Moon Knight Episode 1 Review
The first MCU show of the year Moon Knight has dropped on Disney+. This is a show that I’ve been very excited for ever since they announced Oscar Isaac as the lead. So how is episode 1? Let’s get started!
The Good:
The best thing about this show was that it was something totally new and different for the MCU. Some of the previous phase 4 movies and tv shows were very formulaic and seem to follow the Marvel formula pretty closely. Even several movies from phase 3 had a sameness to them. This show is not that almost everything about it is something totally new and different for the MCU. With the way the story is structured, the tone of the show, and the story here is something very new for the MCU. And I mean that as a good thing, that’s what is so exciting about phase 4 is that every project is something new and different. The next show after this is Ms. Marvel and we got the trailer for that earlier this month, and it is totally different from this show.
I touched on this earlier but I found the story and the story structure here to be very interesting. Because it is an origin story that is what this show is, it’s an origin story for Oscar Isaac’s characters. But here he doesn’t know that he’s going to be a superhero, he doesn’t know he’s on a hero’s journey character arc here. And so it was a story structure inside of the MCU, that we haven’t seen before. And I thought it was a nice touch to throw into something like this.
The show also does a great job of building mysteries and this ticking clock. From the very beginning of the episode, I was hooked and very curious to see where this was going. And I still am very curious where all of this is going in the rest of the episodes. And similar to WandaVision and Loki the episode ends, and it does make me want to see the next episode. So I’m bummed I have to wait another week for episode 2, because where this episode ends I’m very excited to see where it goes in episode 2.
From there, there are some nice touches of humor that worked for me. It’s not overplayed, it's not the funniest MCU project out there. But there are some nice one liners that Oscar Isaac says or things he does that did make me chuckle. Once again, it’s not overplayed but a nice touch.
Finally, both Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke are giving great performances here. Oscar Isaac is especially giving this great performance that is somewhat transformative and so different from any of his other work. But since he is this great actor, he can pull off everything. He can pull off playing this innocent character but can also play more complicated more serious characters equally as well. Then Ethan Hawke as the show’s villain who is a rock solid actor and great in this show, and plays off of Oscar Isaac very nicely.
The Bad:
The big thing here is some parts of the plot and the episode can be a bit confusing. Meaning it’s hard to fully remember what is going on. What this version of Oscar Isaac is doing, and what this version of Oscar Isaac is doing. So when it transitioned, I had to pause and remember what this version of the character was up to. And it wasn’t a huge issue but definitely something that I did notice while watching this show.
Final Thoughts: Overall I had very high expectations for Moon Knight and I thought for the most part they delivered on those expectations. It is something so new and different from the MCU, it’s darker and the way it’s told is very different. The performances all around are great, Oscar Issac might give a top tier MCU performance. So I’m very excited and curious to see where this show goes in the last 5 episodes.
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