It’s become impossible to separate the phrase “It’s Morbin’ Time” from Jared Leto’s Morbius.
In yet another tale as old as time, Hollywood’s shameless attempt to force Morbius into franchise status has hit Sony in the face this time around. With what can only be described as a truly spectacular moment of camaraderie on social media, Gen-Z led the charge with a weird phrase that resounded echoes at every twist and turn, “It’s Morbin’ Time”.
What does it even mean? Who came up with it? We dug deep to find some answers and the results have been eye-wateringly hilarious, yet puzzling.
Who knew that Jared Leto would be playing a C-List Spider-Man villain in 2022, let alone spearheading a new height in meme culture? With every studio and their mother (no, literally, parent companies are cashing in on the gains) trying to get that franchise money, Sony decided that they would take a route that would avoid the pressure of doing justice to a popular character.
Morbius was the pick. However, the internet already felt the scent of a soulless cash grab, right from the original trailers.
There was no faith in the movie leading up to its theatrical release and its disaster was all but solidified when people began to generate fake support for it by photoshopping high Rotten Tomatoes scores and Wikipedia entries to make it seem like Morbius was shattering records at an unprecedented scale. This trolling evolved so much that “#MorbiusSweep” began to trend.
Along the way, we also learned the origin of the now iconic “It’s Morbin time” catchphrase.
In a Twitter thread that was sarcastically dedicated to theory-crafting a catchphrase for our vampire hero, user @rhidaneelolivaw simply posted a response with the quote.
Who knew what levels of intensity their throwaway idea was going to bring? In fairness to the user though, it is pretty nifty to borrow from the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers catchphrase.
We can draw some minor parallels from both projects as Morbius does technically morph into a vampire. Yet, there’s something entertaining about an uber-serious Jared Leto as Morbius saying “It’s Morbin time”.
As memes tend to evolve quicker than ever, things definitely didn’t just stop at the catchphrase alone. Crossing into other projects, we’ve seen a wide range of variations for the quote. There’s even a tie-in version with Venom where he says it to resounding cheers from a fake audience.
Internet culture can be a comical network of references, so the meme potential never really seems to die down.
In perhaps the biggest troll social media could come up with, the fake love for Morbius inspired Sony to bring the movie back to theatres, even after its disappointing Box Office reception where it lost to Sonic 2 on its opening weekend. With hopes for an ironic turnover of profits, the studio was trolled once more as it flopped again. It’s amazing to see just how much of a perfect storm you can witness brewing over the course of months.
Still, this failure to chart indicates that although “all publicity is good publicity”, you’ll never really find yourself outsmarting the internet’s most dedicated trolls.
It’s Morbin Time!
Did you know that Morbius, The Living Vampire was original set to appear in Wesley Snipe’s first Blade movie?
