In Morbius, Jared Leto leads a coldblooded supervillain origin story

Morbius’ first attack on the mercenaries, for example, unfolds like he’s the xenomorph in a better-lit, earthbound version of the Nostromo and/or LV-426, decimating space truckers and automatic-weapon-wielding Marines with swift brutality. A later fight between Morbius and Lucien, meanwhile, conjures the tube chase from An American Werewolf In London, but with less style and more computer-generated imagery. One supposes there are only so many locations that filmmakers can use for action scenes that haven’t already been shot in some iconic fashion, but it takes little imagination to make those cinematic connections while they’re happening. Moreover, Jon Ekstrand’s score functions in precisely the kind of same-y, nondescript way that so much film and TV music seems to these days. The few moments that stand out do so because they sound so similar to Hans Zimmer’s wall-of-sound work on Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, especially when they’re accompanying a scene where, say, a man is looking skyward as a swarm of bats flutter around him in obedience.

While close-ups of Jared Leto’s vibrating ears feel unnecessary, the effect of Morbius’ “radar” as he scans his environment—from his elegantly appointed laboratory to the entirety of Manhattan—actually offers a neat visual, as the buildings dissolve beneath expanding waves of mist. But endlessly transforming faces and colored trails that trace these monsters’ progression across a cityscape quickly grow repetitive, and by the time Morbius and Lucien are hammering each other from one rubble pile to the next, the action becomes an empty placeholder for the hero’s resolution that Espinoza telegraphs. His instincts to try for something semi-tragic, even operatic are admirable, and occasionally work when he slows things down to create a single, tableau-like moment, but the rest of the time the movie ebbs and flows without excitement between dopey character motivations and reams of technical jargon about blood.

If he’s not quite winging it like Tom Hardy is in the Venom franchise, Leto thankfully doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously to prevent a little bit of fun from creeping into the film. But his character’s journey is too obvious, predictable, and oddly impatient to get to its resolution for audiences to care much about whether or not he becomes a superhero or succumbs to his disease. Especially since there’s no particular inclination for Morbius to help ordinary people without the enormous financial resources of Lucien, it’s hard to imagine him doing much of anything for anybody after acquiring his powers and apparently learning how to control them. Smith, on the other hand, seems to relish his chance to turn heel opposite Leto, but he also seems to be well aware that however viewers receive his performance as the film’s bloodsucking super-baddie, his face will be covered more often than not with wildly uneven computer-generated effects.

Without spoiling anything, a couple of post-credits sequences set up a future for Leto’s character in a larger world that you understand why Sony would try and telegraph, but given the failures of past Spider-Man spin-offs (particularly those from the Amazing films) it’s hard to believe they have really thought any of those next steps through. But until then, Morbius feels like exactly the kind of second-tier superhero adventure audiences will accept in between ones that they actively want. Admittedly, it’s odd to want a movie like this to have been worse, but that would mean it failed as bigly as the swings it took; by comparison, Morbius is a walk, or at best a bunt. That may qualify it as a hit for Leto, Espinoza, and Sony, but that doesn’t mean it’s much fun to watch from the stands.