Sony’s upcoming villain-centric Marvel movie Morbius may now be confirmed to have definitive MCU connections, but the character nearly made his big-screen debut 22 years ago in 1998’s Blade. The movie sees Jared Leto assume the role of Michael Morbius, whose search for a cure to his rare blood disease sees him transformed into a vampire. The movie is set to hit theaters on July 31, with its first trailer revealing just how it will tie into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Specifically, the Morbius trailer sees him walking past a graffiti sketch of Spider-Man with the word “murderer” sprayed across it, clearly following on Spider-Man being framed for Mysterio’s death at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home, and providing some validation to previous rumors of the movie having an MCU connection. An even more unambiguous link to the MCU can be seen in Michael Keaton appearing in the trailer as Adrian Toomes aka Vulture, having previously portrayed the character in Spider-Man: Homecoming. However, all of this would have marked at least the second big screen incarnation of Morbius, had the ending of Blade gone according to the initial plan.
In the original ending of Blade, following the defeat of Deacon Frost (who, in this ending, had morphed into a towering blood monster after becoming one with the vampire Blood God La Magra), Dr. Karen Jenson offers to cure Blade of his vampiric blood thirst. Blade, in turn, declines in order to retain the strengths granted by his vampire genetics, reasoning that “as long as there’s a war going on, I still have a job to do.” Karen then sees a cloaked figure in the distance and tells Blade, “Well, you’re back on the clock”, with the movie ending just as Blade prepares to for his next battle with the newly spotted vampire. As it turns out, this anonymous vampire was none other than Morbius.
While the figure officially remains unidentified in the original ending of Blade, the plan was to reveal him as Morbius in a theoretical sequel. However, by the time Blade II was officially underway, the plans for Morbius to serve as the movie’s primary antagonist were scrapped in favor of the rise of a new breed of vampires, dubbed “Reapers”, who feed on humans and normal vampires alike, with patient zero of the Reaper strain Jared Nomak becoming the movie’s tragic villain.
Morbius had also previously appeared in the Fox Kids Spider-Man animated series from the mid-1990s, in several of the same episodes in which Blade himself appeared. However, his jettisoned appearance in Blade remains a major piece of comic book movie trivia. Indeed, that’s especially true when one considers the place that Blade holds in the history of the genre.
With 1997’s Batman and Robin having nearly killed off comic book movies altogether, Blade is widely credited to this day for its instrumental role in reviving the superhero genre well in advance of the breakout performances of X-Men and Spider-Man. With Morbius now known to be set within the MCU, it remains to be seen if audiences will finally get to see The Living Vampire face off with Blade in the Mahershala Ali-led MCU reboot of Marvel’s famed vampire hunter. However, it remains a fascinating case of “What If?” to ponder how differently events might have unfolded had the original ending of Blade been kept in place.
- Morbius Release Date: 2022-04-01
