Jared Leto Becomes A Living Vampire In Morbius Transformation Scene

Along with the big reveal of the "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Part One)" trailer at CCXP, Sony also dropped another comic book treat: a three-minute clip from the upcoming Marvel movie "Morbius," starring Jared Leto as the titular "living vampire."

To quickly catch you up on the premise of the movie, Dr. Michael Morbius is suffering with a rare blood disease that he's determined to find a cure for. A few dodgy science experiments later and he finds that he's accidentally turned himself into a vampire. Which isn't great news, but at least it comes with lots of cool new superpowers and a rockin' set of abs.

In the "Morbius" clip, Michael and his fellow doctor, Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona), are seemingly being held prisoner and guarded by armed goons. However, once those vampire juices start flowing, the balance of power shifts. Check out the transformation scene below.

Enraged at seeing Martine hurt, Morbius whiffs around this industrial building and even fits in a quick homage to Freddy Krueger while dispatching the guards. The "whiff" effects (it's probably super-speed or psionic gliding, but it makes a "whiff" sound so let's call it "whiffing" for now) are reminiscent of how Nightcrawler's teleportation abilities were handled when that character was introduced in "X-Men 2," and it still looks pretty cool.

The fight scene also makes it clear that we're going to be getting that same PG-13 style of violence seen in "Venom," where people can get their heads bitten off or their throats slashed without spilling vast quantities of blood. A special shout-out to this actor, whose gurgling is almost enough to distract you from the fact that his "slashed" throat is clearly fine.

Sony

Directed by Daniel Espinosa, "Morbius" currently exists in a strange limbo space on the outskirts of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The movie rights for Morbius, like the rights to Spider-Man and dozens of Spider-Man-related superheroes and supervillains, currently belong to Sony, not Marvel Studios. However, the arrangement between Sony and Disney that allows Spider-Man to appear in MCU movies has been getting cozier with every new movie released. "Venom" included a post-credits sting designed to fold Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock into the same world as Tom Holland's Peter Parker, and the upcoming "Spider-Man: No Way Home" will center on the multiverse being violently disrupted and characters from Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" trilogy and "The Amazing Spider-Man" movies showing up in the MCU.

"Morbius" already has a strong MCU connection in the form of Michael Keaton, who will be reprising his role as Adrian Toomes aka the Vulture from "Spider-Man: Homecoming." It remains to be seen how "Morbius" will deal with the multiverse mess going on elsewhere — or if it will even address it at all.

"Morbius" releases exclusively in theaters on January 28, 2022. Check out a new poster for the movie below.

Sony