It was just the other day that fans were left wondering if super serious method actor Jared Leto possessed enough self-awareness to embrace the ironic appreciation of Morbius, which has somehow managed to evolve into an unstoppable cultural phenomenon, despite its reputation as one of the worst-reviewed Marvel Comics adaptations in history.
Well, we now have our answer, and when you couple this knowledge with Sony going all-in by re-releasing the panned blockbuster in theaters this weekend (which the studio hyped by acknowledging the memes), then an argument can be made that Morbin’ Time has officially jumped the shark.
Sony regularly come under fire for the handling of its superhero properties, which ranges from the near-daily Spider-Man: No Way Home leaks to the mere existence of El Muerto, so it’s not really all that surprising that the boardroom would opt to try and turn a negative into a positive by jumping onto the Morbin’ Time bandwagon.
In Leto’s defense, he clearly cares a great deal for the character, with his performance in the title role marking one of the very few times he’s actually used his own accent in a film. Should Morbius do decent business at the box office this weekend, then the chances of a sequel being given the green light are going to shoot straight through the roof.
If that does happen, then the panned effort will go down in the history books forevermore as perhaps the first high-profile big budget project in history to be willed into existence almost entirely by irony.
