Though the memes have mostly dried up now, the internet will always have the Morbius derived saying of “It’s Morbin’ Time!” The phrase coined by fans online to mock the Sony Pictures movie quickly became a rallying cry for pocking fun at the Jared Leto-starring feature, and now it has made it’s San Diego Comic-Con debut. Earlier today during the official Hall H panel for House of the Dragon, a fan approached the mic to ask a question and directed their comment at series star Matt Smith, who also appeared in Morbius. Here’s what happened next.
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ComicBook.com’s own Kofi Outlaw was present for the event revealing how it all started, noting that a fan came to the mic and said: “Hey Matt – it’s Morbin Time!” Smith apparently had no idea what the phrase meant or its usage. After it was explained by the fan, that it’s something people who love Morbius say, Smith replied that the fan who loved the film watched a different one than what he was in. When asked what it would be like for his character Milo to live in Westeros, Smith answer: “He’s a vampire so he would struggle with it. I’m glad you watched a completely different movie than I did.”
The memes surrounding Morbius created enough noise for the movie, a film that was critically panned and a box office bomb, to actually be re-released in theaters by Sony Pictures. To that point the film had made $73.3 million at the domestic box office, when its returned to over 1000 theaters the film’s numbers jumped up to $73.6 million. That Morbius generated such huge interest online only to not be worth that cost once again only fueled its meme status.
In our 1 out of 5 review for the movie, we wrote: “The spurts of genuine entertainment in Morbius are few and far between, and are so sporadic, in fact, that they could be accidental. What Morbius ends up being is a model of the lowest common denominator of cheap, studio, franchise filmmaking. It’s not that Morbius is a bad idea for a movie, but the execution perpetrated within this film seems to believe that scraping the bottom of the barrel with comic book Easter eggs and CGI-heavy action will score this a guaranteed box office and fan interest. Marvel movie fans have developed an attachment to these storylines on the big screen because they’re invested in what happens next with the characters and they like the spectacle, neither of which Morbius can brag about; or in the case of something like Sony’s Venom movies, fans are getting something they won’t get elsewhere. Morbius isn’t doing anything you haven’t already seen executed better.”
