Jared Leto’s Gonna Stink Up the Marvel Universe Now as Morbius: The Living Vampire

I really thought that Jared Leto's performance in Suicide Squad was going to be the death of hyping "method" acting prior to a film's release. The final product was clearly not worth all of the mental anguish to which he subjected his co-stars. In fact, all of that hype only made the performance worse by comparison.

Jared Leto is a talented individual, and can be effective when used properly—see Requiem for a Dream, Fight Club, American Psycho, and Dallas Buyers Club for examples of this. However, since giving him an Oscar, he's only turned in one overhyped dud of a performance after another. That used to be enough to be the death of an actor's career, but now name recognition is far more important to studios, thanks to the instant buzz it creates.

I mean, why else would you be reading this if not for Sony's bold yet ultimately really stupid decision to cast Leto as yet another comic book character. That's right, the Oscar winning frontman of 30 Seconds of Summer or whatever is joining Sony's Spider-Man Universe—and by proxy, the Marvel Cinematic Universe—as Dr. Michael Morbius, The Living Vampire.

The film is set to be directed by Safe House and Life helmer Daniel Espinosa. Those are both terrible movies, which is keeping with this whole theme of terrible things. However, don't be so quick to write off Morbius.

Weirdly, Morbius was one of the few Marvel characters—along with Blade, Ghost Rider, and Daredevil—that I read with regularity as a kid. They were weird and had a harder edge to them than most of Marvel's monthlies, and were more in line with the DC and Image stuff I was devouring at the time. If you were to find a way to go back to being thirteen again and could start reading Morbius, you'd totally dig it. Hell, if you're thirteen now I say go for it. But don't try to pick it up now.

In retrospect it was all kind of stupid. He was a hideous looking Greek dude with a rare blood condition that becomes a learned doctor and then turns into a vampire while trying to cure himself. He started as a Spider-Man antagonist, but then had his own run in the early 90s where he became an anti-hero. I assume that's the route we're going with this since that's obviously the route they're going with Venom.

I know he's not a beloved character like The Joker, but he doesn't deserve the Leto treatment either where you just sort of borrow bits and bobs of things you liked from other Jokers like Heath Ledger's voice and Cesar Romero's appropriation of Latino culture. This just sounds like another terrible idea from Sony: Yeah, cast Tom Hardy as Venom and then get the guy responsible for Gangster Squad to direct it, that's a sure fire way to respectability. Oh Sony, when will you realize that, like Fox, you don't deserve superhero properties anymore?