Sony (and Marvel) debut the trailer for Morbius

Sony has debuted the trailer for Morbius, about the titular Spider-Man villain played by Jared Leto. Check it out, and then we’ll parse out some of the strange cinematic universe shenanigans going on here:

Looks fun enough, right? Morbius is a doctor, but then he turns into a vampire, and he can fly and has super strength and “a kind of bat radar,” but also craves blood. Pretty standard vampire stuff.

The interesting thing is how the movie relates to the rest of Sony’s burgeoning Spider-Man Cinematic Universe. There’s a mention of Venom and Michael Keaton shows up as Adrian Toomes, aka the Vulture. There’s also a shot where we see a newspaper with headlines about Rhino and Black Cat, two other Spider-Man characters. Sony is trying very hard to make something that to rival the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Sony made Mobius “in association with Marvel”

But Morbius is also a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe…? Technically, Sony’s movies are supposed to be separate from Marvel’s, but with the companies sharing custody of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, that’s never really been true. And there are some possible intersections with the MCU in the trailer, namely a flash of the “Spider-Man killed Mysterio” news report from the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home, a big event that plays directly into the upcoming Spider-Man 3: No Way Home, which costars Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange, a character wholly owned by Marvel.

You see what I mean about the separation of Marvel and Sony being a fiction? Everything is too tangled up for them to maintain any real distance. And I’ll bet there are more connections we won’t see until the movie comes out in January.

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