Moon Knight (Disney+): A TV Review

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A completely forgettable and unforgivable mess of a Marvel series.

Marvel has not exactly covered itself in glory in the wake of the staggering achievement that was the narrative arc which culminated with Infinity War/Endgame.

Black Widow and Shang Chi were rather generic Disney/Marvel movie ventures and Eternals was the worst film Marvel has churned out in its history.

The Spider-Man Sony/Marvel movies have fared a bit better at the box office, but even those have been pretty lackluster films, Spider-Man: No Way Home being the exception. The other Sony/Marvel movies, Venom and Morbious, have been pretty disastrous.

In this post-Endgame era, Mickey Mouse’s minions have tried to branch out from feature films to television, giving us a plethora of Disney + content that has been more miss than hit.

WandaVision and Loki were flawed but at least ambitious. Hawkeye was a more conventional work, but entertaining nonetheless. Falcon and the Winter Soldier was a middling misfire. What If…? an animated shitshow. And now there’s Moon Knight, which is easily the worst of the bunch.

Moon Knight is, like the lead character in the recent sorry Sony/Marvel movie Morbius, a bit of an obscure superhero in the Marvel canon.

Moon Knight is one of the superhero personas of Marc Spector/Steven Grant - a guy with a split personality. Spector is a rough and tumble American mercenary and Grant is an effete Brit who works at an Egyptian museum. Moon Knight is the avatar for the moon god Khonshu when Spector’s personality is in charge, and when Grant is in charge that avatar is Mr. Knight.  

If that all sounds a bit much that’s because it is, and Moon Knight doesn’t do much to quell the confusion.

Moon Knight is, like Morbius, a pretty fascinating character once you do the comic book reading necessary, but also like Morbius, the character is poorly served by the studio’s attempt to take him mainstream because the vehicle used is so atrocious.

The series Moon Knight, like the film Morbius, is an utter abomination it is so awful.

The series runs for 6 episodes, and yet it’s pacing is so bad, its storytelling so stilted, its action sequences so dull, it felt like watching a 40 hour death march.

The series takes its sweet time actually introducing Moon Knight, a fatal error as he’s the only remotely interesting thing in it. Instead, it plays coy with Steven Grant’s perspective, and actually cuts away anytime something interesting is about to happen and Moon Knight is supposed to show up.

When Moon Knight finally does arrive on screen, he is accompanied by the most egregiously choreographed, poorly shot and dismally edited action sequences you’ll ever witness.

And it isn’t just the action sequences, as everything about Moon Knight looks and feels cheap.

A huge problem with the show is that Oscar Isaac simply can’t carry a series on his own, as he lacks the requisite charisma and star power, nevermind the acting ability.

Isaac’s appeal has long eluded me. He is routinely terrible in movies (try watching him in those Star Wars pieces of shit) and yet people fawn all over him like he’s some great actor/movie star.

That said, last year I saw him in the Paul Schrader film, The Card Counter, and I thought he was fantastic. His performance was underplayed, subtle and riddled with complexity. Finally, I began to see what other’s saw in Oscar Isaac…and then… he turns around and churns out the embarrassment that is Moon Knight.

All of Isaac’s versions of Moon Knight, be it Mark Specter or Steven Grant, are dead-eyed, dreadful and dull. By the way, Isaac’s British accent as Steven Grant is Dick Van Dyke level of hackneyed.

Speaking of dreadful, Morbious was a truly dreadful movie and, ironically, the geniuses behind Morbious and Moon Knight are on the same creative page as there’s a sequence in Morbious that is copied in Moon Knight.

In the sequence, there’s a sort of horror chase through a hallway with corporate zone lighting in it where the only lights that go on are the ones immediately above the person walking. It was enormously amusing to me that Moon Knight used the same exact lighting technique in an equally flaccid horror chase scene. Apparently unoriginal minds think alike.

Another major issue with Moon Knight is that the whole Egyptian gods thing is a tough sell, as once you start getting into supernatural instead of superhero, things become even more silly than usual pretty fast. Eternals suffered from a similar failing.

And Moon Knight doesn’t seem to be connected in any way to the rest of the Marvel Universe, so the series feels even more irrelevant. For example, why when giant Egyptian gods are fighting and civilians dying, wouldn’t the Avengers get involved?

To me, the most remarkable thing about Moon Knight is how instantly forgettable it is, and how atrociously made it is.

But rest assured, despite Moon Knight being a major mess, Marvel still managed to get its weak-kneed woke agenda into the series. There’s one sequence where a little Egyptian girl says to Scarlet Scarab (a female Moon Knight-esque character - it’s a long story), “are you an Egyptian superhero?”, and she replies with pride, “Yes I am!” That sequence made me cringe so hard I nearly defecated.

But rest assured, all that virtue signaling garbage is just icing on the cake of awfulness that is Moon Knight.

The bottom line is that if Moon Knight is what the future holds for Marvel, then the future is bleak indeed.

©2022

Hawkeye: A Review - of the First Two Episodes

Marvel’s new series Hawkeye, at least so far, not only avoids virtue signaling and woke pandering, it’s actually pretty funny.

The show has its flaws, but it’s a breath of fresh air from Marvel, which has in recent years been more interested in preaching than entertaining.

In the wake of Marvel’s miraculous run of movies which began with Iron Man in 2008 and culminated with Endgame in 2019, Disney’s money-making superhero division has been searching for a creative way forward with their storytelling in both film and television.

That search has usually resulted in pathetic woke pandering and virtue signaling on social issues, or mind-time-world bending extravagancies, or an unwieldy combination of both.

For example, Black Widow boasted a shamelessly shallow girl power, patriarchy-busting narrative and Falcon and the Winter Soldier pathetically pandered on racism, both with lackluster results.

WandaVision and Loki, on the other hand, toyed with audience’s minds as they bent time and storylines, thankfully they were at least interesting.

And finally, What if? and Eternals both went all in on virtue signaling and off-world in terms of time bending, and ended up being excruciatingly laborious.   

Now with the new six-episode mini-series Hawkeye – the first two episodes of which began streaming on Disney Plus on Wednesday with new episodes released every week for the next month, Marvel is trying a somewhat different approach.

After watching the first two episodes of Hawkeye I can report that thus far, thankfully, wokeness has not overtly reared its ugly head and no gods or time - bending wizards have showed up to mess with reality either.

In fact, Hawkeye is the most-grounded, most “realistic” and most authentic piece of storytelling in recent Marvel history, which isn’t a high bar to reach but at least they reached it.

Hawkeye tells the story of Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye – the family man and badass superhero archer from the Avenger’s movies, and Kate Bishop, a Hawkeye wannabe who stumbles into trouble. They both end up working together after the costume of the vigilante Ronin turns up and falls into the wrong hands.

The series, or at least the first two episodes of the series, is certainly flawed, but it’s also unique and interesting because at its core it’s really a droll comedy wrapped in the superhero cloak of an action-mystery.

Marvel has always had an undercurrent of comedy in their films, but that was always more a function of the impeccable comedic timing of Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man and the glorious obliviousness of Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, than anything else.

Hawkeye though is legitimately and genuinely funny in the most subtle, self-ware, un-Marvel way.  

For instance, the series opens with Clint/Hawkeye in New York City for the Christmas season. As a treat, one that he quickly regrets, Clint brings his kids to see the big Broadway musical hit Rogers – which is based on Captain America Steve Rogers and the Avenger’s defense of New York, of which Hawkeye was a vital part.

The scenes of the musical are hysterical, like something out of The Simpsons’ (another Disney property) famous Planet of the Apes Musical starring Troy McClure, not just because they’re so dreadful, but also because they’re so horrifyingly believable.

This heinously egregious Captain America musical is a gloriously savage but subtle dig at the vapid and vacuous culture that made the insidious and insipid awfulness of Lin Manuel-Miranda’s Hamilton a landmark achievement and rabid sensation.

Watching the theater muffin versions of the Avengers sing “Hulk…SMASH!” and “I could do this all day” literally made me laugh out loud, most especially because the corporate pimps at Disney are bound to produce either that exact same show or one frighteningly similar to it. It doesn’t take much imagination to conjure the painful image of say U2, who once actually wrote the score for a disastrous Broadway superhero musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, teaming with establishment darling and abysmal, talentless shill Lin Manuel-Miranda to make some corporate-friendly musical like Rogers: The Musical.

Other scenes, like the one where Clint and Kate see people dressed as superheroes and Kate opines on the superhero Hawkeye’s failure to resonate with the broader culture being a function of branding issues and poor marketing, or when Hawkeye himself goes to a LARP (live action role play) event, are Marvel making fun of Marvel to the most Marvel-ous degree.

The main reason for Hawkeye’s success though is that its stars, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye and Hailee Stanfield as Kate Bishop, are terrific in their roles.

Renner’s gruff, dead-pan delivery is deliriously good, and the luminous Stanfield is absolutely masterful with her comedic timing as well, like when she says the name of the Track Suit Mafia is “a little too on the nose.”

In Hawkeye, Renner and Stanfield are like some bizarro-world, asexual, Marvel version of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn…if Grant and Hepburn had to fight and shoot arrows at bad guys.

To be sure, Hawkeye has flaws. For instance, it can be a little slow at times and the few action sequences featured so far are not very noteworthy.

But with that said, I found myself pleased to see Marvel trying something new that didn’t involve overt woke preening and aggressive virtue signaling.

It would appear from the first two episodes that Marvel has given us a little early Christmas present this year, as the subtle, self-aware comedy on display in Hawkeye won’t work in too many other projects going forward for Marvel, but fortunately it does work well here.

We will see where the series goes from here, but thus far, I’m grateful that Hawkeye appears to be a little piece of harmless holiday fun. Let’s hope it stays that way.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

The Woke Wet Dream of Marvel's New Series 'What If...?'

The new Marvel series ‘What If…?’ is a woke wet dream where white male superheroes are replaced by women and minorities

The Disney+ show presents itself as innocent entertainment. But its woke agenda is red meat to rabid race hustlers and the identity obsessed desperate to disappear the scourge of white men from popular culture.

‘What If…?’, the new animated Marvel series, follows in the footsteps of the recent live-action Marvel series ‘WandaVision’, ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’, and ‘Loki’ in expanding the storyline of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The series consists of nine narrative-bending episodes, the first of which premiered on August 11, followed by the second on August 18, with new episodes available every following Wednesday.

If the first two episodes are any indication, ‘What If…?’ will devoutly pander to the newfound politically correct religious faith of Disney (Marvel’s parent company), as the show’s premise can basically be summed up as ‘What if the woke had a time machine and used it to destroy the Marvel universe?’

The first episode examines an alternative time-line where, during World War II, white guy Steve Rogers doesn’t turn into super soldier Captain America. Instead Agent Carter, a British woman, gets injected with the super soldier serum and becomes the superhero Captain Carter.

Captain Carter not only battles Hydra, Red Skull and the Nazis, but also the greatest villain of all… the patriarchy. She shows her true girl power by overcoming sexism and misogyny from condescending white males in the military power structure. You go, girl!

In the second episode, based on the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ storyline, the Ravagers are sent to earth in 1988 by the Celestial Ego to capture his child, Peter Quill, but they mistakenly take T’Challa, Wakanda’s child prince instead.

Unlike the selfish, stupid and white Peter Quill/Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) from the movies, the black T’Challa/Star-Lord (voiced by Chadwick Boseman in his final performance) is so good, selfless and wonderful, he actually convinces Thanos to abandon his genocidal plans and join him on his noble Robin Hood-esque adventures.

The message is clear in ‘What If…?’: if Thanos’ genocidal plan killed just white men, all of whom are awful, then the woke would happily go along with it in the Marvel universe and our own too.

Episode two of ‘What If…?’ so inspired Dr. Jason Johnson, a black talking head on MSNBC, he wrote an article titled, “Disney +’s ‘What if T’Challa became a star-lord?’ is a repudiation of mediocre white men”.

Johnson declares the episode is “a total repudiation of the mediocre white men who’ve been centered in most of the Marvel movie’s blockbuster films.” This is a curious take as Tony Stark was a child prodigy scientific genius before he became Iron Man, Bruce Banner was a renowned physicist before he became the Hulk, Stephen Strange was a brilliant surgeon before he became Dr. Strange, and Thor is a Norse god for goodness sake. There’s not a whole lot of mediocrity on that list of white guys centered in Marvel movies.

Johnson then rants that he doesn’t like movies or TV shows “about selfish, privileged mediocre white men who stumble through life, making costly mistakes that invariably hurt others along the way, but somehow in the end they get to be the hero…”  And yet he was a big fan of President Obama, a selfish, privileged black man who made costly mistakes, like siding with Wall Street instead of Main Street, that invariably hurt others, like working class people, but somehow ended up being a hero in mainstream culture. 

Johnson adores ‘What If…?’ because it shows “what real heroism, through Black guy magic, can actually look like”, which raises the question: what the hell is ‘black guy magic?’ God willing it’s better than the cheesy white guy magic of David Copperfield.

Johnson’s inanity continues with, “White men are bombarded with messages every day telling them they’re special no matter what they have or have not done or earned.”

Are those messages subliminal? I certainly haven’t seen them in the cavalcade of commercials and TV shows where all white guys are punchlines, because they’re the one group that can be ridiculed without fear of cancellation.

As a white male who aspires to the impossible dream of mediocrity, I’ve never experienced this alleged relentless messaging about being “special” regardless of what I “have or have not done or earned”, and neither have any of the other white guys I know.

The irony of all this “mediocre white man” hating is that Johnson is the poster boy for mediocrity himself. He’s an unoriginal mid-wit who has carved out a career on TV and in academia through the sheer force of his kiss-assery and corporate leg-up programs desperate to put a black face on establishment talking points.

He shamelessly belches out mendacious and mindless talking points meant to protect the powerful and maintain the status quo, so that he can keep sucking on the corporate media teat. For example, he once argued with a straight face that billionaire presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, the oligarch’s oligarch, was “not an oligarch”.

He also got suspended by MSNBC and fired by The Root for calling the black women working on Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign the “island of misfit black girls”.

It’s amusing that the Bloomberg oligarch defense and the egregious “black girls” statement sound an awful lot like something one of those mediocre white guys Johnson hates so much would say. To Dr. Johnson, physician of mediocrity, I say, “heal thyself”.

As for ‘What If…?’, I’d love to live on a timeline where corporate media clowns and race hustling hacks like Jason Johnson didn’t exist, and where wokeness didn’t ruin everything it touches. Unfortunately, that timeline doesn’t exist, and I won’t even get to see it imagined on some corny animated show either – it’s just too unbelievable.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 43 : WandaVision/Falcon and Winter Soldier/Loki

On this unique episode Barry and Mike take a look at three Marvel series streaming on Disney Plus - WandaVision, The Falcon and Winter Soldier, and Loki. Topics discussed are the joys of Elizabeth Olsen, Tom Hiddleston's Loki long game, and Kevin Fiege as Marvel Timekeeper.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 43 : WandaVision/Falcon and Winter Soldier/Loki

Thanks for listening!

©2021