Moon Knight

The Oscar-Isaac-starring Disney+ series was supposed to introduce a brand new superhero to the MCU, but 'Moon Knight' fumbles hard with poor ...

Unfortunately, while pacing like that may work for the Netflix binge model, Moon Knight is a weekly release, and fans will need to wait almost a month to reach some form of payoff. The iconic Moon Knight and Mr. Knight costumes seen in the posters and trailers aren’t used nearly as much as they should have, possibly due to CGI budget constraints. While Marvel devotees will probably tune into this series, don’t expect it to thoroughly shake up the MCU like Loki or WandaVision did. Hawke and Isaac also clearly enjoy working together, and some of the best scenes pit the two actors against one another other in non-violent struggle. Harrow is like a cross between David Koresh and Jim Jones, believing he alone has the blueprint for utopia. Moon Knight starts out boring and doesn’t pick up until more than halfway through. Moon Knight’s split personalities have some interesting Jekyll-and-Hyde implications, but the show is unwilling and unequppied to explore its protagonist’s mental health with any real care. Steven also lacks the desire to move Moon Knight’s plot forward. But Marc isn’t the only alter ego not given enough screentime. Bad pacing, repeated story beats, and a depiction of mental health that’s dubious at best all hold the show back from greatness. It’s a confounding choice, given that Steven is not the one with the combat skills or the connection to Khonshu, the Egyptian God that bestowed Marc with powers and to whom he serves. For the audience, the Spector-Grant dynamic also means the show frequently skips over what could have been many exciting action sequences.

Oscar Isaac multitasks in a Marvel series about a superhero who answers to an ancient Egyptian god and struggles with dissociative identity disorder.

It’s characteristic of the Marvel Disney+ shows that the ability of the performers exceeds the inventiveness of the crew — writers and directors seem to be hired for competence rather than distinctive vision. There are a lot of issues swimming around in “Moon Knight,” including its treatment of ancient Egyptian culture, its presentation of its Middle Eastern milieu and its depiction of its hero’s mental health issues. And while it’s unfair to wish that every desert or jungle adventure could be directed by Steven Spielberg (or Robert Zemeckis, or J.J. Abrams), “Moon Knight” won’t stop you from doing so. But onscreen, presenting Cairo in a new light ( in interviews, Diab has said this was a priority) seems to consist of making it look like every other world capital. But the show generates most of its drama and humor, and a number of its visual effects, from their inability to coexist. As they try to stop a sanctimonious bad guy from resurrecting a rival Egyptian deity, enduring chases, desert treks and crunchingly violent battles, they grudgingly trade off possession of their shared body.

Isaac plays two faces of the Moon Knight in the Disney+ series, and is having much more fun as a goofy gift-shop clerk than he is as the man's glum cypher ...

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'Moon Knight' launches on Disney Plus this week and there's a freshness to it that's enticing even for those outside the MCU fandom.

The fact that it can be watched on its own terms is icing on the cake. But there’s a high-stepping riskiness to its first four episodes that is a good look for a studio that’s often more careful than it is wild. Certainly it’s exciting that the sort of work actors like Isaac and Hawke get to do when they inevitably end up doing their Marvel tour of duty can push this far into disorientation, into insecurity. The two actors are locked in a battle for the future of Earth in which both call on the powers of ancient divinity — and the intrigue comes from the fact that Isaac’s characters are only fitfully aware of the rules of the game. A huge part of that is owed to Oscar Isaac and to Ethan Hawke, two actors whom the series trusts with edgy material that makes the first “Doctor Strange” look, well, like Doctor Normal. We meet Isaac as Steven Grant, a museum gift-shop employee who’s haunted by what happens in his mind when he sleeps, when he finds himself overtaken by a force he cannot understand. At times, “Moon Knight’s” first four episodes resemble the early going of “WandaVision,” which was similarly unabashed about using shifts in tone to convey the roiling of a mind troubled by the pressure of needing to save the world.

The beauty of second-tier Marvel characters is they provide a relatively blank canvas, and "Moon Knight" arrives with a host of possibilities.

For Isaac, the effect is a little like Danny Kaye in the classic "The Court Jester," switching from swashbuckling hero to nebbish with a snap of his fingers. Spector is being pursued by Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke), the leader of a cult-like group eager to find an obscure artifact he believes to be in Steven/Marc's possession. And while the title character's eye-catching costume serves as a defining feature of the comics and series, the truth is you don't see him in it very much, while failing to create clear parameters regarding what precisely the hero can do.

The zingy new romp on Disney Plus mixes action, comedy, horror and wildly entertaining insanity.

Moon Knight isn't as confrontationally crazy as Legion -- the cinematography is the usual Marvel muddiness compared with Legion's kaleidoscopic visuals. Some viewers may not get it -- Isaac referenced British comedies and comedians like The Office and Peter Sellers -- and some superhero fans may not like a show that barely has any superhero elements. His British accent helps -- it may not be the most accurate London accent ever (I'm British, FYI), but the "bruvs" and "bollocks" and one well-placed "wagwan" are good for a laugh. There's a big action scene in episode 1 that puts a fresh twist on a familiar action scene, playing out as a complement to (and perhaps a gentle send-up of) the showpiece car chases in Hawkeye, Falcon and Winter Soldier and indeed any movie with a breathless chase sequence. The writing, the direction, the visuals, even the show-stopping editing all pull together to make Moon Knight such a singular experience. The series even segues into horror territory, from a terrifying corridor stalked by a skull-headed monster to a sinister scene in which the extras in the background are revealed to not be what they seem.

Disney Plus' latest Marvel series lands Wednesday, and a cheaper tier is coming. Here are all your big questions, answered.

Disney Plus offers parental controls in the form of kids profiles. The app for streaming boxes, like Roku and Apple TV, is also designed to briefly flash a symbol telling you the format that you're watching; it appears in the upper right corner of the screen for a few seconds when a video begins to play. It has all the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies available to stream, with the exception of ones that were made by Universal or Sony. (So, that's why you won't find the Tom Holland Spider-Man films on Disney Plus, even though you can stream Holland portraying Spider-Man in Disney-made MCU movies like Avengers: Endgame.) Disney Plus also integrates programming from Fox. All 30 seasons of The Simpsons are on Disney Plus, it's begun adding X-Men franchise films, and titles like The Sound of Music, The Princess Bride and Malcolm in the Middle live there too. Paramount Plus charges $5 for its tier with advertising, and $10 for the ad-free version. But Disney Plus allows all subscribers to stream to four devices and access 4K content at no extra cost -- features Netflix charges $20 a month to unlock its premium tier. Those who prepurchased a Disney Plus plan such as the now-expired three-year discounted subscription deal can stack their one free year on top of it, according to a Verizon FAQ. The standalone Disney Plus service costs comparable amounts in other countries in their local currencies. Disney Plus is already among the cheapest streaming services of its kind, and Disney executives have repeatedly noted that Disney Plus' relatively low subscription price would go up as the service pumps itself full of more programming. The movie is essentially skipping cinemas to be a straight-to-streaming release anywhere Disney Plus is operating. (The film won't be released in Russia, however, as Disney has paused all theatrical releases in the country because of the invasion of Ukraine.) Some people refer to this as the date it started streaming for "free," but everything on Disney Plus requires a paid subscription.

The Marvel TV show's premiere episode finds an ace Oscar Isaac in capital-L loser mode.

Clearly tapping into a supernatural force (his scales tattoo can channel the goddess Ammit , we learn), Arthur is a welcome foil for Steven. It was only once I saw the two come face to face at the museum in the premiere’s third act that I realized Moon Knight was already gifting us two things plenty of MCU properties have struggled with: thrilling, enticing villains (Loki and Hela aside, naturally) and leads who are as exciting as their caped alter characters. If you’ve watched him dance inEx-Machinaor stroll with confidence in the latest Star Wars trilogy, you know Oscar knows how best to deploy a weighted physicality in every one of his roles. As Dylan sings, I want to find myself trusting this story so I can similarly claim, “I’m hanging in the balance of a perfect finished plan.” The joy of this pilot is how Grant’s bumbling persona becomes our introduction to the occult world of Moon Knight. Like Jason Bourne, it’s clear that Grant is more than meets the eye. Something is clearly going awry and by god(s) we need to figure out what it is that’s happening soon, lest we lose the plot. But in leaning into being an exercise in withholding, the blood-splattering fights that happen whenever Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac) loses consciousness and finds himself in danger are left to our imaginations.

Well, we get precisely zero Batman vibes in this first episode of the new Disney+ show, where we meet the painfully uncool Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac in his ...

I will say it is refreshing to watch an ambitious Marvel show that isn’t filled with Easter eggs (for comics fans, there’s a quick glimpse of the name “Duchamp” on Marc’s flip phone) or in-universe call-backs: Moon Knight doesn’t have to concern itself with dropping breadcrumbs, and can just get on with telling its own story from the ground up. Although Isaac’s British accent is likely a rollercoaster for anyone who lives in the UK – sometimes he sounds bang on the money and others not – hints are dropped that we will get more of American Marc in the next episode. Casting F. Murray Abraham as the voice of the moon god is a masterstroke. In fact, there’s a lot of really cool stuff in this episode that ends up a little smudged by either its underwhelming CG or Isaac’s quirky central performance as the flappable Steven, which is unfortunate. Steven is passionate about ancient Egypt, and seems to be by all accounts a lovely man on the verge of starting a romance with a beautiful co-worker who he doesn’t even remember asking out. Well, we get precisely zero Batman vibes in this first episode of the new Disney+ show, where we meet the painfully uncool Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac in his element), a timid British museum gift shop employee who thinks he has a sleep disorder.

Much of the pre-release publicity about Moon Knight focused on the heightened brutality of the new MCU on Disney+ series. In doing so, all involved failed to ...

Diab directs four of the six, including two of the episodes given to critics. For viewers who have increasingly complained that the MCU plays it too safe, too rarely risks going big and weird, Moon Knight may provide some of what they want. Finally, Abraham does a lot with a little, making Khonshu seem violent, cruel, selfish, and intensely lonely with limited lines and an evolving tone of voice. With less than two hours left, the show has several pieces in play but none particularly close to resolution. When they don’t in episode two, viewers end up back in the realm of the goofy. The fourth episode suggests a certain awareness of this necessity. Mohamed Diab and the team of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead split directing duties on the series. It’s not so much inaccurate about DID as it is the same old visual language. Scenes of the god’s giant skeletal bird body wandering through a well-attended bazaar or relaxing against a car are strong mergers of the bizarre and benign. Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke)—the series villain—has a far less eye-catching but nonetheless appropriate look. At its best, it demonstrates how quickly and easily the diagnosis can get you marginalized. In doing so, all involved failed to mention how much stranger it would be than the average MCU streamer.

Starring Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke, the new Marvel series follows a troubled, crime-fighting caped crusader. But don't mistake him for Batman.

The producers also worked with mental health experts to make sure they were sensitive to one of the other major traits that separates Moon Knight from Batman and other heroes: his struggles with dissociative identity disorder. So our approach in the writers’ room was to push the boundaries of how weird we can make it.” (The other two are directed by the indie horror duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead because, according to Curtis, “Nobody does ‘bump in the night’ better.”) That’s partly why Slater said he leaned away from that side of the character in his pitch to Marvel. Curtis said that maintaining the “fallibility” of Moon Knight was essential. The early Moon Knight stories introduced a cast of characters who in the many different iterations have generally stuck around. The Moench and Sienkiewicz run on Moon Knight was notable for its noir-influenced visual style and tone, thick with long shadows and moral ambiguity. Created by the writer Doug Moench and the artist Don Perlin, Moon Knight debuted in a 1975 issue of the horror-adventure comic Werewolf by Night as a mercenary out to capture the series’s title monster. They fleshed out the origin story, establishing a lot of the lore that has survived through decades of reboots and retcons. “Anytime a character is getting turned into Legos and Funkos, there are going to be a lot of people weighing in,” Slater said. In recent video calls, we spoke with Slater and a “Moon Knight” executive producer, Grant Curtis, about the choices they made and about the history of one of Marvel Comics’s most unusual creations. “But we really had a lot of latitude with Moon Knight.”

Moon Knight, the new vigilante played by Oscar Isaac for Disney Plus, may be the darkest hero yet from Marvel Studios.

Diab recently told The Washington Post that Jeff Lemire and Greg Smallwood’s 2016 “Moon Knight” series was a heavy influence on the live-action series. “Moon Knight” doesn’t lean on the first decade of the MCU, at least through the first four episodes, but the character could still show up elsewhere on Disney Plus or even in future theatrical releases. But in July, Marvel Comics debuted a new “Moon Knight” series written by Jed MacKay and illustrated by Alessandro Cappuccio. Moon Knight violently protects all those around him while being at odds with Khonshu, the moon god that bestowed his superhero identity. Moon Knight made his Marvel Comics debut in 1975 with a guest appearance in “Werewolf by Night” No. 32. Which explains why Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch is now one of the MCU’s most important characters after the success of “ WandaVision.” Moon Knight is known mostly by avid comic book readers but could become a household name. Spector develops multiple personalities, including Jake Lockley, a taxi driver, and Steven Grant, a billionaire — although in the streaming series, Steven is a disgruntled British museum employee.

Moon Knight, Marvel's first show this 2022, is now out on Disney+ and its first episode is a fitting introduction to one of comics' most interesting and ...

The Marc Spector personality then communicates with him and asks him to give him control of the body. Grant then goes to his workplace in the museum and encounters Harrow, who then demands the scarab from him. A monstrous dog then starts chasing the museum employee, until he locks himself in a bathroom with mirrors. This is where Grant suddenly wakes up in bed with the thought that everything he went through was just in his mind as a dream. The female’s voice on the other end calls him Marc and introduces himself as Steve. The voice, confused as Grant is, hangs up in confusion. Harrow’s men then start chasing him again as he steals a van and drives off from the scene.

'Moon Knight' is the newest Disney+ show in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Is 'Moon Knight' violent? Is 'Moon Knight' dark?

“Moon Knight” is not a show where a hero hits the streets to start fighting crime. The show is rated TV-14, but it really pushes the boundary. Harrow’s introduction also fixes the “big bad” problem for Disney+ Marvel shows, which have often waited until the end of the series to reveal the villain. I will say the show has a moderate amount of violence. In the months leading up to “Moon Knight,” the hype was real. “Moon Knight” stars Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant, a museum employee who learns he has dissociative identity disorder, a cognitive condition where people have multiple personalities and can’t disassociate one personality from the other.

Oscar Isaac pulls double duty in Disney+'s Moon Knight. As Marc, he's a superhero, but he's the audience surrogate as Steven. A recap of episode 1 of the ...

Marc calmly and cooly tells Steven that this is real, this is happening, and to give him control so he can get them out of there safely. Second of all, the “chaos” in Steven feels a bit more serious than the way the very online use it to describe Mercury retrograde and Netflix’s Is It Cake. Steven tries to go back to work, but the lights go out, and Steven is attacked by wolves that resemble Egyptian jackals. He finds refuge in a bathroom and sees Marc Spector clearly in mirrors on either side of him for the first time. Speaking of the accent, it’s at this moment that a voice, recognizable as Oscar Isaac’s American accent, speaks to Steven. This, as far as we know, is Marc Spector. Marc warns Steven to stop before he gets himself in trouble. Once again, he blacks out and wakes up somewhere else, this time on the bus outside of Tottenham Court Road Station and once again pursued by Arthur Darrow. Steven makes it to the museum, but Arthur is right behind him and is allowed in by the various followers on the museum staff. Comic readers know that this is Konshu, the Egyptian god of the Moon who Marc has entangled with, as well as the character voiced by F. Murray Abraham. But to Steven, he’s another thing that goes bump in the night. As Steven could probably tell you, Ammit was an Egyptian deity known as the “Devourer of the Dead.” Arthur uses his cane to judge Steven, but Ammit does not give a definitive reading. Back at his flat, he pokes around and finds a secret compartment with the key to a storage unit and a flip phone with missed calls from a woman named Layla. She calls again, and when Steven answers, Layla (May Calamawy) claims that she has been trying to reach him for months. The cold open introduced us to Arthur in the middle of a self-flagellation ritual that ended with him putting glass shards in his sandals. As Marc Spector, Isaac gets to be the badass mercenary and superhero Moon Knight. But as Steven Grant, one of Marc’s alternate personalities, Isaac gets to be the audience surrogate. The surname “Grant” is fitting for this particular alter, as the gift-shop employee and Egypt enthusiast Isaac plays is less Raiders of the Lost Arc and more Four Weddings and a Funeral (as in Hugh Grant). He’s always running late. Arthur’s guards inform him that they were ambushed and lost the scarab, which leads him to discover Steven in the crowd, who he believes to be the “mercenary.” Steven doesn’t want trouble and tries to give the scarab to Arthur, his body resists.

Oscar Isaac will play Marc Spector, Steven Grant and the eponymous hero (and probably more!) in the new Marvel Disney+ series "Moon Knight.".

We'll just have to watch and see as "Moon Knight" starts streaming on Wednesday. , and May Calamawy, best known for her work in "Ramy," as a figure Spector knows but Grant doesn't. What will their arcs entail? The entire series is directed by Mohamed Diab, an Egyptian filmmaker whose previous films have been set in Egypt and focused on social issues like sexual harassment or the 2011 Egyptian revolution. And what's the deal with Oscar Isaac's "cockney" accent? He's also rocking a wispy wig, a malevolent version of Fabio's mane. Revived -- and perhaps armed with some superheroic abilities -- Spector starts anew.