Moon Knight is Marvel’s ballsiest project since MCU Phase one. Oscar Isaac’s entry into the MCU is big, bold, and delightful, but it doesn’t push the boundaries.
You see, I’m a guy who is tired of the Marvel formula. So much so that I just glanced through all the Marvel movies to watch Infinity War and Endgame and in the end, I did not even enjoy them. What do I mean by the Marvel formula? It is what I define as the thing Marvel movies do where they ignore an interesting story or genuine character development for an irritating joke every 5 seconds.
Most Marvel movies look horribly colour graded, do not have any groundbreaking VFX which at that budget is expected and have weirdly choreographed fight sequences. My gripe is I expect more from these movies, not just a focus on the next big thing or the next big cameo.
But hey I am not judging anyone who has the complete opposite thinking from mine, we all love different things. This brings me back to the things I do love- Superhero movies and series. The first few Iron Man and Captain America movies were phenomenal, they showcased how amazing Superhero movies could be. But since then Kevin Fiege has hard-coded the Marvel formula in every project ever since and I could not get behind that.
So when Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke signed up for Moon Knight, I was intrigued. The series represented a chance for me to watch something not bound by the Marvel formula.
And in the end, it was just that.
Moon Knight aka Marvel’s riskiest project
Moon Knight’s fourth episode titled Asylum is the best thing Marvel has made in a really long time. The deep dive into Mark Spector’s Dissociative Identity Disorder is chillingly beautiful. It is dark, depressing, harrowing and is brilliantly acted out by the phenomenal Oscar Isaac. We see how Marc’s childhood trauma forces his brain to create an identity to get away from the constant pain of abuse he faces.
Even the pilot – The Goldfish Problem is great. It is atmospheric and has an amazing soundtrack to complement the life of Steven Grant.
Looking at the whole series as a whole, it is mostly good if not great. It showcases an intriguing story of two versions of the same man and delves deep into their psyches. The Egyptian mythology and atmosphere are done to perfection by director Mohamed Diab.
The Series suffers from the Marvel Formula
But it does have some deficiencies. Diab in this series is an excellent director when he needs to find emotion in his actors, but he does not fare well when the scene calls for a good action scene.
The handheld method of cinematography is excellent for fight sequences when it gets up close to the action. But Diab uses it terribly by having the camera shake almost constantly throughout any intense action scene. And when they shoot an action scene well in the finale, the fight sequence doesn’t have any intensity. We do not feel the weight of Moon Knight fighting at all.
And the forced insertion of the standard boilerplate jokes feels so awkward. There really was no need to have terrible humour in the Asylum episode but here we are.
In conclusion, Moon Knight does the non-superhero stuff of a superhero project extremely well but fails at the traditional superhero stuff.
