Updated June 3, 2022: After the writing of this article, Sony Pictures has decided to re-release Morbius for a theatrical run (in a thousand theaters, no less). Apparently, there is something to the Morbin' Time ridiculousness spelled out in the following feature.
Morbius, a 2022 movie from Sony featuring scientist turned vampire antihero Michael Morbius, has found a second wind of late. Like Jared Leto's own Morbius discovering his new-found ability of flight, the movie has been taken by a gust of tongue-in-cheek creations online urging for a follow-up to a film hardly anyone watched and seemingly no one enjoyed.
On May 28th, @CultureCrave tweeted: "'It's Morbin time' has trended on Twitter for a whole week." There's also been an endless array of dumb memes on Twitter to go with the character. One user subtitled a screenshot of a vampire-mode Leto with the caption reading "It's Morbin' time," leading to the confusion of countless people on the outside of an inside joke, who feel they have to clarify that 'no, that isn't said in the movie.'
Meanwhile, on streaming platform Twitch, some guy had been playing the entire Morbius movie on a loop for days. T-shirts with "MORBIN' TIME" across their chest were made and printed. The entire screenplay was posted online in 280-characters-or-less installments. This got to the point that the legitimate Forbes magazine went out of their way to state that Morbius 2 is definitely not happening. Following Morbius' own gothic roots, to the uninitiated it would appear that the movie, despite having failed at the box office and having been universally panned on release, is back from the dead.
The most surprising thing about the Morbius film was the end credits sting. Not that Doctor Michael Morbius would inexplicably meet Michael Keaton's Vulture, but instead that the movie's creators believed that this cinematic guano would be deserving of a sniff at a sequel or spin off. However, that could very well be what happens as a result of the Morbin' Time campaign. Is Twitter memeing a Morbius sequel into existence, and will we all have to suffer as a result?
Sham Stoker's Dracula
Entirely unorganized, and honed by a collective of humans prepared to laugh at something that was already stupid, the Morbin' Time fad actually brings to mind the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement (albeit Morbin' Time isn't run by a crack team of deluded internet trolls as far as we can tell). Looking back, with enough oomph behind their movement (including paid billboards and bi-planes promoting their hashtag) the Snyder fans diverted film history and got what they wanted after three years of loud complaining and wishful thinking.
After a lackluster film in Joss Whedon's Justice League, enough viral movement, and with the actual Justice League stars showing their support online as well, Zack Snyder was permitted to return to the project he had previously dropped out from, re-shoot certain parts, and cut his own version. The dedicated (if not aggressive) fandom had won, and perhaps the Morbin' Time bros have learned a thing or two.
All "The Morb Heads" out there know what they're doing, but don't see the possible destination that this could take. Currently, there is a self-awareness and a kitsch quality to their posts, an odor of "so bad it's good," as reviewers on platforms like Rotten Tomatoes rank the film at a healthy 71%, and with IMDB placing Morbius as its 17th most popular movie right now. Arguably, this goes one more level as these goofy bloodsuckers go out of their way to give the movie as many stars as possible, creating yet another monster. Because for Sony, who believed that a movie like Morbius was a good idea in the first place, it's more than reasonable to believe that a cigar-chomping studio exec will see this popularity on Twitter and misread it as genuine calls for a sequel.
Previously, on Morbin' Time...
Morbius "The Living Vampire” made his first appearance in 1971's The Amazing Spider-Man #101 by Roy Thomas, with art by Gil Kane. A brilliant scientist, eager to cure himself of a terminal illness, the comic's Michael Morbius would gain his powers from a mix of vampire bat DNA and electroshock therapy. With a lust for human blood, Morbius would kill his research partner, immediately regretting the monster that he had become but, alas, was still driven by a vampiric hunger. As the character progressed from there, he would be utilized in his own sporadic but dedicated comic series' and regularly pop in as a go-to Spider-Man villain, most iconically as a blue-haired, ambiguously foreign version in the seminal Spider-Man: The Animated Series that ran from 1994-98.
While that may have suggested enough source material for Sony to go ahead on, from the start, no one legitimately required (or even wanted, for that matter) a whole movie dedicated to him. While also not a very good movie, 2018's Venom (based on a far more popular Spider-Man villain) also by Sony, had a basis for existing. And the results show: whereas the first Venom made back its budget over eight times worldwide and spawned its own sticky icky sequel, only $163 million was taken worldwide for Morbius. Atop of Morbius' budget alongside marketing for the film, this looks like a loss for the Sony corporation.
In his review, critic Mark Kermode aptly said, "Enough origin stories that no-one asked for." Kermode would actually talk relatively favorably about the 2021 sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage," to further the comparison. When a movie is great, it doesn't matter if nobody asked for it. On the other hand, when it's Morbius...
Give a Leto Love and It All Comes Back To You
Morbius here acts as a fatal triple threat: an actor many people dislike ("Why Do People Hate Jared Leto So Much," one article asks rather rhetorically), in a movie for a character nobody cared about, by a production company people love to hate on. During production, the able-bodied Jared Leto (Morbius) would lack a sensitivity in continuing to opt for crutches when not shooting, even needing assistance for bathroom breaks, quite literally slowing down the shoot. The film itself is murky and bland, early reactions to Morbius warned and later reviews confirmed. The entirety of Morbius and its main star is considered dislikable, and it's almost too easy a target for anyone online to take aim at... and that's why we're so fascinated by actually doing so.
Like standing around a dumpster fire, we can't help but be drawn in by its warmth and the color of the flames as they melt away at the metal container. Mesmerized, we even throw more garbage on to see how hot the flames get, how high they rise. Nobody in the first place wanted to see Morbius on screen; add to that the presence of one Jared Leto (whose audition in the world of superheroes should've ended with Suicide Squad, with what many believe to be the worst Joker performance, live-action or otherwise), his multiple claims off-screen of being a supposed predator, and misleading promotion, and the result was just a drunken mess of a movie.
This influx of memes is a hangover, a side effect prescribed by a quack "Doctor" Morbius. One can't help but fear Morbin' Time will go in the exact same direction as the highly popular comic fandom of Zack Snyder, and these keyboard jesters will actually get their way. They're high on Morbium, and don't recognize the power they (and Photoshop) wield.