Opening Night: MORBIUS

Good day CrewMembers and welcome to “Opening Night: MORBIUS” The purpose of the “Opening Night” feature is to give newcomers the foundations and basic information to be able to enjoy the program more fully. We work to avoid probable spoilers and speculation to allow everyone to enjoy “THOSE” moments together. We take our focus from the trailers and on-the-record news confirmed by the cast and crew.

As mentioned, when planning these features out, we work to rely only on the officially released trailers and anything officially confirmed by the cast/crew. That has actually made writing this feature a bit trickier, and longer than usual for an origin movie. Here comes the explanation why.

Without getting into too much business background, SONY actually has the license to make programs based on Spider-Man and his family of characters but has worked with MARVEL Studios since Captain America: Civil War to allow Spider-Man/Peter Parker and select characters to exist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. On the side, SONY was planning their own Spider-Man Adjacent Characters Cinematic Universe. These movies were purposefully ambiguous on if they existed in the MCU or their own.

After Spider-Man Far From Home, a new deal was reached that seemingly brought the two universes closer together. The first real evidence of this was seen in Venom: Let There Be Carnage. However, when the first trailer for Morbius was released, a very familiar actor from Spider-Man Homecoming appeared and made the link between the MCU and SONY’S Spider-man Universe appear very clear. Subsequent trailers and an oddly vague interview from that actor muddied the connection again.

While Spider-Man No Way Home gave some possible avenues for clarification, Morbius seems to possibly exist between the universes referencing characters/events from both. MARVEL Studios has a tendency to purposefully mislead or even lie in their trailers to protect plot points; maybe SONY is following suit? It is quite possible some of these “clues” won’t actually make it into the final cut at all, but they are all we have to go on. With that in mind, let’s finally get into what you should watch before settling down for Morbius.

Morbius is an origin movie, meaning we will see Dr. Michael Morbius’ transition from sickly man into super-powered vampire during the movie. There aren’t any previous Morbius movies or programs you need to watch to understand his story. So honestly, if you’re just in for Jared Leto, Matt Smith, or Vampires; you’re set to buy a ticket and walk into the theater.

If you’re interested in knowing a bit about the bigger universe(s?), here are some things to keep in mind. Morbius is a SONY Spider-Man character live-action movie, so we recommend watching VENOM and VENOM: Let There Be Carnage. Right now, these are the only other movies in that universe and the trailers do show allusions to them.

As we mentioned above, there are also cameos (do trailers technically have cameos?) from Spider-Man Homecoming, so we suggest seeing that as well.

Morbius Opening Night Checklist

Spider-Man Homecoming (2017)

VENOM (2018)

VENOM: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

MORBIUS (2022)

Once we get a chance to see the movie, we expect to write a “Second Run” feature that will help clear up some of the confusion with the trailers and the existing SONY/MARVEL Universes.

Until then, enjoy the show!