Moon Knight Episode 1 Review: A Well Written Show With Lights And Shadows Of A Violent Antihero

Cast: Oscar Isaac, Ethan Hawke and May Calamawy

Directors: Justin Benson, Mohamed Diab, Aaron Moorhead

Streaming Platform: Disney+

Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four star) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is penetrating more and more into hitherto unexplored territories, probing the immense backdrop of the prolific comic production of the house of ideas. It succeeds in its intent thanks to Disney+ and the new serial line. It all started with WandaVision and continues now with Moon Knight, a series that promises to really break away from what has been shown in recent years. At the level of insertion within the shared universe, this new story seems to be much closer to Eternals and therefore more autonomous. And this is where the predominant factor of the series comes into play: creative freedom released from narrative continuity. Moon Knight introduces a new context and a new imaginary, the Egyptian one.

The Marvel universe, or should we say multiverse, has shown different divine entities, starting with the Asgardians up to the Celestials. In between, we also saw entities from other planes of reality, such as Dormammu in Doctor Strange or creatures in the Shang Chi ending. However, unlike the Norse gods, who are more like an immortal alien species, the Egyptian gods here seem to be represented just as such. Moon Knight doesn’t stop there, but introduces a captivating character like Steven Grant / Marc Spector. It is not the first time that we find ourselves in front of a hero with a dubious personality, just think of The Punisher. Here, however, we are in completely new terrain, in which Oscar Isaac focuses attention on himself and on his double personality.

Moon Knight Episode 1 Review: The Story

Moon Knight takes us into the life of Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac) a souvenir worker at the British Museum. Clumsy, late and with a passion for Egyptian mythology, the man seems to be hiding a dark secret. Every night he binds himself to the bed, to memory problems and finds himself in places and situations in which he does not recognize himself and considers himself simple nightmares. But the nightmare will soon merge with reality, and what previously seemed just fantasy will come to life. Steven’s path will cross that of Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke), the head of a sect that seems to have infiltrated various layers of world society. Behind all this, the Egyptian gods and human avatars seem to be hiding, carrying out their mission.

Steven discovers that he has another personality, that of Marc Spector, a man skilled in combat able to take on the role of a hero thanks to the power of the Egyptian god Khonshu (F. Murray Abraham). But the road to understanding the mystery behind all this is still a difficult one. Moon Knight plays a lot on reality and on the conscience of the latter. Steven is an unreliable storyteller, we don’t know how much of what he sees is true or not. In the same way we still don’t know what his original personality is, if this separation came before or after the contact with the Egyptian god. The mystery and the questioning of reality remind us a lot of the first (and very successful) first part of WandaVision.

Moon Knight Episode 1 Review And Analysis

As we said, the fulcrum of Moon Knight is not so much the spectacularization, but the introspection of the protagonist. The first few episodes take a long time to profile Steven and Oscar Isaac is just perfect. The actor captures the attention and makes him the space for action. Also, Steven’s English accent is commendable; if we think that it was Isaac’s idea. This aspect creates a clear separation between Steven’s refined personality and Marc’s rough one. The excellent script makes us immediately become attached to the protagonist whose past we will gradually discover. It could not be otherwise, as it is a real origin story disconnected (for now) from the rest of the MCU.

The pleasure of the series is all in the acting and Ethan Hawke is not exempt from this discourse. The all of him is a well-conceived villain, at least in these first bars. Arthur Harrow is a calm and persuasive man, whose peculiarity is not the brute force but the sibylline word. He also excellent the performance of May Calamawy in the role of Layla, companion of the protagonist and whose past is well intertwined with that of Marc. The relationship between the two is one of the cornerstones of the former mercenary’s past choices. Moon Knight would be perfect if it weren’t for a less than flawless CGI. However, he compensates for a really interesting graphic rendering of the costume. The white furrowed with red bloodstains renders the violence that lies behind the vigilante very well.

Not only that, we can also find a careful direction, scrupulous in investigating the psyche of Steven/Marc. Marvel superheroes went into analysis in phase 4, it happened to Wanda, Bucky and Loki in the series of the same name. Psychological analysis in the Disney+ series seems to prevail over mere action, and with Moon Knight we continue on this path.

The story, for now, seems to be totally disconnected from the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there are no references or allusions, yet we are in the same universe. It will be interesting to observe the evolution of the character in the course of the subsequent episodes and how he will fit into the continuity and with which characters he will interact. Meanwhile, the first four episodes of Moon Knight show all the attention to detail, starting with the mashup of genres. Furthermore, the madness of the character or the real presence of the god Khonshu is constantly questioned. In comics, in fact, the skills and psychology of the character vary according to who writes about it. The series seems to fit between the original version conceived by Doug Moench and Don Perlin and the relaunch of Moon Knight in 2006 at the hands of David Finche and Charlie Huston.

The series seems to draw on horror when the god Khonshu enters the field, and then veers into the drama with Steven’s life up to the action thriller in moments of action. In short, a well-structured mixes, in which we go from fun to tragedy. Made up of six episodes, Moon Knight’s 1^st episode debut on Disney+ on March 30^th and rest of them weekly basis on every Wednesday. The foundations for something unique and inspiring are all there. After Hawkeye we expect everything from the MCU series, and the series seems to promise a lot. The direction of Mohamed Diab approaches the genre well, creating suggestive settings, especially in Steven’s sleepless nights.

There is great writing behind Moon Knight brilliant and original ideas for the formula of an MCU production. Flashes that return to the staging, in an intelligent and functional direction to the tones of the work. Moon Knight is primarily an introspective show, with the action reduced to the bone, diluted and savored with witty visual gimmicks. The condition experienced by the protagonist, his repeated blackouts and the discourse on multiple personalities, becomes a vehicle for exerting bursting violence in action scenes that are rarely completely clear. A staging that, on a purely theoretical level, tries to replicate the maturity of products like Daredevil , sweetening their explicitly raw framework to fit on a level only slightly higher than the average target of Marvel and Disney +.

In this sense, the first two episodes are a time bomb, built with great precision and excellent balance between intimate dimension and action packaging, even alternating flashes of horror direction in the most enigmatic phases of Steven’s journey to discover his dormant powers. Unfortunately the quality of the storytelling undergoes a drastic drop in the third episode, all too confused and hasty compared to the quality of the previous two. It seems almost a curse, like that of Khonshu, the problem that afflicts the serial products of Kevin Feige: the inability to maintain the balanced rhythm in the central segments of their productions, with a sharp surge only in the final acts.

Moreover, we must admit that for the first time we have found some failure in the visual effects: a less convincing CGI than usual, applied above all to the silhouette of the protagonist when he wears the avatar costume: the realization of Moon Knight , in this case, saw the use of a massive dose of digital intervention, and the movements of the Egyptian anti-hero are not always able to restore a sense of perfect fluidity. Despite these concerns, our preliminary judgment on Marvel Studios’ Moon Knight remains largely positive, especially due to the willingness to experiment with storytelling. A value that, perhaps, has been missing since the days of WandaVision with which Moon Knight shares its exquisitely mystery frame.

This, combined with the acting talent of Oscar Isaac (who plays with physicality, with facial expressions and even with language to play more than one character with the same face) undoubtedly represents the main value of the new Marvel Studios TV series. If we add to all this an excellent fanservice component , which will intrigue fans of the original comics with various quotes, we just have to hope for the final episodes. In the hope that the villain, well played by a magnetic and ambiguous Ethan Hawk, can be a little more incisive to give the story a further qualitative leap.

Moon Knight Episode 1 Review: The Last Words

We watched first 4 episodes but we will reviewing only episode 1, we don’t want to spoil. According to the vision of the first few episodes, Marvel Studios’ Moon Knight could represent another successful bet. Because first of all the show replicates the mystery setting that determined part of the success of WandaVision, and because it could give us the most interesting protagonist of the Marvel serial universe so far. Moon Knight is a mature series, an atypical origin story, cleverly packaged to conceive a more mature work than the average. Hoping however to see an improvement in visual effects in the closing installments of the 2022 opening MCU show.