Friday, March 29

‘Moon Knight’ has raised an ambitious story, but it has a problem: the rigid Marvel corset


We commented after the first bars of this Marvel miniseries that there was in it a unique potential to propose something different from most of the house’s productions. His tone, slightly darker than usual (especially after openly light serieslike ‘Hawk Eye’) and focused on the psychology of the protagonist, played by Oscar Isaac, opened more or less unheard of paths for Marvel heroes.

With the series just finished on Disney+, the result is comparable to that of so many other Marvel productions, in film and on television: the results fall short of high expectations, but it is inevitable to recognize the series’ audiovisual packaging and narrative agility that makes it perfectly understandable that one after another, without fail, they are all overwhelming successes and generate so much expectation. ‘Moon Knight’ does not revolutionize anything (and in fact, it is below other “dark” series of the house, such as some of those produced by Netflix), but it maintains the type.

For this, the viewer has to pay a few tolls: that soft aesthetic and for all audiences that yes, works well in ‘Loki’ or Hawkeye, but that for a character who embodies the vengeance of the gods, he falls a bit halfway; the inevitable and unnecessary episode of flash back that there is no need (yes, it fits perfectly with the tradition of the hateful fill-ins paper filler of the superheroic genre); the villain with genocidal ambitions but who, as a family product, has to stay on the hoof with pretensions (and double penalty here, when he is embodied by someone as charismatic as Ethan Hawke)…

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And on top of that, that annoying tone of inventing garlic soup when what Marvel often does is pick at much earlier pop culture finds and regurgitate them for mass consumption. In this case, and eye, minor spoilers for the last episode, the game with the split personalities and the insane asylums harks back to none other (especially in a couple of very specific twists) to none other than ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’. Marvel adds color, sound and a unique style. And to live.

Knight and whatever comes up

It is true that ‘Moon Knight’ takes some risks that makes the enthusiasm of a certain sector of the fans understandable. To the tinkering with the double personalities is added the total absence of explanations that the series offers in its first episodes. This refusal to overjustify anything gives a certain atmosphere of mystery to the approach. and it’s also the spectacular trademark of the house, which curdles here in a hand-to-hand fight between gods with equivalence in their avatars, and that although it is not resolved in the best way, conceptually it is very powerful.

And we always end up asking ourselves the same thing with each new series, with each new movie: is Marvel stagnant? If in the grand scheme of things there are no big differences between ‘Moon Knight’ and other previous series from the house, how long can you keep repeating the string of more or less parallel hits and misses? On the plus side, excellent performances, digestible content, engaging mythology, occasional hits of pacing and staging. On the negative, recycled ideas, a certain plot swelling, and series conceived to consume and, to a large extent, forget.

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‘Moon Knight’ does not have the answer precisely because it is another Marvel series, and it still does not present any answer to the enigmas that are renewed with each proposal: Can the bubble float in the air without bursting… or presenting anything new? We were literally talking yesterday about how ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ presents novelties in the MCU by way of the authorial seal and the differentiated vision, an option to which Marvel’s industrial machinery can wink, but without launching into the chest discovered.

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The proof is that in ‘Moon Knight’ Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead appear as directors and screenwriters of several episodes, two indie creators with enigmatic and daring films (‘Resolution’, ‘Spring’, ‘Infinity’) and whose seal is detected slightly in the film, but to which Marvel, as always, does not deliver without a network. ‘Moon Knight’ is one of Marvel’s most enigmatic heroes, and he lives up to it: at the moment, with this series, he continues to collaborate in mapping out that huge question mark that is the company’s future.

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