SFX designer Conor O’Sullivan, explains the CGI behind Jared Leto’s animated Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse was acclaimed and won the Best Animated Feature Oscar, Venom and its sequel had mixed critical receptions. Morbius, which features cameos from Sony’s Spider-Verse characters including Michael Keaton’s Adrien Toomes, builds out a new corner of their franchise, in hope of pitting the vampire against Spidey someday.
Morbius follows Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) as he invents a synthetic blood substitute to help cure the illness he was born with. In the process, Morbius turns himself into a living vampire, with a host of superpowered abilities. In the comics, the character’s design is grotesque and monstrous, and Morbius director Daniel Espinosa wanted to mimic the original design as much as possible. Though Leto’s CGI is comic-accurate, it has been the subject of much debate by the fan community, with many believing it to be too unbelievable or even cringe-worthy.
O’Sullivan, who worked on Morbius in addition to a wide range of movies such as Star Wars, speaks to Inverse about the divisive design of the character. O’Sullivan says that the movie's design team cycled through “500 or 600” designs before Sony gave them what they wanted - which was “completely different” than everything he'd done. As a result, the studio decided to make Morbius digitally, though they ended up going back to O'Sullivan's designs anyway. Check out the full quote below:
I did Morbius, and I must have produced 500 or 600 designs. And at the end of all of that, they threw something on the table — literally the day before we started shooting — that was completely different from the path that we’d been on. So, it ended up digital because Sony wanted to do this completely different design. And now they’ve brought the film out, and it’s gone back to all my designs, which have all been done digitally! [laughs]
It’s not uncommon for a studio to change their mind about the design of a certain character, or go through multiple looks before settling on the path they ultimately want to go down. Paramount famously redesigned Sonic the Hedgehog after backlash to the first trailer, thus causing the film to be pushed back several months. However, it does call to mind what the other designs for Morbius might have been, and how different the character could’ve looked in practical effects if Sony had decided to go in a different direction.
It is unknown when, or if, Jared Leto’s Morbius will return, but Morbius’ negative critical reviews and poor box-office performance certainly seem to indicate the series is DOA. Sony’s handling of their Spider-Man Universe has caused quite a bit of debate, with recent announcements of solo-films for El Muerto and Madame Web causing many Spider-Man fans to scratch their heads. Regardless, Spider-Man: No Way Home’s stunning box office and fan approval proves that a shared Spidey universe can be done, and done well.
Source: Inverse
