Moon Knight Thread (SPOILERS INSIDE!!!)

Same. I don’t know why, but I thought it would premiere today, so I’ve been waiting patiently for it to drop. Then I watched the trailer and it said March 30.

F.

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Todd

I enjoyed episode 1. Oscar Isaac is a lot of fun, the chase in the cupcake truck cracked me up, and the bit where he turns into Marc was really well-shot and the flashing lights revealing the hieroglyphs was nicely creepy.

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Ben

Also, I assume there’s already going to be a million Nick Cave jokes about Ethan Hawke so I won’t even try and make an original one here.

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lorcan_nagle

Martin Smith wrote:

I really enjoyed it, except for Isaac’s English accent, which sounded a bit crap.

It came and went for me – some parts (and specific phrases) worked quite well but others were a bit Mary Poppins.

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Ben

A little confusing at first.

I will have to see more.

Putting broken glass in your shoes and walking.

Ugh!

• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Al-x.

I know next to nothing about Moon Knight but I enjoyed the unsettled, dreamlike nature of the first episode and Isaac’s performance in it. Looking forward to seeing how it plays out.

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Ben, Todd

garjones wrote:

As with the trailer I could see bits and pieces of the Lemire run at play with the drifting in and out of reality that worked so well in that one.

Yes, it feels like they might be drawing heavily on that run. Let’s hope so. It gives scope to do some amazing things with the concept.

Bake a lasagne from the comfort of your own bed!

I thought it was okay, but far too drawn out. It felt like the first ten minutes of a movie stretched out to 45 minutes.

Rocket wrote:

If they can do it in NYC with multiple sit-coms They can do it in London too.

If each of Spector’s personalities has a job, collectively they must be bringing in a significant weekly wage. Unless they have jobs similar to the friends in “FRIENDS” — waitress, budding chef, struggling actor, masseuse…. — in which case, yeah, that photo above would be accurate.

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Todd

As I said I think the accent is fine, it’s quite an affected voice he’s using but it’s perfectly passable. It’s nowhere near Dick Van Dyke territory.

You have a point in that aspect though.  I saw a clip earlier today where Isaac was discussing the London setting, which apparently was mainly just that they felt there were too many New York based stories. The English accent for Steven was his idea and he described Moon Knight as ‘an expat’ so the character itself would seem to be an American adopting an the accent for his Steven personality.

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Todd, Ben

Another interesting element is not so much the split personality- I have seen this compared to Fight Club but it isn’t really that – but the kind of disturbed memory and diminished perception approach is common in many video games. Hotline Miami, Katana Zero, even Silent Hill.
I think it is a feature of having to come up with a narrative for players who start the game with no knowledge of the setting or scenario even though the protagonist of the game has to be a character already active in that narrative. So amnesia or a version of it with twists thrown in to challenge what was established are a way to keep the narrative interesting.

Doesn’t Moon Knight have one more personality in the comics? A Jake, is it? I wonder if they cut it or if it will emerge later as a surprise.

‘Moon Knight’ Just Teased a New LGBTQ+ Marvel Character

https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a39618554/moon-knight-lgbtq-character/

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Todd

Christian wrote:

Well, we don’t actually see him doing anything super-powered, do we? Everything apart from maybe hitting the monster at the end there could be done by highly-trained mercenary Marc Spector.

Well… the suit and weapons certainly didn’t seem to be something he was wearing under his clothes so definitely something magical implied in that. It was like a Power Rangers transformation.

Anonymous wrote:

Well… the suit and weapons certainly didn’t seem to be something he was wearing under his clothes so definitely something magical implied in that. It was like a Power Rangers transformation.

Yeah I wasn’t a fan of that because right off the bat they’re basically confirming that there is some sort of godly creature really there, discounting the possibility that it’s just another hallucination, but it seems they’re going for the supernatural straight away, so whatever.

Dave wrote:

Isaac is still really good though, and makes it watchable even when it’s dragging a bit.

He does a great job arguing with himself. Steven is a fascinating yet annoying character. The 3 piece suit is a headscratcher and his refusal to let Marc take over despite facing death is Darwin award worthy. He has ample evidence that Marc is much more capable yet he refuses to give up control.

I hope he can keep it up because there is nothing else attractive about this show. But Isaac is knocking it out of the park and everything/one else is providing adequate background for Isaac’s performance.

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Dave

Jon wrote:

Oh boy yeah, straight for the supernatural elements… Ep 2 and it already feels very MCU-y which is not what I was hoping for from this, tbh… I mean, sure I was probably being too unreasonable expecting something a bit darker and grounded from Disney, but still, the trailers were alluding to that, but this is already in CGI monster-fest MCU territory.

I like the idea of Marc and Steven having their own costumes though, I don’t know if that was the case in the CBs, maybe in the more recent ones, but that’s neat… I’m guessing they won’t bring the Jake persona in.

Oh well, at least next episode is set in Egypt, or faux-Egypt at least, which is a nice change of pace… I’m not too hopeful about the plot though =/

There is one inconsistency in the story that makes me think there is another “Jake” personality that Marc may or may not know is active. At the very beginning, Steven finds out that he asked his coworker out on a date. I assumed it was Marc but… Marc is married and obviously in love with Layla. He’s only divorcing her to protect her.

also, Marc would have known he would be going after the scarab on Friday so why set the date for when he’s out of town?

So… Steven obviously did not ask her out and Marc shouldn’t have, then what’s the explanation? Also, the museum gate guard seems pretty confident that Steven’s name is Scotty. I don’t think that is a throwaway joke because they didn’t throw it away. He kept calling him Scotty. Also, that guard seems much friendlier than he should considering Steven really barely knows him. It’s like he has a familiar relationship with Steven that Steven doesn’t understand because he can’t remember it.

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd

Yes, I think most of the advance reviewers have been given the first four episodes. I’ve seen several references in reviews to the ending of the fourth episode being a big WTF moment and a gamechanger for the series so I’m interested to see what they have lined up.

Personally I’m wondering whether they might have drawn inspiration from one of the more recent runs, maybe the meta MK-as-a-TV-show stuff in the Bendis run or the weird alternate realities of the Lemire issues.

A further persona doesn’t feel like it would be that much of a twist at this point – I assume a lot of people are expecting it.

So, I liked the fight scenes, Marc and Layla’s relationship, Marc having timeskips like Steven had in episode 1, and the overall Indiana Jones with MPD vibe.

But seriously, all the Gods stuff? eeeeeh. I don’t care about Khonshu’s relationship with the gods, it’s just a bunch of guff thrown in there and it’s like the Celestials and all the other stuff that’s made up to be a big thing for a specific corner of the MCU but there’s no weight to it. Actually, I take that back slightly, I thought Marc yelling out Khonshu’s responses was funny.

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Rocket, Dave, garjones

Since I was set up for a ‘disappointing’ episode I thought it was fine. I agree the character stuff is more interesting than the Egyptian god bits but yeah the Konshu voice was amusing.

There is clearly for me now another personality (Jake) to appear. Marc ‘zoning out’ and finding people dead when Steven is playing the pacifist and just isn’t very good at combat is even clearer than the date at the steakhouse thing Johnny spotted.

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lorcan_nagle

My main takeaway from this weeks episode is how much I appreciate Oscar Isaac.

Even if that “Are we dancing, are we fighting?” line is reminiscent to one of his early moments in TFA (“So, who talks first? You talk first? I talk first?”), it’s not quite as good. But it was a reminder of just how good (and hot) this man is.

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Rocket, lorcan_nagle

garjones wrote:

There is clearly for me now another personality (Jake) to appear. Marc ‘zoning out’ and finding people dead when Steven is playing the pacifist and just isn’t very good at combat is even clearer than the date at the steakhouse thing Johnny spotted.

Mirror-Steven pretty much says it outright at one point, that the personality that took over Marc wasn’t him, so yes it seems like a fairly safe bet.

Anonymous wrote:

There is one inconsistency in the story that makes me think there is another “Jake” personality that Marc may or may not know is active. At the very beginning, Steven finds out that he asked his coworker out on a date. I assumed it was Marc but… Marc is married and obviously in love with Layla. He’s only divorcing her to protect her.

Holy shit, I missed this. This is a great catch, Johnny. I’m not surprised you found it.

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lorcan_nagle

Al-x wrote:

Are the street bazaars that unorganized? All this running zig zag style through the streets, jumping from rooftop to rooftop.

Not all, but I’m assuming the shot some scenes near or in the main bazaar, which yes, looks like that… it looks like they really filmed in Cairo and the directors wanted to show off the city and culture a bit… one of the city shots was super CGI-ed to make it look waaaay more clean and pretty than what it probably looks like, though =P

I’d like to know where that castle is located though, I never knew of such a place in Cairo, so I’m assuming it’s not in Cairo.

Anyways, yeah, I’m not really digging this all that much, it’s getting more and more Disney with each episode… First episode was pretty good and promising, but they keep going down this pure dumb Fantasy route which is just not super interesting… it’s like they don’t know if they want to have a grittier more grounded story or a modern Aladdin type of thing or a Gods of Egypt type of thing… it’s all over the place’s what I’m saying, but also too Disney for me.

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Todd, Al-x

Jon wrote:

… it’s like they don’t know if they want to have a grittier more grounded story or a modern Aladdin type of thing or a Gods of Egypt type of thing…

I think they are trying to be all things to all people which we cause those problems. I’m not sure what you are looking for though. Do you want a simple Spector v Harrow conflict? Because Harrow is getting more supernatural every episode because his end goal to bring back his god and gain more power. I said before that the show is mostly a showcase for Isaac. So fast forward through the god bits and concentrate on Isaac and his encounters with Hawke. Ignore the surly, mouthy ghost. He is there to provide filler for the people who do like the supernatural and comic relief like when his voice came out of Marc’s mouth.

I like the gods. they provide flavor to the story.

I am waiting for it to catch its stride or hit a groove. Honestly, this is a problem with the Marvel series and a lot of episodic storytelling in general. They want to keep things mysterious – and maybe it’s marketing driven to generate a lot of online discussion – but they are still explaining things and setting up backstories in the third episode and a lot of scenes don’t seem to have a point or any impact on the plot. And honestly we still don’t know enough about Moon Knight and his powers. As well as things that actually have to do with the plot.

Essentially, the story hasn’t really started. It’s like a murder mystery but there hasn’t been a murder yet. Or like Raiders of the Lost Ark but Jones hasn’t met the G-men yet. Sure, a lot of stuff has happened but I don’t have any specific idea of what anyone really wants. Just vague notions but nothing concrete.

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Todd

Todd wrote:

Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen did a great job with a Marvel network television series, working with the limitations they had. I would like to see what they could do if they were given the metaphorical “good China”, and not have to deal with foam plates.

It would be too powerful, nothing could compare. The universe would wither and die.

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Rocket, Christian, Todd

Dave wrote:

This was my feeling during the third episode in particular. There just wasn’t a clear sense of goals or motivations.

Or clear plan.

In modern acting, actors are trained to play intentions rather than motivations. Motivations are why a character wants something, but intentions are what the character wants to do. An actor doesn’t really need the “motivation” as much as to know what the character wants in the story (love and/or the Ark of the Covenant, for example) and what they intend to do to get it and, if it’s not the end of the story, what they plan to do with it when they get it. Dramatic writing for maybe a few thousand years works this way as well.

So, this does allow the story to ignore a vast amount of information in the set up. We don’t need to know anything in regard to how Mark became Moon Knight, split his personality or why he wants to keep Khonshu away from Layla – we don’t need to know any of that as long as we clearly know what Marc plans to do to get the scarab and then what he plans to do with it.

At this point though, I think the scarab is not important anymore – probably will come back into it as some kind of key to re-imprisoning Ammit. It’s just an example of what I mean though in that when Marc had the scarab, we should have had some clear idea of what he was going to do with it. Can anyone answer this question? If Harrow did not reacquire the scarab, what was the plan? So far, it seems like the idea was to play a lifelong game of “keep away” which doesn’t sound interesting or really practical. Destroy it? If it could be destroyed, then do that right away. Throw it in a damn volcano in Iceland before you go back to England. (And honestly, why go back to England after the mess in the Alps or
Caucuses or wherever he found the scarab?)

Again, it is basically Indiana Jones storytelling without the movie serial fast pace to gloss over the somewhat janky twists and turns. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Indy gets on a boulder and aims a bazooka at the Ark (in broad daylight and surrounded by Waffen SS), how does he think this will turn out? Even if everything miraculously went his way in that moment, what does he expect to happen? The best case outcome is that he blows up the Ark and Belloq right before the Germans kill him an Miriam. Is that what he wants?

It still works because the movie is rushing to the end, and his intent is clear. He is going to blow it up. In Moon Knight, there is no clear future intention in the scenes past whatever the protagonist wants in the moment. Part of this is of course that the protagonist is more than a single personality, so it becomes what does Marc want and what does Steven want. Even then, at the end of Episode 2, imagine if Steven did take the body back from Marc. Is there any clear idea what he would have done? What would his plan have been? Does he clearly have an interest in helping Marc and Khonshu or stopping them because they are hurting people?

That is really the most interesting element of the story. Marc’s plan could have been that he would obtain the scarab, and then he’d go back to England and remain Steven forever with the scarab hidden in a locker or somewhere that Harrow would never think to look for it. Not a great plan but at least a clear intention.

Now, he can’t do that because Steven is aware of everything, so… what’s his new plan?

The universe is an awful place anyway.

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Rocket, lorcan_nagle, Todd

Yeah, this is a bit of a shame after I loved the first ep so much, but both the second and the third were somewhat underwhelming.

The thing I disliked most was indeed the gods scene, not just because it felt too early and wasn’t properly built up to, but also because the whole plot relies on the gods being really, really dumb. And they weren’t able to make it work, either. Marc’s shouting “If you would just listen!” after the gods listened calmly for quite a while and neither he nor Khosnhu simply said something like “Yeah, he’s Ammitar’s avatar and he’s been building a cult and killed quite a lot of people, and he’s summoned a jackal with his magical powers and now his people are in the desert digging up her tomb and surely you being gods, you could check on some of this stuff easily, yeah?”. Maybe the scene could’ve worked if it had been done better, but the writing just wasn’t there, and now everybody just looks very dumb.

I still like the series overall – Isaac is great, and the interactions between the different Stephens are a lot of fun. But I don’t much care for Layla, and the questing they’ve been doing to get Arthur’s location just all seems too random.

Oh, and a final nitpick: The fight scenes are okay, and you can see what they’re going for, but it’s not quite there. And I don’t mainly mean the supernatural fighting stuff and special effects (though those as well), but just the general choreography. When Marc is fighting those three guys on the rooftop and you see him do his thing, this needs to be on the level of the fighting in Banshee or Warrior, and it isn’t anywhere near that. I really don’t understand why Marvel can’t get good people for their fight scenes in the TV shows, it’s not like they aren’t out there. Burn Notice and Person of Interest did fantastic fight scenes every week in shows that had 20+ episodes per season (as did Daredevil, of course), and I’m assuming that Disney is throwing a lot of money at these shows. So what gives?

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

Christian wrote:

Burn Notice and Person of Interest did fantastic fight scenes every week in shows that had 20+ episodes per season (as did Daredevil, of course), and I’m assuming that Disney is throwing a lot of money at these shows. So what gives?

The answer is in the question.

It’s Disney! They’ve always been squeamish about effective depictions of violence – Shang-Chi has good choreography, but I wouldn’t say it’s as brutal and Moon Knight isn’t exactly set up for Hong Kong style spectacle.

Though I did like the line “Are we fighting or are we dancing?”

On the other hand, I don’t get how PUNISHER and DAREDEVIL handled it so well while IRON FIST…

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Todd

That ending was fun, and really should have happened earlier than 2/3s of the way through the season.

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Rocket, garjones, lorcan_nagle

Well that ending went full Jeff Lemire run where it shifts between the hospital and the Egyptology stuff. For non comics fans though I suspect some will comment that they’ve seen that office scene in The Usual Suspects.

Was Jake in the second sarcophagus in the cell?

The dumbness came into play again with Layla asking all those questions when they needed to escape when she knows men with guns are following behind.

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lorcan_nagle

Yeah the dumbness from both the Gods last episode and the humans this one is the weakness of the narrative.

I am really enjoying the show overall but I have to mentally skip past that to fully buy into it. It’s like if there was an active shooter situation and my wife decided she wanted to drop the fact that she’s been having an affair, I am going to park that until we make sure we’re both survive. Simple priorities.

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Al-x, lorcan_nagle

Dave wrote:

like watching someone else play Uncharted for an hour, but only the dull bits, and not very well.

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Dave, lorcan_nagle

Jon wrote:

There’s only 2 more of these right?

Yup. Dr. Strange 2 is out the week this finishes, then Ms. Marvel starts a month later, and Thor: Love and Thunder a month after that.

Presumably She-Hulk will be released sometime later in the year, and Black Panther 2 is still scheduled for November. I wouldn’t be surprised if that moves though.

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Al-x

Anonymous wrote:

The dumbness really is grating though. I thought she was smart enough to know Harrow would say anything to get into her head and turn her against Marc/Steven at this point. Didn’t M&S say as much in the last episode?

Completely agree.

But apart from that, I liked this episode better than everybody else, apparently. Thought the Indiana-Jones-eing was fun enough, and I liked the creepy disemboweling mummy and Steven having to dig deep into Mr. The Great. And I loved the final sequence – that made up for a lot, to me. Also, the hint of Jake (or whoever is in the third sarcophagus).

Al-x wrote:

The hippo at the end… No. Just no…

That was one of the few bits I liked! And it’s not like the MCU is a stranger to talking animals.

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Rocket

Dave wrote:

The final section aside, I thought it was pretty boring again this week –  like watching someone else play Uncharted for an hour, but only the dull bits, and not very well.

There just hasn’t been enough to get us invested in these characters or what they’re doing, and the entire point of the whole adventure seems increasingly vague. It’s hard to even keep in mind what the characters are trying to do and why.

Also, while it’s nice to see the Lemire hospital setting on-screen in that final sequence, I don’t think there’s been enough built up and invested so far to make that feel like a really surprising twist. It’s just yet more flashy twisty stuff and very little actual substance.

It would be a nice twist if all this is actually the first play through of a video game and the last episode is a speed run.

there are no split personalities. Just different players. One takes the good karma option and the other the bad karma choices.

Oh I understood who the hippo was (it’s the chick who helped Marc in the god room), it still looks dumb as fuck though… also, she’s the avatar of the goddess, not the goddess herself, I don’t see why she’d become a Disneyfied hippo… she should get a costume at most, like Marc does… it’s not as if he becomes a mummy bone bird creature… UNLESS of course, that’s how Marc is seeing her in his head or wherever the fuck they are…

But I mean, the whole point was to have a gag, like it’s often the case in the MCU so whatever, it doesn’t matter really, it just looks dumb.

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Al-x

I’m sure the writers of the ending of episode 4 had no idea it could be interpreted as weird. It was just an accident, they thought that was a conventional story beat.

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Dave

Al-x wrote:

It is weird, but again I want to see where they go with it.

Ohhh it’s not going anywhere beyond the gag… they don’t have the budget, she’ll turn into human form within the first few minutes, you’ll see =P

So… I said that the hippo at the end may have been a jump the shark moment unless the follow up delivered.

The follow up was Ok.

Now I understand what was said here that it is a Disney production.

I will stop for now and let the rest watch and chime in.

Jon wrote:

hhh it’s not going anywhere beyond the gag… they don’t have the budget, she’ll turn into human form within the first few minutes, you’ll see =P

Well I was wrong… they did have the budget for their new disney hippo princess (ugh I can’t believe the directors who are actually Egyptians thought that was a good idea).

Tobias Radesäter wrote:

I have no idea why I keep watching. There isn’t even a plot, just random shit happening. Each episode feels like the first episode of a new story.

Totally… Also, while the episode itself wasn’t totally terrible, I kinda didn’t care? It’s like they’re demistifying everything they can in the most casual way they can…

But hey, good news, at least we got rid of the obnoxious Steven… right? riiiiiiiiiiight???

I quite enjoyed the latest episode. I thought Isaac was particularly great in this one, and it got to the root of a lot of interesting aspects of the character and made good use of the fantasy aspects. I feel like you can see it picking up the movie script again after three episodes of padding.

If you condensed those three middle episodes of faffery into one tight episode I think you’d have a pretty solid miniseries here.

As it is, this payoff feels like it’s taken too long and many of the main threads of the story now feel lost or forgotten about. Let’s hope the ending brings it all together somehow.

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lorcan_nagle, Todd

I kind of feel the opposite – they’ve spent several episodes dicking around when they could have been developing that stuff much more thoroughly!

If you were to leave out the Egyptian god stuff I think you’d remove a lot of what makes this show distinctive, it’d just be another street-level crime series.

Dave wrote:

If you were to leave out the Egyptian god stuff I think you’d remove a lot of what makes this show distinctive, it’d just be another street-level crime series.

You don’t necessarily need to leave that out, but they went about it the wrong way… if they hadn’t demystified everything so quickly and we still didn’t know whether Marc was just VERY crazy or not, the asylum sequence would’ve been a lot more powerful…

But as it is they kinda shot their load in the 2nd episode by showing the magic suit that is clearly real (even in the 1st episode you could think the suit is part of a halucination… and the stupid thing is, the suit didn’t need to be magical at all.) and the invisible demon creatures were also real since they interacted with the outside world.

Imagine how much more effective an asylum sequence would be if we still didn’t know for sure if Moonknight is just another personality running around in white pijamas and beating people up, and if the invisible monsters and the Konshu mummy and every other supernatural thing were all just part of his halucinations.

The show has some of the right ingredients in it, but they’re all in the wrong order and it’s all just too sanitized and safe and Disney. So yeah, I do think a grittier, uglier, dirtier (more street level, sure) setting would’ve benefited the story quite a bit.

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Todd, Al-x

Imagine being scared of a talking hippo when you have frequent conversations with a nightmarish looking skeleton bird mummy creature… Ahhh MCU, you just can’t help it…

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Al-x