I kind of agree with you on the 6-episodes format being too short to let the series breath but I think that you are a bit harsh with Moon Knight.
I actually found that it was refreshing to have something that was not heavily connected to the MCU as it has become such a mess that it is very hard to follow.
And I really do not think that the series meanders, on the contrary the different points of views are revealed one after the other and the scope of the story expands in a very natural way, in my opinion. It was a pretty interesting and respectful depiction of DID, which is quite rare on TV...
Add to this the amazing acting and the very good direction (which you noted) and that sums up to a strong series. I really think that your way of watching the show might have prevented you from investing in it, as the rhythm of one episode a week was very engaging, at least to me. Discussions on the Primetimer's Forum were also a nice way of building a better knowledge of all the lore, especially the Egyptian mythology-related one.
By the way, I think that this could be an interesting topic for an Episodic Discussion: "Where do you read (good) comments on the episodes you watch?". I know some favour Twitter or Reddit but I found that Primetimer was actually the community I felt the more at ease with.
About a year ago I decided I should read some Moon Knight before the show came out since it was a character I'd always ignored in the comics, and I ended up going chronologically through most of his history (like 200 issues in the end?), and my final judgment was I probably shouldn't have bothered. And that was BEFORE I watched the show!
Firstly, the character has been D-list for a reason. He's just not that interesting. He started out as Batman with multiple aliases, and then those aliases became separate personalities, and then he just got tossed around and rebooted for a while. At one point his alt personalities were Captain America, Spider-Man, and Wolverine (that was a truly awful run).
Secondly, it's clear that the MCU producers looked at the comics as well and thought, well none of this is any good, and so they made an entirely new thing with some of the same visuals and character names. And since I certainly don't hold Moon Knight in any reverence, I'm fine with that, but the issue is the thing they came up with isn't actually better.
I liked Layla. I liked that he's still Jewish (for some reason I was sure they were dropping that). I thought the Mr. Knight version of the suit looked really good. Some of the asylum stuff worked well. Other than that? Ehh...
I actually thought WandaVision, Loki, and Hawkeye were all great successes, so this was a bit of a disappointment for me. Hopefully Ms. Marvel will be better. And yes I'd love to see an MCU Disney+ show that actually is more like a TV show. The only truly great Moon Knight comics run was the (mostly) standalone six issues that Warren Ellis wrote, and if they just adapted that into six episodes, it would've worked way better.
I'm glad it was so short, because by the time I said to myself "this isn't great" there wasn't much left. And episode 5 was good enough to make me stick around.
I am in an odd spot in that I have barely watched many of the Marvel movies and was actually good at first at watching the Marvel shows. And then last fall I got busy and failed to watch Hawkeye (or Boba Fett for that matter) and now Moon Knight. Meanwhile I was looking at all the DC shows I have fallen behind on! At first it felt like Marvel shows were easier to stay current on but when I see these lackluster reviews, that feeds more procrastination. Does everyone think Hawkeye is worth viewing? I heard it wasn’t half bad. Or should I treat the Marvel movies as 2 or 3 episode shows and start there?
It is the case that the MCU wants credit for doing the thing without actually doing the thing. The creative team on WandaVision said, more than once, that the casting of Evan Peters as Wanda’s brother was also about the fear that you forget a loved one’s face when they die. And that’s absolutely devastating. But it’s not something that the show actually conveys in any meaningful way. It’s not really touched upon, actually.
I feel the same about the relatively-praised fifth episode of Moon Knight. It’s trying to fit a lot into an episode, three/four separate stories, all about Marc/Steven, and nothing really resonates as a result. It wants the credit of exploring its hero’s trauma, but it does the bare minimum. At least WandaVision’s penultimate episode was solely focused on Wanda, more or less, and gave Olsen’s performance room to breathe. She didn’t have to cut between a friendly talking Elephant and childhood trauma.
Definitely lower-tier Marvel. In general, though, these shows always try to do too much and they always hire great actors to do very little. (Do you really need Vera Farmiga and Tony Dalton for that?)
I actually think the six episode structure is a good size for telling stories that are relatively focused while still allowing some time to enjoy the good guys doing "routine" heroics; Hawkeye in particular used the structure well. But it only works if you don't put your lead character on the bench for more than half the episodes. Moon Knight's biggest problem was not enough Moon Knight. What was there was stylish and fun and I thought Isaac did a great job, so I hope MK gets another outing that isn't so bogged down in origin story shenanigans.
I actually liked the first half of Moon Knight better than the second -- the character study of a meek man coming to realize there's something more to his blackouts and sleepwalking mixed with the action-comedy of the hapless museum shop clerk suddenly waking up in the middle of the other guy's daring adventures, without a clue as to what's going on. Once the personalities were more in communication with each other and teaming up to save the world, I felt myself checking out. If we'd moved up the traumatic backstory revelations in the asylum to episode 4 and then ended the miniseries there, I think I would have been happier with the project overall.
(I was also disappointed in how Marc's Jewishness got relegated to some tokenism about shivas and kippahs in one single episode, rather than informing the character and story throughout. I'm pretty sure he's only the second on-screen confirmed Jew in the entire MCU, after Ana Jarvis back in season 2 of Agent Carter. I'm glad the creative team didn't erase that aspect of his identity entirely like they have for other comics figures they've adapted, but I guess I had higher hopes for the franchise's first canonically Jewish superhero.)
I kind of agree with you on the 6-episodes format being too short to let the series breath but I think that you are a bit harsh with Moon Knight.
I actually found that it was refreshing to have something that was not heavily connected to the MCU as it has become such a mess that it is very hard to follow.
And I really do not think that the series meanders, on the contrary the different points of views are revealed one after the other and the scope of the story expands in a very natural way, in my opinion. It was a pretty interesting and respectful depiction of DID, which is quite rare on TV...
Add to this the amazing acting and the very good direction (which you noted) and that sums up to a strong series. I really think that your way of watching the show might have prevented you from investing in it, as the rhythm of one episode a week was very engaging, at least to me. Discussions on the Primetimer's Forum were also a nice way of building a better knowledge of all the lore, especially the Egyptian mythology-related one.
By the way, I think that this could be an interesting topic for an Episodic Discussion: "Where do you read (good) comments on the episodes you watch?". I know some favour Twitter or Reddit but I found that Primetimer was actually the community I felt the more at ease with.
About a year ago I decided I should read some Moon Knight before the show came out since it was a character I'd always ignored in the comics, and I ended up going chronologically through most of his history (like 200 issues in the end?), and my final judgment was I probably shouldn't have bothered. And that was BEFORE I watched the show!
Firstly, the character has been D-list for a reason. He's just not that interesting. He started out as Batman with multiple aliases, and then those aliases became separate personalities, and then he just got tossed around and rebooted for a while. At one point his alt personalities were Captain America, Spider-Man, and Wolverine (that was a truly awful run).
Secondly, it's clear that the MCU producers looked at the comics as well and thought, well none of this is any good, and so they made an entirely new thing with some of the same visuals and character names. And since I certainly don't hold Moon Knight in any reverence, I'm fine with that, but the issue is the thing they came up with isn't actually better.
I liked Layla. I liked that he's still Jewish (for some reason I was sure they were dropping that). I thought the Mr. Knight version of the suit looked really good. Some of the asylum stuff worked well. Other than that? Ehh...
I actually thought WandaVision, Loki, and Hawkeye were all great successes, so this was a bit of a disappointment for me. Hopefully Ms. Marvel will be better. And yes I'd love to see an MCU Disney+ show that actually is more like a TV show. The only truly great Moon Knight comics run was the (mostly) standalone six issues that Warren Ellis wrote, and if they just adapted that into six episodes, it would've worked way better.
I'm glad it was so short, because by the time I said to myself "this isn't great" there wasn't much left. And episode 5 was good enough to make me stick around.
I am in an odd spot in that I have barely watched many of the Marvel movies and was actually good at first at watching the Marvel shows. And then last fall I got busy and failed to watch Hawkeye (or Boba Fett for that matter) and now Moon Knight. Meanwhile I was looking at all the DC shows I have fallen behind on! At first it felt like Marvel shows were easier to stay current on but when I see these lackluster reviews, that feeds more procrastination. Does everyone think Hawkeye is worth viewing? I heard it wasn’t half bad. Or should I treat the Marvel movies as 2 or 3 episode shows and start there?
I just —
It is the case that the MCU wants credit for doing the thing without actually doing the thing. The creative team on WandaVision said, more than once, that the casting of Evan Peters as Wanda’s brother was also about the fear that you forget a loved one’s face when they die. And that’s absolutely devastating. But it’s not something that the show actually conveys in any meaningful way. It’s not really touched upon, actually.
I feel the same about the relatively-praised fifth episode of Moon Knight. It’s trying to fit a lot into an episode, three/four separate stories, all about Marc/Steven, and nothing really resonates as a result. It wants the credit of exploring its hero’s trauma, but it does the bare minimum. At least WandaVision’s penultimate episode was solely focused on Wanda, more or less, and gave Olsen’s performance room to breathe. She didn’t have to cut between a friendly talking Elephant and childhood trauma.
Definitely lower-tier Marvel. In general, though, these shows always try to do too much and they always hire great actors to do very little. (Do you really need Vera Farmiga and Tony Dalton for that?)
I actually think the six episode structure is a good size for telling stories that are relatively focused while still allowing some time to enjoy the good guys doing "routine" heroics; Hawkeye in particular used the structure well. But it only works if you don't put your lead character on the bench for more than half the episodes. Moon Knight's biggest problem was not enough Moon Knight. What was there was stylish and fun and I thought Isaac did a great job, so I hope MK gets another outing that isn't so bogged down in origin story shenanigans.
I actually liked the first half of Moon Knight better than the second -- the character study of a meek man coming to realize there's something more to his blackouts and sleepwalking mixed with the action-comedy of the hapless museum shop clerk suddenly waking up in the middle of the other guy's daring adventures, without a clue as to what's going on. Once the personalities were more in communication with each other and teaming up to save the world, I felt myself checking out. If we'd moved up the traumatic backstory revelations in the asylum to episode 4 and then ended the miniseries there, I think I would have been happier with the project overall.
(I was also disappointed in how Marc's Jewishness got relegated to some tokenism about shivas and kippahs in one single episode, rather than informing the character and story throughout. I'm pretty sure he's only the second on-screen confirmed Jew in the entire MCU, after Ana Jarvis back in season 2 of Agent Carter. I'm glad the creative team didn't erase that aspect of his identity entirely like they have for other comics figures they've adapted, but I guess I had higher hopes for the franchise's first canonically Jewish superhero.)