By [With 2022 all wrapped up and we’ve had time to let the previous year sink in, it’s time for our fifth annual Golden Cages Awards! Over the next two weeks, the staff at Flixist will be announcing the winners in sixteen different categories that range from all different genres and categories before ultimately revealing what our best film of 2022 was. So sit back, relax, and come join us as we take one final look at 2022 and see the notable movies the year had to offer.]
My friends, it is time. There was only one movie that could have won Worst Picture for the 2022 Golden Cages and we all know what it is. Sure, it may not be the technical worst movie of the year, but there wasn’t a movie that was as big of a joke as Morbius. And really, are you surprised? From the constant delays to the wet fart of a release, Morbius represents the new low point for the superhero genre and shows that Sony was so desperate to make it work that they would prostrate themselves to the world at large just for us to witness it.
Sony tried so hard to market this film as being important to the MCU. They tried to throw in Spider-Man nudges and winks and even put Michael Keaton’s Vulture in the trailers to try and sucker audiences in to see it, not to mention that it had nothing to do with ol’ Web Head and Vulture was just a post-credits scene. Sony banked on people only seeing this movie because of the big Marvel logo on the front, but in an era where the MCU is no longer as omnipresent, that wasn’t enough to get audiences in seats. The people who saw it only laughed at the terrible special effects, the barely present Jared Leto performance, and the nonsensical editing. It became a joke, with memes flowing out and the world collectively morbing at the failure of the film.
Yet Sony, with a stunning inability to read the room, mistook our jokes as praise and tried to put it back into theaters after disappointing at the box office. And then no one saw it again and laughed at it even more. It’s telling that a few short weeks after Morbius’s second screening failed, Sony decided to rerelease Spider-Man: No Way Home to theaters to try and recoup the cost. It was a beautiful joke, something that I could only dream of. Sony legitimately thought that people would actually care about Morbius and tried too hard to make us care about it, only for audiences to mock and ridicule virtually everything about the film. You can’t say that about Blonde. You can’t say that about Don’t Worry Darling. Only Morbius has the distinct honor of being so bad that everyone knows about it, making it the perfect winner for the 2022 Golden Cage for Worst Picture.
