Michael Morbius (Sony's Spider-Man Universe) (2024)

Dr. Michael Morbius is the titular main protagonist of the 2022 Sony's Spider-Man Universe supernatural superhero film of the same name. He was a noble prize-winning scientist suffering from a rare blood disease who attempts to cure himself with a form of transgenic vampirism which gives him superhuman abilities, but also an unstoppable bloodlust.

He was portrayed by Jared Leto, who also played Angel Face in Fight Club, Harry Goldfarb in Requiem for a Dream, Junior in Panic Room, the Joker in the DC Extended Universe, Niander Wallace, Jr. in Blade Runner 2049 and the Hatbox Ghost in the 2023 The Haunted Mansion film.

Biography[]

At a hospital in Greece, 10-year-old Michael Morbius welcomes his surrogate brother Lucien, whom he renames Milo. They bond over their shared blood illness and desire to be "normal". Their adoptive father and hospital director Nicholas arranges for Michael to attend medical school in New York while he focuses on caring for Milo.

Twenty-five years later, Michael publicly declines a Nobel Prize for his work with synthetic blood. Michael's colleague Martine Bancroft discovers he has secretly captured dozens of vampire bats from Costa Rica in hopes of splicing their genes with his own to cure his condition.

After informing Nicholas and Milo of his planned experiment, Michael receives funding to outfit a private mercenary vessel in international waters with his equipment. While the cure works, it transforms Michael into a vampire. Michael kills and drains the crew of their blood after they attack him out of fear. Once his bloodlust subsides and he regains his senses, a horrified Michael erases all CCTV footage of his experiment before contacting the authorities and jumping overboard.

Michael returns to New York and discovers he has superhuman abilities, including echolocation. He subsists on his synthetic blood until it gradually ceases to satisfy his needs. Milo learns that Michael is cured but becomes furious when Michael refuses to cure him as well. While checking on a hospitalized Bancroft, Michael finds a dead nurse, drained of her blood. Believing he was responsible; he attempts to escape before being cornered and arrested.

In prison, Michael is visited by Milo, who offers to use his wealth to free him. Upon seeing Milo's cane left behind and realizing Milo took his cure and killed the nurse, Michael escapes to confront him, but Milo is unbending. Michael meets Bancroft to explain what Milo has done before acquiring a new lab and developing an anticoagulant to stop and potentially kill the unstoppable Milo. He also plans to use it on himself since he will become unable to resist his bloodlust.

Stroud and Rodriguez find footage of one of Milo's attacks and release it to the media. Nicholas recognizes Milo and pleads with him to stop. Angered by Nicholas' perceived preference for Michael, Milo wounds and forces him to call Michael. Michael watches Nicholas die while Milo attacks Bancroft. Michael returns to Bancroft, but she dies in his arms, and he drinks her blood to gain more power. Michael confronts and fights Milo in an epic battle before summoning a swarm of vampire bats to restrain him and inject the anticoagulant. Milo dies peacefully and regrets what he has done, and Michael flies off with the bats, embracing his identity as a vampire.

Sometime later, Michael encounters Adrian Toomes, who was suddenly transported from the MCU to Michael's universe due to a side-effect of Doctor Strange's spell to remove the knowledge of Peter Parker's secret identity as Spider-Man in order to stop the Multiverse from fracturing, despite Adrian not being a multiversal outsider. Adrian reveals that he has been studying up on Morbius' recent actions as a vampire and thinking that his appearance in his universe has something to do with Spider-Man, he offers to start a team with Michael to "do some good". Morbius remarks the offer is intriguing and agrees.

Personality[]

Morbius is devoted to cure his disease while staying good-natured as a doctor. He seeks to help people, but becomes a threat after testing on himself. He is forgiving, as seen when he offered Milo a chance for redemption following the latter's fall to villainy.

He retains the desire to help people, voicing intrigue in Vulture's proposal that they find others like them that work outside the law and form a team to do what others can't.

Powers and Abilities[]

Powers[]

• Pseudo-Vampirism: After being injected with the Morbius Formula, Michael, as a vampire, possesses supernatural strength, durability, speed, agility, reflexes, stamina, senses and an accelerated healing factor. He also displays a humanoid bat-like appearance with pale skin, bright red eyes, and razor-sharp teeth and claws.
  • Vampiric Transformation: Michael is capable of transforming between his human form and a monstrous, humanoid bat-like creature at will.
    • Supernatural Strength: As a vampire, Michael is able to break through bulletproof glass in a matter of seconds, overpower a group of mercenaries relatively easily and even able to hold his own against Milo. His strength is also rivaled by other living vampires such as Milo.
    • Supernatural Durability: As a vampire, Michael can withstand great impacts, such as surviving falls from tremendous heights, that would have severely injured or kill a normal human.
    • Supernatural Speed: As a vampire, Michael can generate an aura of energy currents and mist-like shapes into his movements. He can also move so fast that he looks like that he is turning into mist, but in truth, he is actually moving too fast for the human eye to see.
    • Supernatural Agility: As a vampire, Michael is far more agile than normal humans.
    • Supernatural Reflexes: As a vampire, Michael can dodge or counter any attack, such as gunfire, even at point-blank range.
    • Supernatural Stamina: As a vampire, Michael's advanced musculature is considerably more efficient than that of humans. As a result, his muscles produce practically no fatigue toxins during physical activity compared to those of humans. His virtually inexhaustible stamina enables him to exert himself at peak capacity for an undefined period of time without tiring at all.
    • Enhanced Senses: As a vampire, Michael's senses are far more greatly developed as he can pick up even the faintest of sounds and smells over vast distances.
      • Night Vision: Due to Michael's vampiric senses, he can see clearly in the dark.
    • Accelerated Perception: Michael can process information, and think much faster than humans. He was able see bullets moving in slow motion, despite the fact that they were moving at high speeds.
    • Regeneration: As a vampire, Michael's metabolism allows him to heal much faster, more extensively, and efficiently than normal humans.
    • Gliding: Michael is able to glide on wind currents at amazing speeds and at high altitudes, simulating flight.
    • Sharp Claws and Fangs: As a vampire, Michael has razor-sharp fangs which he could use to bite and tear through flesh and bone and razor-sharp claws which he could use to rip and tear through materials.
    • Wall-Crawling: As a vampire, Michael is able to stick or grip onto any surface, just like a bat.
    • Echolocation: By manipulating reflected sound or sound waves, Michael is able to locate objects or other individuals over small or vast distances.
    • Bat Communication: Michael is able to call upon an army of bats and order them to attack Milo.
    • Vampirization: Michael is able turn humans into other living vampires when they are exposed to his vampiric blood.

Abilities[]

• Genius-Level Intellect: Michael is a highly intelligent individual ever since he earned his doctorate at the age of 19.
• Master Scientist: Michael is an excellent scientist and an expert in the fields of science, biochemistry, electronics, mechanics, technology and several other subjects. He was able to successfully create artificial blood, that has saved more lives than penicillin, thus earning him the nobel prize.
• Master Engineer: Michael is an excellent engineer. Even at the age of ten, he was able to successfully fix Lucien Crown's blood pump with just only a spring from a pen.
• Expert Medic: Michael is a highly skilled doctor since he is better known as the world's leading expert on blood-borne diseases.
• Master Combatant: Michael is a brilliant hand-to-hand combatant, able to hold his own against a group of mercenaries relatively easily. His combat skills combined with his superhuman physical attributes, make him a formidable opponent in single combat.

Weaknesses[]

• Antibody: Michael's vampire physiology is similar to that of actual bats, which makes him vulnerable to the antibody. If he is injected with a massive amount of this serum, it will literally kill him.
• Bloodlust: Michael has a thirst for human blood, which forces him to rely on artificial blood, to avoid succumbing to his thirst for blood.
• Lack of flight: Michael cannot actually fly as he glides on air currents. Without air currents, he is unable to glide through the sky.

Gallery[]

Trivia[]

• Morbius is the third primary antagonist who does not meet Spider-Man despite to be known in comics since Venom and Carnage, while others like Riot, Shriek, but also Milo doesn't count much as Spider-Man's major villains.
• When Michael was having a romantic conversation with Martine Bancroft, Dracula was mentioned who is Morbius's main enemy and sometimes friendly acquaintance in Marvel comic books.
• In the post-credit's scene, when Michael Morbius met Vulture for the first time. Their respective actors, Jared Leto and Michael Keaton, are known for portraying Joker and Batman (in different continuities and projects of the DC universe).
• Before Michael got his vampire powers, he tested on a mouse as a test subject. which is similar how Dr. Curt Connors from the Marc Webb universe before he became The Lizard, he tested on Fred the mouse to make sure its healing proof.
  • Unlike Connors when Fred turned into a "Lizard Rat". Michael's mouse didn't show any side effect to become a Vampire Rat.
• In the weeks following Morbius' release, it became commonplace among people online to create memes surrounding both Morbius and catchphrases he falsely uses in the film (see quote above). These typically center around the "Morb-" prefix of Morbius' last name and alias, with "It's morbin' time!" (a parody of Power Rangers' "It's morphin' time!") and "Stand back, I'm beginning to morb!" (often used to refer when Morbius enters his vampiric state, or other characters going into a similarly beastly form) being the most common of these).
• Due to the film's rather poor status in the view of film critics, Morbius has sparked a series of memes parallel to the "Morb-" memes consisting of a hypothetical movie that the critics did not watch, a movie which is considered the greatest of all time, with whopping scores.
  • Jared Leto responded to these memes by uploading a video of him reading a joke script for Morbius 2: It's Morbin' Time.
• The film's numerous tropes and clichés influenced the Internet meme of it being "one of the movies of all time", with emphasis on a lack of originality.

External Links[]

• Michael Morbius on the Heroes Wiki
• Michael Morbius on the Magnificent Baddie Wiki
• Morbius on the Sony's Spider-Man Universe Wiki

Navigation[]

's Spider-Man Universe Villains

Venom Venom | Life Foundation (Carlton Drake/Riot & Roland Treece) | Shakedown Thug |Cletus Kasady Venom: Let There Be Carnage Venom |Cletus Kasady/Carnage |Shriek |Kasady Family Morbius Michael Morbius |Milo Morbius |Vulture Madame Web Ezekiel Sims Others Prowler | Spot

Villains

Comics A.I.M. |Baron Blood |Baron Mordo |Basiliak |Black Cat |Blackout |Black Talon |Bloodbath |Bloodthirst |Carnage |Carrion |Darkhold Dwarf |Demogoblin |Doctor Octopus |Doppelganger |Dormammu |Dracula |Green Goblin (Norman Osborn) |Hand |Hobgoblin (Phil Urich) |Hood |HYDRA |J. Jonah Jameson |Kang the Conqueror |Kingpin |Lilith |Lizard |Loxias Crown |Master Pandemonium |Melter |Mindless Ones |Morbius |Mr. Hyde |Nightmare |Rose |Shriek |Umar |Vampires |Vic Slaughter |Vulture Movie Michael Morbius | Milo Morbius | Vulture