Review by Jordy

Moon Knight 2022

Review by Jordy
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BlockedParent2022-03-30T19:15:32Z— updated 2022-04-29T21:52:44Z

The next chapter in Marvel’s struggle of bringing the MCU formula to television.
It sounds simple enough in concept, as they’ve built their brand around making simple, unpretentious, linear, streamlined stories with good characters and big spectacle.
I think they consistently check the character box, television shows included, and this thing is no different. It helps a lot that they got Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke, both of whom are phenomenal actors. They’re capable of adding so much life and colour to these characters, some of which probably isn’t even written on the page (could’ve done without the accent, though).
However, for as consistent as they are with nailing their characters, they’re becoming about as consistent with messing up in the story and spectacle department for these shows.
Marvel’s probably aware that they need to add some bells and whistles to their usual storytelling for a 6 hour miniseries, but so far the results have been mostly convoluted and messy (Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, Loki). Moon Knight is no different, because despite some serious attempts at experimentation, most of it doesn’t pan out due to the schlocky execution.
As for the spectacle, yeah it’s pretty bad. Scale has nothing to do with how impressive an action sequence is, as even evidenced by even the best moments in the MCU (for my money, the absolute highlight is still the highway shootout in The Winter Soldier ). So, you really don’t need to do a crazy car chase with CGI trucks, trees, George Michael and a plethora of green screen if your show can’t afford it. You don’t need to attempt fancy mirror visuals I’ve seen in countless horror films if they’re too expensive. Scale it down, focus on the choreography and make sure everything looks good. Again, taking a page out of the Marvel Netflix book would work a lot better for this character. Furthermore, the Moon Knight suit has the exact same problem as the MCU Spider-man suits. It looks like animation, not a man in a suit.
Add the usual uninspired filmmaking, flat lighting (as well as underlit scenes, I might add), boring shot/reverse shot framing and general lack of colour/style, and I’m seeing nothing but another boring, by the numbers show. Its only appeal are the two main actors, both of whom are way too good for this and deserve a lot better.

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@kd6-3-7 I like a lot of what they’ve made in the past, but it’s abundantly clear to me that they’re running out of ideas at this point, and rushing from a production standpoint.

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