Morbius sees a clash between Jared Leto's titular bloodsucker and Matt Smith's Milo, who loses all his inhibitions after undergoing the change from human to living vampire. Spoilers ahead!
Both Morbius and Milo suffer from the same rare blood disease, which is slowly killing them both. They've known each other since childhood – in fact, Morbius is the one who gave Milo, real name Lucien, his nickname – and their bond seems unbreakable… until the vampirism hits.
"It's the heartbeat of [the film] in many ways," Smith tells 12DOVE of the brotherhood between Morbius and Milo. "It's about the bond between two best friends growing up, and they've both experienced this very difficult disease that they've had to live with their whole life, and they've lived it together. And in trying to find a cure, finding it and dealing with it, it sends them in opposite directions. That's what's nice about the film. It is about actually a smaller, domestic group of five or six characters, it's a much more contained type of big Marvel film."
After curing himself of his illness, but afflicting himself with vampirism, Morbius refuses to hand the cure over to his friend to stop Milo becoming a monster – but Milo takes it anyway. While Morbius struggles with retaining his humanity, Milo throws himself into bloodthirsty carnage with glee. His larger than life energy even extends to dancing after snacking on some people in the subway confrontation with Morbius, and again in front of a mirror later in the movie.
"None of it was in the script, actually. Not the stuff in the subway," Smith says of the dancing. "And then afterwards, the dancing scene, that was a good idea from Daniel [Espinosa], the director, late on into the shoot. But it wasn't choreographed, we just had a day in the mirror and was like – that's why I love working with Daniel, because he had that approach. 'What should we do? What should we find? How should we do it?' And he lets you play around and discover things and take risks, and it's rare on a film of that scale for someone to do that. So I was really grateful for that."
Considering the difficult situation Milo has lived with all his life, is Smith's character an outright villain, or more of a victim of circumstance, then? "I don't know, really," Smith admits. "People will make up their own minds. I think it's probably the latter, isn't it? I think he's just lost his way a bit. And with great power comes great responsibility, for want of a better cliché, but probably the latter."
Morbius is in UK cinemas and US theaters now. For deep dives on the movie, check out our guide to the Morbius ending explained, the post-credits scenes, and if the film is in the MCU or not – and see more from our interviews with Espinosa on working with Jared Leto, the movie's horror tone, and Micheal Keaton's cameo, as well as Smith on joining the Marvel Universe.
