Moon Knight Review!

Alright! Today I'm reviewing the 6th Marvel Studios-produced Disney+ show and 33rd product off the MCU assembly line, Moon Knight. Moon Knight stars Oscar Isaac as Marc Spector, the conduit of the Egyptian god Khonshu who serves as a "Fist of Vengenace" who punishes those who commit wrongdoings. But there's a catch - Marc has dissociative identity disorder (DID), and when he's not his mercenary superhero self, he's the dorky gift shop employee Steven Grant, who's trying to figure out why his life is a mess.

At its best, Moon Knight is a very cool mystery about Steven Grant’s secret life and the emotional disconnect Marc Spector has. It almost borders on a character study at times, which was extremely commendable for the MCU. At its worse, it’s nonsensical superhero nonsense. You see, we have a superhero show where the worst part about it is the superheroing. It was far more interesting to see Oscar Isaac act against himself or unravel a psychological Egyptian-themed mystery than it was to see a caped crusader fight CGI demodogs and humans with guns.

I’ve seen costumed people with mental issues beat up poor people before. You know what I haven’t seen? A stirring psychological thriller where a man discovers he has a brutal alternate identity. That’s the better story, and that’s why the first, second, and fifth episodes are better than the third, fourth, and sixth. It’s the costumed vigilante vs. a compelling drama about two dudes coming to terms with living in the same body. 

In terms of superheroing though, I do commend the series for the comic-accurate suit. I absolutely love the push the MCU has had recently with comic-accurate suits and I am here for it. However, as always, points off for the spotty CGI. I love practical effects and, specifically, how they age more kindly than Marvel-brand CGI that ages like milk the minute you see it. Moon Knight hit a strange balance of having incredible visual effects mixed in with what is very obviously a terrible green screen.

Another disappointing aspect of the show was the musical score. For the most part, it was very bland and unremarkable, which is, sadly, in line for the MCU. But with a character like Moon Knight, well, I was hoping we could have, like, at least a mildly interesting main title. However, sometimes the soundtrack featured a very strong Egyptian voice that rose above and gave the appropriate feel to the 

You're telling me that's not the guy from X-Men: First Class? 

I also wasn’t totally sold on the main villain, Harrow. While I absolutely loved his first few appearances (I absolutely LOVED that scene with the shoes, that was such a simple and powerful way to introduce the character - the proper type of PG-13 grit that most Marvel films could use more of), his laissez-faire cult of personality portrayal became a bit stale. He started seeming less like a prophet and more of an unintimidating nonchalant bore. His motivation was also ripped straight from Minority Report, which I’m not sure was the intended purpose. 

The most interesting thing I can say about the character was that he was perfectly set up to become Moon Knight but evil and with different colored CGI powers and a giant sky beam and a horde of CGI demodogs that all die at the same time, and that Marvel actually didn’t take that route. 

I also wasn’t a big fan of the plot of the series. While the first two episodes were rock solid in terms of “The MacGuffin is this little scarab thing, hey look I’m a superhero,” episodes three and four veered off of that trail in an ever confusing “We have to go to this place to stop this guy but first let’s talk to these people who tell us to go find this thing which will tell us the location of this other thing but to get the first thing we have to go to this guy who’s actually evil and we have the thing but it’s broken so let’s reverse the sky and then go to the place to get the thing.” It became too convoluted, as if the writers said “Random bullshit go!,” which is an inevitable trait of these globe-trotting adventures, but it was still one MacGuffin too many. I’m not even sure what the initial scarab was for, it just stopped being important at some point. The cliché “My ally is actually evil” villain-of-the-week in episode three was also frustratingly boring (Fs in the chat to the actor though). 

There were some production issues I had a problem with - much of episode three and four was literally too dark. You couldn’t see what was happening for a few scenes. Or maybe I was just spoiled by The Batman’s superb lighting that allowed one to clearly see everything that happened in a movie that takes place solely at night. There were also some plot holes (How come the other gods can’t heal their avatars? Why can Khonshu become huge? How were they ever in balance when they literally had a third personality locked up in there?) and some points that would have benefitted the series if they were clarified (How long has Marc been Moon Knight?).

I also appreciated that they at least gave lip service to the character’s Jewish origin by depicting a shiva and having him wear a kippah, but they missed the opportunity to really delve into the conflict of an Abrahamic man being forced into servitude by a pagan god. They also don’t really address if he’s a practicing Jew, which could have added additional conflict between Marc and Steven.

Moon Knight has also given me the realization that I rather hate the six-episode format. Somehow you always have a filler episode that feels terrible in retrospect given the limited number of episodes. Or, they keep consistent quality but feel like a movie stretched out to six hours (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier). These six episodes are either too much to tell a movie’s story or too little to tell a TV story. 

I know I’m being harsh on the show. I’ve spent, like, ten paragraphs talking about things I disliked about it. But, in my defense, most of those things were a) Nitpicky, b) Suggestions on things I wish they did better, or c) My growing cynicism towards the genre in general. The only actual issue I have with the series is that most of the mystery around Moon Knight’s character is gone if you read his Wikipedia page. “Why does this guy’s life suck?” Well, he’s a superhero. “Why does he have two personalities?” Well, he has DID. “How does he continue to be a superhero?” Well, there’s a third one. I get it, he’s an obscure character and most audience members will be fascinated by it, but the series takes a while to catch up to what a mildly educated comic book reader already knows. In that regard, it reminds me of Captain Marvel, except that had Carol Danvers find out who Carol Danvers is and thus negated her character, while Moon Knight has Steven Grant find out who he actually is, and thus creates two interesting and dynamic characters. 

Now, I’m not saying the series is bad - quite the opposite actually, I rather enjoyed it - it just could have been better. The first episode and, to an extent, the second episode nailed a trippy “What is going on?” tone that really worked and created a really interesting story. It’s episodes three and four that derail the series completely, creating an uninteresting fetch quest that stalls the plot. Episode five, however, was absolutely phenomenal and one of the best things the production line that is the MCU has ever made - and that’s because it contained practically no superhero elements. I was watching it and thinking it was more interesting when he wasn’t in the costume, but episode five cemented it. The story of Marc Spector and Steven Grant was more exciting, emotionally compelling, and more fun to watch than anything in a cape could pull off. Most Disney+ shows falter in their finale, but given that Moon Knight's falter occurred in the third and fourth episodes, well, the finale is perfectly adequate.

Moon Knight is mostly a testament to Oscar Isaac’s acting, which turned an otherwise boring and borderline incoherent superhero story into a compelling character piece that occasionally worked. It had a few cool visuals here and there and a few bad visuals here and there, but, aside from a superb fifth episode, it was on-par with the MCU. I’m not entirely sure how Moon Knight would interact with established characters like Spider-Man, however. I didn’t come out of this like I did Shang-Chi wanting to see him immediately, he’s just doing his own thing.

Overall, I give Moon Knight a 7/10. “Although it has a few superb and emotionally poignant moments, Moon Knight is superseded by the commitment to the superhero genre.”