The first trailer for Sony's Morbius does an excellent job setting up the core story
of the film, a doctor transforms into a vampire after attempting to cure his rare blood disease.
But it also features subtler moments that offer significance.
These are the small details you missed in the Morbius trailer.
The first 45 seconds or so of the Morbius trailer establish that the doctor is suffering
greatly because of his illness.
He's shown with wires taped to his head and neck, struggling to walk with forearm crutches,
and hunched over a bed as a fellow doctor meticulously counts the vertebrae of his spine
protruding from his skin.
In a voiceover, he says: "I'm running out of time."
It soon becomes clear that Dr. Morbius intends to cure his blood disease using non-traditional
medicine and his own devices, which raises a red flag to the woman working alongside
him.
When Morbius says that what he's discovered would be a cure, she asks:
"At what cost?"
This line is more than just the musings of a concerned colleague, it's foreshadowing
of the highest degree.
The woman who speaks it is Martine Bancroft, Morbius' fianceé played by Adria Arjona.
Throughout the Marvel comics, Martine actually dies several times, is resurrected, and eventually
becomes a living vampire herself.
It's unclear at this point in time, however, whether the Morbius film will depict the death,
subsequent revival, and transformation of Martine.
While several members of the Morbius cast were announced far before the release of this
first trailer, one actor's involvement in the film came as a complete surprise, and
was only revealed through the new footage.
At the very end of the Morbius trailer, Michael Keaton appears as Vulture, a.k.a. Adrian Toomes,
the villain of Spider-Man: Homecoming.
"Got tired of doing the whole good guy thing, huh?"
"What's up, Doc?"
Those who stuck around for the Spider-Man: Homecoming post-credits scenes might recognize
what the salvager-slash-arms-trafficker is wearing in the Morbius trailer.
As a hooded Morbius approaches his white van, Vulture is shown donning the same prison jumpsuit
he was wearing in Homecoming's mid-credits stinger, pardon the, uhh, Scorpion pun.
Anyway, since his appearance in the Morbius trailer is so brief, there's no way to tell
when exactly the meeting between Vulture and Morbius takes place in the movie's timeline.
Because of that, it's also not clear how significant Keaton's role in the film will be.
That doesn't mean Keaton's appearance is all for show and shock, though.
Vulture's brief, end-of-trailer reveal might allude to the early foundations for a potential
Sinister Six team-up on the silver screen.
While the Spider-Man villain team has had numerous iterations in the comics, several
of its key or recurring baddies, including Venom, Mysterio, Doctor Octopus, and Green
Goblin, have already appeared in both Sony's Spidey offerings and its shared MCU installments.
While nothing has been confirmed, Keaton's surprise cameo in Morbius is much larger than
the return of a famous face, it could signal a more connected and expanding web of the
Spidey universe.
With Sony launching, and planning to launch, so many Spider-Verse movies, it's hard to
keep up with who and what we can expect to see out of the growing web of adaptations.
One image captured within the Morbius trailer helps further that confusion, or air of mystery,
depending on whom you ask.
In the first-look footage, in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, Morbius walks past a mural of Spider-Man
with the word "murderer" spray-painted across it.
There are a couple things to pull apart from the moment, the first being Spidey's outfit.
It appears to be a blend of several Spider-Man suits, but looks most similar to Sam Raimi's
version.
If you can remember all the way back to the 2000s, Tobey Maguire embodied the web-slinger
when Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy was dominating silver screens.
If you were a hardcore fan of those films, you may have also bought the PlayStation 4
exclusive Spider-Man game featuring an animated version of Peter Parker wearing a Raimi-like
suit, which is seemingly the same suit shown in the mural that appears in the Morbius trailer.
The second noticeable thing is the actual language covering the image.
The "murderer" statement points to Tom Holland's most recent turn as Peter Parker in Spider-Man:
Far From Home.
During the final scenes of that film, Peter is accused of killing Mysterio using footage
the villain doctored and sent to J. Jonah Jameson, who broadcasted it in a video posted
to TheDailyBugle.net.
"Spider-Man's name is Peter Parker!"
"What the f—."
There's no clarity about what this moment in the Morbius trailer could mean just yet,
but here's to hoping a legit Spidey cameo happens in the theatrical cut.
Later on in the trailer, there's a shot of Matt Smith's character walking cautiously
through a seemingly abandoned subway station.
In the film, Smith doesn't play some random tie-wearing dude who likes to walk around
alone at night, he plays Loxias Crown.
Smith's Loxias Crown is to be the central antagonist of Morbius, however, Smith's character
has been described as, quote, "Morbius' best friend."
So, what's going on here?
In the Marvel comics, Crown is best known as Hunger, another vampire whose origin is
unknown and who has nothing to do directly with the events that lead to Morbius transforming
into a pseudo-vampire.
But there's also the character of Emil Nikos, Dr. Morbius' closest friend and lab associate
who dies as a result of Morbius' post-transformation confusion and bloodlust, only to be made into
a vampire by another unrelated comic character later.
Since Smith's character has Crown as a last name, it's been assumed from the get-go that
he's partially inspired by the preexisting Marvel antagonist, and the rest of his characterization
is filled in by the general concept of Emil Nikos.
Smith's character will reportedly be afflicted by the same blood disease Morbius is, which
is the basis of their friendship, and perhaps its ultimate destruction, once Morbius kinda-sorta
cures and curses himself.
The Morbius trailer also gives us a good look at Tyrese Gibson's character, whom we know
from one of the actor's Instagram posts to be FBI Agent Simon Stroud.
In the pages of Marvel comics, Stroud is an Agent-of-S.H.I.E.L.D.-turned-mercenary who
seems to always find himself tangled up with the weirder denizens of the Marvel universe,
including Morbius.
Stroud is sporting some interesting tech in his brief appearance in the Morbius trailer.
He's seen wearing a sleeve that appears to offer augmentation for his right arm, and
specifically his hand.
Stroud was never depicted as having any kind of enhancements in the comics, and this one
raises an interesting question: Who built the thing?
Stroud often worked side-by-side with Morbius in the comics, and this tech looks like the
kind of thing that the good doctor, with his Nobel Prize-winning expertise in physiology
and medicine, might have constructed.
Obviously, Stroud won't be depicted as a S.H.I.E.L.D.
agent in this film, as the Sony Universe of Marvel Characters and the Marvel Cinematic
Universe are still ostensibly separate, for now.
Still, Stroud's dapper attire and the fact that he's seen backed by a number of cops
seem to indicate that he'll be in some kind of position of authority, meaning that Morbius
may very well have a friend in high places to help unstick him from tricky situations.
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