Moon Knight Thread (SPOILERS INSIDE!!!)

Topic

The series premiere on March 30, 2022.

I am definitely looking forward to it.

Replies

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

Moon Knight Review: Disney+’s Most Original Marvel Series Is Also the Most Visually Exciting One Yet

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

Yeah I thought it was pretty good. Certainly the most competent feeling Marvel TV show so far. So much so that it might end up feeling like a missed opportunity that they didn’t do it as a movie.

The way they presented the character worked well and my wife (who had no prior knowledge of Moon Knight) enjoyed the unsettling vibe of madness and disorientation throughout.

Looking forward to more.

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Ben, lorcan_nagle

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

I really enjoyed it, except for Isaac’s English accent, which sounded a bit crap. Maybe that’s going to be an intentional plot point though! Loved the creepy vibe and the angle they took on showing DPD was really clever.

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Ben

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

I don’t think it was helped by some of the dialogue. The bits early on with his supervisor and the colleague Marc had asked out for him felt particularly rough going. Oh and when he told the living statue guy he was going “jog on”, which doesn’t work in that context. But again, maybe the point is that Steven is too much of a div to know that?

[Al-x]

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.

It was okay… the CGI was pretty bad though, specially the van chase… they should’ve released 2 or 3 episodes though, ’cause even though it was mostly fine, I thought it was kind of a weak kick-off…

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

I enjoyed it, watched it with the family so I could see them try and figure it all out since I already know the Konshu and triple personality stuff. 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.

I thought Isaac’s accent was fine, I think when we know where an actor comes from we can tend to actively listen out for inconsistencies, which are there but not glaring.

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Ben

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.

By the way, in London this is the size apartment the wages of a gift shop employee would get you:

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Al-x, Ben, Todd

Bake a lasagne from the comfort of your own bed!

A bedroom that’s also a kitchen is perfect for someone with multiple personas, one can have a kip while the other one cooks them breakfast.

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Todd

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.

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

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

I loved everything about this.

I thought the Steven sequences were charming and fun, with some nice creepy bits (“How did it feel when you were rejected?” – “I am not dead”). It was very good at setting everything up in subtle ways, and the everyday dialogues were very entertaining, I thought. And then, when it takes off, it’s a great ride. Loved the drifting in and out, and how it created humour by skipping some obviously outrageous action scenes. (I do wonder whether we will get to see that whole sequence later on from Marc’s perspective. That would be neat.) Isaac was great.

Where the accent is concerned, is that even an issue? I mean, Marc Spector isn’t British, so you’d expect Steven’s accent to be a bit off, wouldn’t you?

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Rocket, Todd, Ben, Dave

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

Ok, yeah, the accent is odd but that fades away fast.

It was a good first episode.  Zipped along quite nicely with that consistently off-kilter feel to it.

Good casting too, though Donna needs to have an accident.

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Todd

Saw the first episode and it was fun. Moon Knight is a bit more superpowered than I recalled, but I did remember that he had some enhanced abilities associated with the phases of the Moon. I do wonder where the gods of Egypt (the Ennead) fit in the Marvel mythos as we have essentially cosmic (and magical) aliens like the Celestials, Asgardians and the Eternals and then some mystical extradimensional entities like Dormammu that have been officially introduced in the movies. This feels more in the Dr. Strange category with maybe the Ennead being similar to the Avengers of Bronze Age Egypt (and so they would have been around after the Eternals came to Earth).

In some ways, the movie reminded me in tone and style more of DC’s SHAZAM than any other Marvel movie. Some horror, ancient supernatural entities and some really broad comic moments.

The interesting thing is that there really isn’t much of a supporting cast. His co-workers are comic stereotypes. We really just get to know the hero and the villain. The only scene that isn’t told from Steven’s point of view is the opening. It’s almost a one man show but Isaac is certainly an actor for that. Like Tom Hardy in Venom, the show probably wouldn’t work with any actor of less caliber.

MOON KNIGHT EPISODE 1 BREAKDOWN! Easter Eggs & Details You Missed! – YouTube

 

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Todd, Al-x

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.

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Jake Lockley, the taxi driver. Yeah no sign of him yet but their version of Steven diverges a lot from the comics so they may have decided to cut him, we shall see.

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

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

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

Moon Knight is a bit more superpowered than I recalled

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.

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.

Episode two was OK but definitely felt like a change of pace from the first episode – while I’m still enjoying the story, it feels like stuff could have happened a lot quicker without really losing anything, and there’s already a slight sense of repetition with some of the scenes, which essentially reiterated stuff we already knew.

I wouldn’t be surprised if (as with some of the Star Wars TV stuff) this has been based on a movie script with some filler to pad it out to the length of a TV series.

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

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.

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 =/

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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

Yeah, the story seems quite a bit unfinished and fuzzy. The scenes with Layla didn’t really work. It’s a thing in movies, but the dialog in her scenes only work because the audience knows what is really going on. If my spouse suddenly started talking with a completely different accent and thought she was a different person, I wouldn’t assume that she’s putting on an act. It probably would have been a little better if she knew that Marc had a mental condition and thought he was another person from time to time.

There is the slight problem of chronology in that Marc told Khonshu that Steven would not be a problem, but that implies that Steven has been a personality for a while and Layla never knew about it…? It makes her look less intelligent than she should be.

For me, the deeper dramatic core of the story is that Steven is the false identity. In the sense that he was born Marc Spector and then Marc split into this identity. Also, Marc claims that once he completes this job, Steven will never see him again, so it seems like Steven is Marc’s escape hatch. A kind of ego death that allows him to forget all of his sins.

Rocket wrote:

The 3 piece suit is a headscratcher and his refusal to let Marc take over despite facing death is Darwin award worthy.

Personally, I think this is an important point in the dichotomy between the personalities. I think Marc unconsciously split into Steven because he is his mental ideal of a person who has absolutely no ability to hurt other people. Basically, a manifestation or response to Marc’s guilt over essentially spending his life as a hired killer.

Steven’s meek to the point of refusing to harm anyone  for any reason – and that is an asset when Harrow judges him since Marc would be found guilty, but Steven is innocent and will always be innocent – so he’s beyond Ammut’s power and she can judge neither of them as long as they both exist in the same body. It’s also probably why Harrow actually seems to like Steven – I feel they had more of a connection than Layla and Steven did. Again, though, Steven is as opposed to Harrow as he is to Marc because both do harm to others.

However, it is also a very obvious detriment as this means that Steven will always get in the way whenever violence is necessary since for him violence can never be an option. He’s only violent when facing something not human and even then, it has to threaten someone else for him to even punch it. Marc doesn’t want to take over only because Steven is no good at fighting, but also because he needs Steven to be non-violent. Marc wants to be Steven because Steven does not want to be Marc.

The setup though – and I have my doubts that it will pay off – is that Steven at some point should find out that he isn’t real. That whatever memories he has, of his mother or childhood, never happened and he is essentially the figment of a disordered mind.

 

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

I listen to the Pilot TV podcast and those lucky buggers often get previews ahead of everyone else (it’s an offshoot of the popular Empire movie magazine).

They have seen 4 episodes and said 3 is a bit disappointing but 4 ramps up again and has a twist. Could it be the Jake persona?

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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.

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I dunno, may just be me, but I’m taking this one roughly week by week and that’s 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

I liked bits of episode 3 – I actually quite liked the stuff with the gods, because I’m into Egyptian mythology – but it didn’t particularly hang together well as an episode. I don’t quite buy Steven’s attitude in places either. He was as against reviving Ammet last episode as Marc, but he was just actively getting in the way of it this episode, even if he was trying to avoid violence.

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garjones, lorcan_nagle

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

I don’t know…

I have seen Raiders, this current episode, Xmen Apocalypse and so many other scenes of Egypt and Middle Eastern streets.

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

 

Then this “mysticism” of ancient tombs like we discussed in the Storytelling thread of going to deep Africa or the Far East and

uncovering all this mystery…

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

I found it a bit messy and aimless this week. It definitely felt like mid-series padding, which to be honest has been a problem for all the Disney+ Marvel series. But a lot of scenes didn’t even make that much sense and the whole thing felt like treading water.

That said I did like the sequence of rewinding the night sky, towards the end – it had a grandeur and sense of wonder that these shows could do with more of.

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Chris-S, 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.

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Al-x wrote:

Are the street bazaars that unorganized?

Having been to Cairo twice, yes the place is complete chaos.

One of the rather unique features is they don’t appear to have any planning permission for building houses they add floors as and when they can afford to do so. So you get all these unfinished upper floors and they are all different heights, which is actually handy for parkour-like superhero scenes.

This is quite typical:

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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

garjones wrote:

So you get all these unfinished upper floors and they are all different heights,

You’d think that people living that close to the f-in pyramids would know to stack stones properly.

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lorcan_nagle, Dave

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

Getting over a bout of food poisoning so haven’t been in the mood to watch anything and haven’t seen episode 3.

I assume or suspect the reason Marc and Steven have had their cycles messed up and Marc can’t take control when he wants is the emergence of another personality. I’d predict this one is more of a Mr Hyde Id driven rogue who is somewhat the Tyler Darden of the story. The sort of guy that expressed Steven’s selfish desires (like dating his coworker) in a “nutty professor” kind of contrast.

So it sets up a more interesting conflict in that Marc wants to be a  mild mannered person like Steven but all his darker impulses have to go somewhere if he does that. And those impulses might form an alliance with Steven to take control from Marc.

The question is whether we’ve seen this persona already and just thought it was Steven.

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.

Rocket wrote:

I’m not sure what you are looking for though.

Well again, I was looking for something more psychological and grounded and darker, like a combination of Netflix DD & Legion.

Also, I don’t mind certain elements like the gods, but again, they jammed them in a way I don’t really like… plus the budget is really starting to show (which is bound to happen when you start going too fantasy).

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Todd, Rocket

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

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I was thinking along similar lines.

MK is only 6 episodes long. It should be moving a lot faster than it is.

I think story and pacing has been a big problem for the Disney+ series. They are not having to stretch out plots over 22 episodes like a typical network series. These shows should be tight as a drum. For me, I think Hawkeye had the best story and pacing so far.

Honestly, they could learn some great lessons from Agents of SHIELD. It had great storytelling. A mystery is set up in an episode. In the next one, answers are provided while setting up a new question. All of this feeds into the overarching storyline. AoS’s first season and 2/3 of the second season were not good but after that, everything fell into place and they just hit the afterburners. There was a sense of urgency in each episode, even “quieter” ones. 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.

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lorcan_nagle

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

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

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?

 

lorcan_nagle wrote:

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.

I’m willing to take that chance.

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Rocket, lorcan_nagle

The universe is an awful place anyway.

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Rocket, lorcan_nagle, Todd

Anonymous wrote:

The universe is an awful place anyway.

Exactly. It’s not like we’re risking much.

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Rocket, lorcan_nagle

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

[Al-x]

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Didn’t realize until now that Oscar Isaac also played Apocalypse!

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Uncle Retrospective, Christian, Todd

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

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Well, true enough I suppose (Star Wars certainly has the same problem, only worse), but Marvel is much, much better at this in the movies. They’ve often got great fight scenes that still manage not to get too violent.

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

Yeah, the show is just meandering around, but there’s not enough established in the universe for it to get away with this. We’re not spending time with characters we already know and like, and instead of getting us interested in them it’s throwing us into this big portentous story and hoping we’ll go along. Picard has a similar problem this year where the characters keep getting sidetracked and waylaid, and while I see a lot of people annoyed by that most people who have a problem with it are sufficiently emotionally invested in Picard and Seven of Nine and know who Q and the Borg Queen are and as such have an idea of the stakes. But here’s it’s all abstract for the most part. The highlight this week for me was Steven and Marc hugging in the mindscape, and that’s the thing that’s had the most build-up in the actual show because they’ve been bouncing off each other for 4 episodes. Meanwhile almost everything else comes up and then goes away in a couple of scenes.

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Al-x, Dave

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

garjones wrote:

Was Jake in the second sarcophagus in the cell?

Could be, I was thinking it was Moon Knight (whatever that means).

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?

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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

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.

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Todd, 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

Yeah this went from being my most anticipated to the most disappointing… and probably the wrost so far. Shame that they’re wasting Oscar Isaac again, although I guess this is still much better than Apocalypse

There’s only 2 more of these right?

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

Damn… Marvel going even harder with the superhero carpet bombing… and people thought they’d slow down after Endgame xD

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).

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The hippo at the end…

No. Just no…

Maybe a jump the shark moment for MCU on Disney?

Time will tell.

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:

That was one of the few bits I liked!

Yeah, the hippo was great!

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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.

I just found out that hippo is an Egyptian god.

May not have jumped the shark after all…IF the show follows through just right.

Who Is the Hippo God From MOON KNIGHT Episode 4’s Final Moments?

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

Jon wrote:

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 look

Yeah, that was a weird cut from him getting shot, hitting the water, and then the hospital ward etc.
Now the show has to follow through just right and stick the landing.

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]

garjones wrote:

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.

I know it was intentional… 😂

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

https://www.gamesradar.com/moon-knight-episode-4-ending-explained-marc-dead/?utm_source=Selligent&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=XGR_NWL&utm_content=XGR_NWL_Automated_Airedale_Final&utm_term=10909800&m_i=%2B9R%2B75UlyNBgDT0lvEUORpZPcgXvg1%2BmQtQssP03VTy0AvYl2BL8mIElJ5bNp%2BRL5GTEfJ_NkcgzZ0xARj0YO%2BnzuQ2CwFBVWtyA7H%2B%2B%2B1&lrh=1f6f2216af07ffb44bd78134b2683e5bc491f1fdcb23b750ceae97e3ac3e5850&lctg=10909800&M_BT=59513553596296

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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

Wait, who was the little girl in the museum at the beginning of the show? The one that stuffed a bubble gum wrapper into the pyramid model. She’s which avatar or which god’s avatar?

I think I may have been the only one half expecting David Haller to show up toward the end.

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Christian

[Al-x]

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Todd

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.

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.

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lorcan_nagle

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???

[Al-x]

Jon wrote:

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

Most likely yes. From the vision flashback, Steven was a construct personality Marc created as a child.

Now.. Is the guy whole?

I guess the action will come in the final ep as Moon Knight will most likely return and face the guy and his henchmen and kick all this a**  and gets Layla back etc.

Got to deliver on the cape action. This is after all a Disney MCU product…

The streaming gives the viewer a warning about flashing lights etc. BUT this episode should have had a warning for those who

might be triggered by childhood trauma…

Still can’t get over the very first scene of the guy putting smashed glass into his shoes and walking on them. Ugh!

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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

So far, I have found the series to be just okay. If Oscar Isaac had not been the lead, this series would have been a complete shitshow. He is really saving the series from the abyss.

Dave wrote:

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.

And this is only a SIX episode series!

As I was thinking about it this morning, it seems to me they have tried to cram too much into this series. I think a lot of the Egytian god stuff could have been put off onto a later series. With the first series, hint at it or just show flashes. Have a more mundane villain this time, like Bushman or Stained Glass Scarlett. Build up to higher powered baddies. It feels like they are putting EVERYTHING into the first season. I think the show would have benefitted from some restraint.

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lorcan_nagle

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.

Todd wrote:

So far, I have found the series to be just okay. If Oscar Isaac had not been the lead, this series would have been a complete shitshow. He is really saving the series from the abyss.

Agreed.

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.

That’s only true up to a certain point. Imagine it being Bushman as the villain and the gods are merely hinted at and not explicitly shown. Until Bushman kills Marc/Steven, at which point we get to the sequence in the afterlife/mental hospital. If we don’t know the gods exist in this universe as clearly as we do now, we would doubt that sequence even more.

When this show is over, the afterlife/mental hospital sequence is what’s going to be distinctive about it, with or without the gods. At least I think so. The god stuff is more macguffin than the actual character development we’ve seen in the afterlife/mental hospital.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

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

I saw this on Facebook:

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Dave

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

Moon Knight Costume Designer Shares Challenges With Designing Oscar Isaac’s Superhero Suit And The Mr. Knight Suit