Morbius

Dr Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) has devoted his life to finding a cure for the rare blood disease that afflicts him and his best friend, Milo (Matt Smith).

. And not in a way that sets up an intriguing mystery but in a way that, like so much of the film, just doesn't work at all – and is made even worse when you read director Daniel Espinosa's explanation for it on social media. It's been delayed by about a year by the pandemic, but it comes across like it was delayed at least fifteen, maybe twenty years – and not just for the usual reason of the pandemic making the past three years feel like three decades. Still, even this would suggest something interesting about Morbius, and that's to do it a service that the film absolutely does not deserve. I suppose there are worse actors out there, but I fail to think of any other major Hollywood actor who so consistently misjudges each and every performance as badly as Jared Leto. That he's a pretentious "method actor" only makes his fall from grace after his significant comeback in Dallas Buyers Club all the more embarrassing, all the more annoying. It works but with one significant side effect: it also turns him into a blood-thirsty "Living Vampire" – a being of immense strength, speed and heightened senses that needs to feed on the blood of humans every few hours to survive. That Morbius? Venom made sense, even if I'm not a fan, as he is a very popular character, but who the hell was demanding a Morbius: The Living Vampire (to give him his full name) film?

An ailing biochemist aims to cure himself of a debilitating illness, but ends up infecting himself with vampirism in the Marvel movie Morbius.

Not unlike Venom, Morbius was a bad guy when he first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man comics, back in the 1970's. He needs to be at least an anti-hero now, if a franchise is to be built around him. At one point, Morbius overhears some counterfeiters passing fake $100s, and commandeers their printing press to make what appears to be an artificial-blood machine — because the technologies for fake-bills and fake-blood match up? But Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) is looking to capture smaller game as he approaches the mouth of a cave, hobbling with difficulty on two crutch-like canes. Except this is a man whose hair has the kind of sheen that comes from brushing it three times a day. Born with a rare blood disease, Michael Morbius has spent his entire life working on two things — a cure, and origami paper-folding. His name is Morbius, and while watching his origin story, you may get the feeling that somewhere in the cinematic multiverse, wires got crossed.

Jared Leto plays the Marvel antihero 'Morbius' in this poorly-made action thriller.

And “Morbius” might be the worst-looking of them all. The bloody incident grabs the attention of detectives Stroud (Tyrese Gibson) and Rodriguez (Al Madrigal), who come to suspect Morbius in a string of murders. It’s a shocking problem in “Morbius” considering editor Pietro Scalia’s past award-winning work on “Gladiator” and “Black Hawk Down.” Why is Espinosa so afraid to show blood or gore? Smith rises above the film, moving with a lanky, unencumbered energy not unlike his “Doctor Who” days. Unlike “Blade Runner 2049” or “The Little Things,” where he could float through scenes as a blank villain, Morbius requires pathos, a layer deeply lacking in Leto’s range. The scrubbing in “Morbius” starts with a flashback to 25 years earlier. Daniel Espinosa’s “Morbius,” a misbegotten, artistically bankrupt bid by writers Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless to fuse a gothic horror edge to the MCU, is the nadir of comic book cinema. The slow motion and jump scare editing, mixed with plumes of black smoke, aims for frights, but only manages to stitch together a smattering of incomprehensible images. Created by Roy Thomas and Gil Kane, the titular villain, sometimes anti-hero, sprung from the pages of “The Amazing Spider-Man” in 1971, imbuing the webslinger’s universe with a supernatural grittiness. Espinosa, unfortunately, is so beholden to the timbre of mass entertainment, he struggles to provide his film with the necessary bloodlust, brutality and frights to rise above a snore. So as Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto), a brooding biochemist living with a blood disease, sways with the assistance of crutches getting off the helicopter, the mystery of his story is moot. It’s no secret the desperate lengths contemporary movies, especially of the comic book variety, rely on VFX to do a film’s emotional heavy lifting.

As Marvel movies go, "Morbius" is more a sip than a gulp, a relatively small-boned Jekyll-and-Hyde tale that moves another Spider-Man villain into the ...

) from a screenplay by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless, "Morbius" has ample company in the world of tortured antiheroes and villains whose well-intentioned scientific goals go terribly wrong. But the material is too anemic, frankly, to contemplate spreading its wings much beyond that. , the timing of the film's arrival merely underscores Jared Leto's range, from this living vampire to an entrepreneurial vampire in "WeCrashed"

It is, in fact, the worst of the year so far. It has no redeeming qualities, from Jared Leto's monotonous, derivitive Blade rip-off — ah yes, another ...

It is, in fact, the worst of the year so far. Now, characters from each distinct brand can come into conflict — a new variant of Iron Man, for example, or Patrick Stewart’s twice-dead Professor X, or indeed three Spider-Men — the toys being mashed together by conglomerates desperate to milk as much as they can from an insatiable audience of foamy-mouthed fanboys. It has no redeeming qualities, from Jared Leto's monotonous, derivitive Blade rip-off — ah yes, another embarassing performance from the prince of prosthetics — to its absolute lack of formal imagination, inventive plotting, or technical acuity.

Morbius tries to set up a cinematic universe to rival the MCU, alienating the audience in the process.

Considering how tightly controlled and perfectly calibrated the MCU is, it’s pretty astonishing that Sony has managed to hijack it for its own ends, confusing fans of both franchises. Morbius also has no reason to dislike Spider-Man - in fact, it’s not clear if Spidey even exists in this universe. The second scene sees Morbius driving down a highway, then getting out of his car to meet Vulture, who is now equipped with his high-tech jetpack suit.

Morbius, Sony's latest Marvel film based on a Spider-Man villain following Venom and Venom: Let There Be Carnage, does very little to mimic Tom Hardy's ...

(If it wasn’t, someone probably would have asked him to say “human/bat chimera” out loud, and re-consider whether the experiment was a good idea.) With the help of colleague and love interest Dr. Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona), Morbius “accidentally” turns himself into a Living Vampire — basically a regular vampire, but without the traditional church allergies. Morbius is what happens when there’s a studio desire for another Venom, but without much thought as to how Venom connected with anyone. Dr. Morbius, we’re told, is one of the world’s foremost scientific minds, having developed a blue-tinged artificial blood that has “saved more lives than penicillin.” Yet he still has not found a cure for his disease — something he desperately wants, not for his own sake, but for his childhood friend Milo (Matt Smith), who suffers from the same disease and funds Morbius’ research through his wealth. Milo dances and preens every moment he’s on camera, in a performance that’s only marred by the CGI makeover both leads get when they vamp up, a choice that doesn’t seem much better than Buffy the Vampire Slayer-style prosthetics. Morbius is the kind of magic you’d want to keep a lid on: a two-hour spell that makes viewers forget it actually stars Jared Leto, one of the few men alive in danger of being too interesting, thanks to his widely publicized overcommitment to Method acting and a public persona that frequently evokes “benevolent cult leader” vibes. And a movie that apes Venom without an unpredictable performance at the center, it turns out, is a pretty lousy time.

Director Daniel Espinosa's Morbius — out April 1st — rips the classic Spider-Man villain out of Marvel's comic just to put him in a movie drained of all ...

But what does feel distinct to Morbius as a movie is the degree to which it’s willing to depict disabled people as frail, weak victims whose entire lives are defined in relation to the able-bodied. The implication, of course, being that Sony’s not through yet. In another universe, Morbius would dig a bit deeper into what might have been an interesting premise: the eccentric founder of a synthetic blood company becomes a pseudo-vampire who also moonlights as a superhero. But in this universe, the movie opts for the road more traveled — one paved with flashy VFX, opaque character motivations, and a climactic action sequence that plays like an overlong quick time event. Morbius doesn’t really try to detail how bat DNA is supposed to factor into Morbius’ condition or explain how he manages to transport hundreds of bats back to his laboratory after willingly walking into a swarm of them in the dramatic scene from the movie’s trailers. Morbius dives headfirst into the already-in-progress origin story of its titular ghoul, Michael Morbius (Jared Leto), a brilliant scientist and lifelong sufferer of a chronic blood disorder.

Jared Leto bares his teeth as a neo-vampire who walks by day and tries to keep his monstrous thirst at bay in the latest Marvel adaptation.

And while most of it is as predictably familiar as expected, it does something unusual for a movie like this: It entertains you, rather than bludgeons you into submission. Leto’s history of needless showboating (as in that wreck “ House of Gucci”) may not have boded well, but he fits the role and delivers an actual performance, not just shtick and brooding poses. One of the revelations of “Morbius” — the latest movie to take a marginal Marvel character out of mothballs for his blockbuster close-up — is that regular blood smoothies do wonders for the skin. Milo grows up to become a louche moneybags played by Matt Smith, who’s best known for playing Prince Philip in “The Crown,” a bit of casting history that gives his role here amusing tang. After a leisurely flashback to his sad childhood, Morbius is back in his New York lab, experimenting and knitting brows alongside a colleague, Monica (Adria Arjona). It also runs under two hours, i.e., a full hour less than that recent slugfest “ The Batman.” I mean, what’s not to like?

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Spotlight also has a look at slasher horror film X. Starring Brittany Snow, Jenna Ortega, Kid Cudi and Martin Henderson, and set in rural Texas in 1979, a mini-porn production rapidly turns into a nightmare. This week’s Marvel film release at cinemas is Morbius, starring Jared Leto in the title role as he accidentally turns himself into a living vampire. Spotlight is our entertainment bite-sized snapshot featuring new entertainment releases in SA, exclusive film trailers and much more.

'Morbius' has connections to the Marvel Cinematic Universe that sets up a Spider-Man showdown, but the scenes are puzzling.

There’s maybe a Peter Parker, but if there is he’s not Spider-Man. That doesn’t stop Vulture from name-dropping him like a LinkedIn contact, and somehow Morbius is immediately into the idea of beating him up. The second scene, which could also be mistaken for a luxury car commercial starring Jared Leto, has Morbius drive to a remote area. During the multiversal fracturing, Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton) ends up in the Morbius/Venom universe. That last part is important, because here’s where the Morbius scene stops making sense. There are no scenes after the credits, but stick around to acknowledge the hard-working industry employees who deserved better than having to make Morbius. Yes, Morbius has two credits scenes.

This article contains Morbius spoilers. Ever since Marvel Studios began the tradition of including extra scenes during or after the end credits of its ...

We’ll have to see what happens if Morbius underperforms, although at least one more Arad-produced movie, Kraven the Hunter, is already in production and an inexplicable Madame Web film is on the way as well. Arad certainly deserves credit for his role in saving Marvel Comics and launching what became Marvel Studios in the period from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. The implication is that this Toomes suddenly was transported from his cell in a different universe–presumably the MCU universe where was jailed at the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming–and ended up here. Suddenly out of the sky appears Toomes in his full Vulture regalia (or at least a CG version of him since we never see Keaton’s face again). The Vulture expresses something to the effect that he doesn’t know how he got here, but he thinks it “has something do with Spider-Man.” A scene showing Morbius walking past a Spider-Man poster on a city wall–also seen in trailers–is also missing from the movie. In Morbius, Dr. Michael Morbius ( Jared Leto) is experimenting with a serum derived from vampire bat DNA to cure a rare blood disorder that he suffers from.

The violet cracks in the sky symbolize the multiverse breaking, and with this credits scene, the implication is that Morbius (Jared Leto) and his world (which ...

Yet with this bombshell cameo (which was teased in one of its trailers), it can’t help but feel a little like the credits scene and potential sequel are more important than anything that just happened in Morbius. All this universe-colliding stuff is a big deal because it’s how Marvel and Sony have addressed the film rights of various characters. The second scene picks up where the first one leaves off, and features Morbius meeting up with a free Toomes. The Vulture wants to recruit our living vampire into some kind of supervillain posse. Morbius has two credits scenes, one for every year that the movie was delayed! Morbius’s first credits scene features the purple time rift seen in Spider-Man: No Way Home. In that movie, Doctor Strange has to put the world back together to stop the multiverse from collapsing on itself. But since Toomes hasn’t been convicted of any crimes in Morbius’s world, we see him exonerated and freed.

Sony Pictures' superhero efforts have varied wildly in success, but their latest deserves a stake through its heart.

Morbius goes about crossing off all the things that audiences expect from a superhero movie—the origin story, the villain with a personal relationship to the protagonist, the journey of learning to embrace new powers—with all the enthusiasm of a routine colonoscopy. Of course, this also wouldn’t be the first time that Jared Leto showed up in a superhero blockbuster with a host of villains—and we know how well that went. He was one of the most entertaining performers of 2021, turning in performances in The Little Things and House of Gucci that stole the show from the likes of Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, Adam Driver, Al Pacino, and Lady Gaga. Had he brought half the chaotic energy he did to playing a creepy serial killer suspect or a paunchy failson to Morbius, the film could’ve been watchable—perhaps even worthy of a so-bad-it’s-good sequel. But Leto’s antihero is surprisingly muted and devoid of any charisma, whether he’s sharing scenes with a supposed love interest or a childhood best friend turned villain with an impressive net worth that is never explained. If the film’s two mid-credits scenes featuring (minor spoiler alert) Michael Keaton’s Vulture are any indication, this isn’t the last we’ll see of Dr. Michael Morbius, who could find himself sharing screen time with other Spider-Man villains in the near future. And so, along with his colleague and possible romantic interest Dr. Martine Bancroft—a character whom actress Adria Arjona earnestly compared to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—Morbius tests the cure on himself in exotic international waters (a.k.a., 16 miles off the coast of Long Island). Suffice it to say, it doesn’t go well—as in, Morbius turns into a vampiric man-beast who drains the blood of everyone aboard the ship aside from Bancroft. At the start of the movie, we see Dr. Michael Morbius (Leto) capture a group of vampire bats in the jungles of Costa Rica, hoping to splice their DNA with that of humans to cure his blood disorder. But the greatest virtue of the Sony-produced Marvel movies—their sheer unpredictability—can also be a curse, much like a Nobel Prize–winning doctor discovering a cure for a rare blood disease that turns him into a living vampire. The sad truth is that Venom might’ve followed a similar path if it weren’t for Hardy hijacking the project by jumping in a lobster tank and being a complete weirdo on every level. [Licks the blood off the man’s face.] That injury will require an external nose splint administered by a medical professional. The Andrew Garfield–led Spider-Man franchise was so underwhelming that the studio turned to Marvel Studios when rebooting the character—and the Kevin Feige–approved Tom Holland era has been considerably better—while the Venom films have emerged as a horny, chaotic celebration of symbiote-human companionship. As the owner of the film rights to Spider-Man and the extensive library of comic book characters associated with the superhero, Sony has created many of its own Marvel movies, and the results have been all over the place.

How do the 'Morbius' credits scenes set up 'Sinister Six,' and how do they tie into the MCU? Read on and excelsior!

By the way, neither of these credits scenes are the Morbius-Toomes encounter from the January 2020 trailer, which showed them meeting as they passed in an alley (with Keaton delivering the “What’s up, doc?” line). That scene is not in the current film. Then Toomes (Keaton) finds himself in a prison cell in the continuity of “Morbius,” followed by news reports that he’s sure to be released after having just appeared out of nowhere. Toomes, in his full Vulture armor — including the mask that could conveniently excuse Keaton from filming, I’m just saying — shows up, thanks Morbius for meeting him and says they should band together to “do some good.” In the first scene, we see the familiar multiverse rift from “No Way Home” over the New York skyline. Now the MCU’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home” multiverse fracture has thrown open the doors for pretty much any Spidey villain to wind up in the Six. If there can be said to be a classic Sinister Six lineup, it would include Doctor Octopus, the Vulture, Electro, Kraven, Mysterio and Sandman.

An analysis of the two mid-credits (or post-credits) scenes in Marvel and Sony's latest Spider-Man spinoff Morbius, starring Jared Leto as Dr. Michael ...

All we can say for sure is that nothing in either mid-credits scene contradicts No Way Home, and there is clearly more to this story and the rules of the multiverse that we’ll hopefully see explained across future films. No Way Home’s post-credits scene may have already hinted at a flaw in the spell, given that when Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is transported back to his world, a piece of the Venom symbiote gets left behind in the MCU. So clearly, not every living creature who was aware that Peter Parker is Spider-Man got sent back. The question of how Toomes was transported from the MCU to the SSU has puzzled some viewers, since Strange’s spell at the end of No Way Home supposedly only reverted the villains who had breached the multiverse back to their original dimensions. We just don’t know yet; as Strange tells Peter (Tom Holland) in No Way Home, “The multiverse is a concept about which we know frighteningly little.” The same goes for Marvel’s rules on magic. I don’t know how I got here … something to do with Spider-Man. I’m thinking of putting a team together. The anchor reports that a hearing has been set, which “could likely lead to his immediate release.” Toomes is then escorted into a police car by several officers.

Jared Leto's one-note vampire is possibly the least helpful superhero we've seen yet.

Morbius is reflective of Leto’s much more self-serious side, and the film is thuddingly tedious as a result. The only time Morbius seems fleetingly interested in working for the public good is when he stalks some shady-seeming gangsters to a lab where they’re making counterfeit goods—but he then reveals that he only wants to hijack their lab to carry out more of his experiments. When Leto is at his most maximalist, it helps if the movie matches him—the willingness to embrace exaggerated silliness is what made House of Gucci such an enjoyable ride, with Leto hamming it up right in the middle of all the chaos. Most crucially, his best friend, Milo (Matt Smith), who has the same blood condition, gets his hands on the serum and becomes a vampire as well, embracing his villainy and delivering many a florid monologue about how great it is to suck people’s blood out of their neck. Leto, an actor who often makes a public meal of how committed he is to his roles, does his best to sell the monster within through lots of anguished screaming. Griping about a trend that’s just a Hollywood fact of life is almost trite, but in the case of Morbius, the dark and gloomy Jared Leto vehicle finally making it to theaters this weekend, I have to register a complaint.

Many reviews noted that the film did not live up to the promises made in the trailer for a horror/thriller superhero film with ties to other Spider-Man films.

In the film, Leto portrays biochemist Michael Morbius, who is trying to cure himself of a rare blood disease. As Adam Graham of the Detroit News notes in his review of the film, the studio's desire to expand its Spider-Man lore is understandable. Graham is not alone in his assessment of the Jared Leto-led film.

For someone who has sat through a multiverse of superhero flicks the past few years, I'm still (to my own surprise) game for just about anything involving ...

There's only one way to watch the film, where Leto plays a doctor-turned-vampire for now. If you're a superhero completionist, we're guessing that you want to watch Morbius anyway. So it's not the biggest surprise that the Jared Leto-starring Morbius, which debuts this weekend, is earning the worst reviews we've seen since the days of Batfleck.

Morbius has arrived and is currently sitting as one of the worst-reviewed superhero movies…ever. That means you may not want to actually see Morbius, ...

The public didn’t know the multiverse stuff was directly connected to Spider-Man, so why would Toomes know that? Originally, it seems as if Toomes and Morbius’ interaction was supposed to take place in a different context, which is why some of the lines from the trailer did not make it into the final film. A main problem with the way things were changed was that because everything got carved up and was forced to integrate the events of No Way Home means that almost nothing about it makes sense. It seems the very, very large amount of delays which pushed Morbius to be released after Spider-Man: No Way Home is what caused these final scenes to be so seemingly random. It’s more like they stole Toomes from the MCU rather than added Morbius to the MCU, which was more the original implication. All of this seems…pretty poorly mapped out at the moment, including Toomes’ clumsy inclusion here in the post-credits sequence which was advertised as a main selling point of the movie in order to generate “oh hey Morbius is connected to the MCU!” buzz, which seems pretty misleading now.

Warning: Full spoilers follow for Morbius. Do you want to know if the movie has a post-credits scene? We'll tell you right here: It has two mid-credits ...

… The Morbius universe is the same universe as Venom and how the powers-that-be will commit to a certain hero is in their [plans], it's in a small briefcase that has a bomb around it. Gone are the Spider-Man mural, the Oscorp tower in the New York skyline, and the scenes of an exchange between Morbius and Adrian Toomes outside a jail. But mostly, some things end up on the cutting floor and some things end up in the movie. I think that what we have with the movie when we worked on it over the last two and a half years, there's a bunch of stuff that is not in the movie, as in with any picture. Perhaps Venom is a sort of boogeyman to people in this universe?) And with that, we have the official planting of the seeds for a Sinister Six movie. Morbius director Daniel Espinosa told IGN UK that his film is set in the Sony-verse or what he refers to as the Venom-verse. “Morbius exists within the Venom-verse, but as we know, those ‘verses will be able to cross each other in the future,” the director said. But, as Leto told IGN in a recent interview, “some of this stuff I really can't tell you unless I'm going to kill you, but certainly, (Vulture’s) reputation precedes him. In what’s evidently a prearranged meet, Vulture tells Morbius that he’s read up on him since arriving in this universe, a fantastical happening he presumes Spider-Man had something to do with. The terrain and geography would suggest he’s relocated out west after running afoul of the law in New York. In the climactic battle in New York City, Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) ultimately must kill his best friend-turned-vampiric enemy Milo (Matt Smith) using a chemical injection of his own creation. I think that'll be fun to play as an actor and I think it'll be fun for people to see that.

We break down the Oscar winners, as Marvel's living vampire hits cinemas, along with 'Sonic the Hedgehog 2', and the clever and acclaimed slasher flick 'X'; ...

Spotlight also has a look at slasher horror film X.  Starring Brittany Snow, Jenna Ortega, Kid Cudi and Martin Henderson, and set in rural Texas in 1979, a mini-porn production rapidly turns into a nightmare. This week’s Marvel film release at cinemas is Morbius, starring Jared Leto in the title role as he accidentally turns himself into a living vampire. Don’t miss the Los Angeles premiere coverage of the new Paramount military science-fiction series Halo, now on Showmax, with SA director Jonathan Liebesman (Battle: Los Angeles, Wrath of the Titans, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) helming some episodes.

Jared Leto as the character Morbius in a chemistry lab. Jared Leto is a vampire in STEM, in Morbius. Courtesy of Sony. Over the last ...

Primed by the culmination of two years of Morbius trailers or spending the better part of an hour and a half watching Jared Leto slurp down blood bags like a college freshman, I could not believe Morbius was really all wrapping up like this. It dawned on me that there’s probably going to be a sequel, or some tie-in; that this horrendous thing was maybe just really the beginning. The five minutes or so in which this all happens borders on psychotic; I found myself hollering an obscene and inhuman hoot — a gurgling death rattle from the last vestiges of my sanity. Michael Morbius is a genius doctor who has assembled a team of unnamed characters to travel, by helicopter, to Costa Rica’s Cerro de la Muerte, which translates into English as “The Mountain of Death.” We do not get much more information on how much killing the mountain has done. A lot of vampire tales complicate the problem of taking on a fairly reprehensible form of being by ensuring their bloodsuckers are intoxicatingly charismatic. Compared to the great lengths that Morbius went to to reach Costa Rica’s Cerro de la Muerte, a jaunty sprint to the waters just beyond Fire Island seems a little silly, comical even. Morbius’s gimmick is that Morbius is now essentially a vampire, but without any tether to existing mythology. The international waters in question end up being a Panamanian cargo ship 12 miles off the coast of Long Island. If Morbius was a person you were supposed to have a date with who kept postponing, at this point you’d both agree to just forget the other existed. However, we do learn that Morbius is trying to capture a bunch of vampire bats to take home with him to New York City. He slices his palm open, blood drips down, and thousands of bats come shooting out of the cave trying to lick his pale little hand. This state of eternally “coming soon” was due to the numerous delays the movie has faced. Over the last two very long years, nothing has been made more clear than the fact that the world we live in is devoid of constants.

'Morbius' is highly anticipated with its supposed ancillary ties to Spider-Man and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

My expectations may have been set a bit too high for “The Lost City,” which had the air of a latter day “Romancing the Stone”, but whose tone is a bit loonier than I expected. However, the completion of the mission creates a difficult choice for Briggs that leaves Lulu’s life on the line. Trainor is everything that Alan appears to be on the covers of Loretta’s novel, but isn’t in real life. The tonal shift back and forth did the movie no favors. “Dog,” which Tatum co-directed with Reid Carolin, tells the story of two wounded warriors. The likable and handsome lug, who specializes in playing characters who aren’t always the brightest bulb in the box, may not ever win an Oscar, but he does have a certain charm to go with his good looks. We’ve been entertained and inundated by so much vampire material particularly on television over the last two decades with shows like “True Blood,” ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Angel” and even “The Vampire Chronicles,” to be scared or surprised by the blood-sucking creature. “The Lost City” seems crafted specifically for a date night. The last thing a mediocre movie should do is make the viewer’s mind wander toward a classic of the genre. A subway fight between Morbius and Milo also provoked thoughts of the subway chase and subsequent mauling of a businessman in 1981’s “American Werewolf in London.” I’m not sure if that was intentional or not? Madrigal brings some character and humor to his role, but Gibson is stiff, trying to play the tough guy. Unfortunately for those expecting such a crossover, the movie proper either never had that intention or was scrubbed clean.