Morbius director Daniel Espinosa talks combining horror and Marvel – and being inspired by Pokemon

gamesradar.com:

Morbius isn't your typical Marvel movie. The premise – a genius doctor afflicts himself with vampirism in pursuit of a lifesaving cure for his deadly blood disease – makes it very clear that this film is tackling darker subject material than is usual for a superhero flick. 

At times, when the bloodthirsty action kicks into gear, Morbius veers into outright horror territory – and we asked director Daniel Espinosa how he handled mixing that intense aesthetic with the style of a Marvel movie. 

"That was one of the big challenges and the big questions that I posed to the studio when we started working together, because I always felt that Morbius has a subcurrent, which is horror," Espinosa explains. "And that is not something that we usually have mixed with a Marvel superhero. And I thought that that would be interesting, to try to make a more edgier, outsider version, Lost Boy's version of the Marvel superhero." 

Morbius' experimental cure doesn't just leave him with a nightmarish craving for human blood: it also gives him superpowers. In the movie, his newfound abilities have a unique visual style, with his echolocation (or "bat-radar," as Morbius also calls it) and flight depicted on-screen with colorful, wavering lines that turn vibrations visible. 

"I was at the Tate Museum where they had an exhibition where you could walk in, you could put on goggles, you could become a tree," Espinosa says of what inspired the look of Morbius' powers. "You could see the vibrations that a tree can feel. And when I had those goggles on, I thought this must be how Morbius perceives the world, that he can sense what's behind him and what's around him.

"I tried to create an almost surreal, psychedelic experience where those waves are, it's