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.

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.