By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Among fans of superhero cinema, it only takes one word to make them bust out laughing: Morbius. While the character has been around in Marvel Comics for decades, most people associate him with Morbius, the Jared Leto box office bomb from Sony whose only real cultural contribution was hilarious brain-rot memes (“it’s Morbin’ time!”).
Now, DC star David Dastmalchian wants to play Morbius in the MCU, and Kevin Feige needs to say “yes” because this actor might be the only man who can redeem this complex comic character.
Sucking the Life Out of the Box Office
In Marvel Comics, Morbius is a biochemist who gets a weird blood disease and tries so many weird treatments on himself (including injecting samples of vampire bat DNA) that he becomes a living vampire who must feed on the blood of others to stay alive. The Morbius movie broadly adapted the comic character for the big screen, but the movie was a flop: it currently has a 15 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics complaining that almost everything about the movie (from its story to its acting to its special effects) was seriously subpar.
However, that hasn’t kept David Dastmalchian from wanting to play this notorious vampire on the big screen. Speaking with The Direct about MCU roles he would like to play, the actor didn’t mince words: “I’ve always wanted to take a crack at Morbius, the living vampire,” he said. “I would love the opportunity to play Dr. Michael Morbius.”
The Ultimate Comic Book Movie Veteran
That’s not as crazy as it sounds because Dastmalchian (otherwise best known for movies like Oppenheimer and Dune: Part One) has quite a few reps in the superhero movie industry. On the DC side, he is best known for playing the hilarious Pola-Dot Man in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, though he also memorably played one of Joker’s henchmen (the one Harvey Dent violently interrogates) in The Dark Knight. On the Marvel side, he played a shady Eastern European conman in Ant-Man and the voice of the alien Veb in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
He also voiced both Calendar Man and the Penguin in the excellent animated adaptation of Batman: The Long Halloween. On television, he also played Dwight Pollard in a couple of episodes of Gotham and Abra Kadabra in a couple of episodes of The Flash. Speaking of the Flash, Dastmalchian also voiced the Scarlet Speedster in the two-part crossover movie Justice League x RWBY: Super Heroes and Huntsmen.
This experience proves that David Dastmalchian has what it takes to be the leading man in a big-budget superhero film. Plus, his previous onscreen Ant-Man role was minor enough that it wouldn’t be too weird for him to play an entirely different character in the MCU. If you still don’t think he has what it takes to play Morbius, though, you need to check out the actor’s other filmography.
The Best Actor Whose Name You Never Remember
In short, Dastmalchian is always one of the most compelling actors whenever he is onscreen: in the star-studded Oppenheimer, for example, he instantly stands out as William Borden, the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, who is poised to be Oppenheimer’s best friend or his worst enemy. In Dune: Part One, he is barely recognizable as Piter de Vries, the absolute creepiest henchman to Baron Harkonnen. In Late Night With the Devil, he is absolutely riveting in the lead role as a late-night talk show host who invites a possessed girl onto his show, unwittingly unleashing pure chaos into the world.
Ever since his brief, brilliant performance in The Dark Knight (which was his first credited role), David Dastmalchian has been honing his skills as one of the creepiest and most charismatic actors in Hollywood. After the major failure of Sony’s Morbius movie, it’s going to take someone with this actor’s level of talent and ambition to bring this not-quite-undead character back to life. Considering that Marvel somehow can’t manage to create a new Blade film, Dastmalchian as Morbius may be the best way to bring vampires (always an audience crowdpleaser) into the world’s most famous cinematic universe.
Marvel has been suffering at the box office due to superhero fatigue and is now gambling its cinematic universe on an upcoming reboot. If they want the new and improved MCU to attract audiences, though, they need to start taking big creative risks, starting by utilizing David Dastmalchian as one of the most hated characters in cinema. Only he can redeem this character and possibly even reclaim the silliest fan-made catchphrase of all time: it’s Morbin’ time!