Every Marvel series that has debuted on Disney+ has had its own distinct style.
This isn’t a revelation to anyone who’s watched WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, What If…?, or Hawkeye. Yet, none of these series have been so upfront with its ambitious and audacious implementation of visual and psychological horror. While some of you might be raising your hand and saying, “Hi, WandaVision and Loki exist” – even those very creative and daring shows used storytelling devices to slowly introduce these to their worlds. In the Moon Knight premiere, we are walloped – with little-to-no warning, like our protagonist – with terrifying imagery, jarring time-space jumps, and spikes of violence…all with no explanation.
This should leave audiences bewildered and ready to punch out of Moon Knight. Yet, this series has one thing going for it that makes it all compelling, sensical, and somehow enjoyable all at the same time: Oscar Isaac.
Isaac’s performance throughout the chaos is what keeps the entire premiere episode of Moon Knight grounded. When we first meet Isaac’s character, the charmingly befuddled British museum employee Steven Grant, he’s just a nervous guy who’s frazzled by his lack of sleep and all the stress and anxiety that comes with that (and, you know, just being a person). Isaac is able to effortlessly play a man who walks around as a raw nerve. He has this wonderful, distinctly British self-deprecating humor. Of course, Isaac is nowhere being British, but he somehow is able to capture that wry, twitchy type of Brit humor that usually ends with him saying “innit?” followed by a nervous laugh.
Isaac is convincing in the role that you forget how effortlessly cool, tough, and commanding he’s been in literally everything he’s ever done. Of course, this works perfectly when the reveal comes that he’s sharing the body with the uber suave, deadly mercenary, Marc Spector – a character we hear about from a disembodied voice (F. Murray Abraham, Homeland).
Isaac’s Grant is the audience surrogate for so much of the time-lapse/jump-cut action sequence. It’s extremely horrifying to see Grant’s character in a ridiculous comedic situation, and then in the blink of an eye he’s covered in blood and people are dead all around him. In the hands of a lesser actor, and frankly a lesser director (Mohamed Diab does a brilliant job with literally everything in the episode), this whole episode would’ve been an utter disaster.
Why?
For starters, we literally have no idea what’s happening. Somehow Grant is sharing a body with Marc Spector. For some reason, Ethan Hawke’s Arthur Harrow can judge people because he was gifted by the gods. Oh, and he can summon a huge devil dog, too. Then there’s the aforementioned voice, which sort of sounds like Optimus Prime, that keeps calling Grant an idiot and is constantly angry at him…for being himself. Also, there’s a whole bunch of stuff about Egyptian gods that are vaguely mentioned.
This is a formula for an absolute, utter hot mess. This should not work literally at all, but Diab and Isaac will this episode into an absolutely enthralling premiere that leaves us wanting to know everything about this Marvel hero. That’s a sign of brilliance, and it makes this reviewer eager for next Wednesday.
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