Showbiz

'Misfire' Spider-Man spin-off Morbius gets one of worst-ever Rotten Tomatoes scores

'Misfire' Spider-Man spin-off Morbius gets one of worst-ever Rotten Tomatoes scores
Morbius - trailer
Sony

The latest Spider-Man spin-off is here in the form of Jared Leto’s Morbius, and the first verdicts are not good... at all.

We’re not in the business of dumping on films before we’ve seen them, but the new comic book adaptation has received one of the worst-ever Rotten Tomatoes scores after opening to a wave of terrible reviews.

The film has been a long-time coming, having been delayed a total of five times during the pandemic after originally being intended for 2020, and it doesn’t appear to have been worth the wait.

The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey didn’t hold back during her two-star review, calling it “a work of shameless corporate desperation.”

Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter

She wrote: “It can’t be described as the wild, untethered disaster that some were secretly hoping for, either, because that would imply some level of creative risk.

“No, this is the flavourless product of far too many board meetings, where anything offered by director Daniel Espinosa has been whittled down to the level of pure “content”. I’m not sure it’s even meant to function as a film in the traditional sense.

“It’s more a two-hour prelude to a post-credit scene, which happens to be one of the most sloppily written teases ever committed to screen.”

Jared Leto leads the cast in the new spin-offSony

It’s far from the only negative review out there, either.

At the time of writing, the film has a rating of just 18% on the aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.

The site lists two-star reviews in The Telegraph, Den Of Geek and Total Film, as well as damning one-star write-ups in The Evening Standard, Time Out, the Times and The Guardian.

It’s the first major film starring the character Dr Michael Morbius, who is a scientist who turned himself into a vampire in an attempt to cure himself from a rare blood disease.

Adria Arjona, Matt Smith, Tyrese Gibson and Jared Harris also star in the film.

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The Conversation (0)