Now that the marketing for Morbius is ramping up ahead of the film’s April 1 release, the increased publicity is something of a double-edged sword, since many are speculating the movie might turn out to be a dud.
The film centers around a world-renowned blood disease expert who accidentally transforms himself into a vampire following an experimental treatment of his own terminal illness. So while we expect Morbius to be doing a lot of sucking, hopefully it will remain solely the method by which he consumes human blood, and not the movie itself doing so like yet-another soulless franchise flick that serves as a thinly-veiled excuse for Sony to retain the intellectual property rights of certain comic book characters.
The official Morbius Twitter account dropped two videos in promotion of the movie Monday morning, so a good percent of the title’s trending status could be due to genuine hype.
In one Tweet, lead star Jared Leto teases in a featurette, “The multiverse has officially opened.”
Another tweet urges moviegoers, “Get tickets now.”
It’s important to contextualize this movie release cycle; there are some rumors swirling that so far, early critical response to the film is negative.
Despite Morbius having already premiered at the Plaza Carso in Mexico City on March 10 — ahead of its official release to the general public in theaters — the film does not currently have any reviews on review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, as of press time.
According to GWW editor Brandon Matthews, some critics have already seen the film, but can’t give official reviews yet due to an embargo. However, he claims he’s heard from several journalists who saw it and said it’s “boring and calculated,” inconsistent, and bad. That’s far from an official confirmation of Morbius‘ lack of quality, but it doesn’t bode well for would-be fans, either.
“I am still going to see this movie but not in theaters,” one Twitter user wrote.
Elsewhere on Twitter, the rumors about the terrible reception continue to permeate.
“I’ve heard nothing but terrible things about #Morbius so far. Shocker,” wrote the Twitter user @DRMovieNews1.
Another fan said they hope the rumored negative reviews “are wrong.”
“Is it as bad as others say it is?” wrote another Twitter user.
Other Twitter users seemed decidedly underwhelmed at the attempted hype train.
One fan is calling out the negative rumors as possibly being a little too discouraging for those who might be a bit curious about the world of comic books.
“I’ll wait & judge for myself like I do my comic books,” they wrote.
Other fans were not letting the rumors get to them, and clearly getting stoked for Morbius‘ release. An insane-looking motion billboard from Milan, Spain, was enough to stop several Twitter users in their tracks.
Even if Morbius isn’t a critical success, there may be a chance it will resonate well with audiences, and do well at the box office, regardless. The previous Sony Spider-Man Universe films, 2018’s Venom and it’s sequel last year, are both plagued with rotten critical scores on Rotten Tomatoes — but both their audience scores are above 80%, as of press time. Both films were box office hits, too. However, Sony could be pushing their luck if they keep releasing critically-underperforming superhero films in a movie market oversaturated with such material.
Morbius comes to theaters April 1.
