Quarantine Control #109: In the Mane of the Moon

DC Staff | May 5, 2022 | Features, Television | No Comments

A point that’s been constantly reiterated in these posts is how easy it is to forget that COVID-19 continues to hover around, an understandable observation even for anyone who heavily follows the news. After all, there are too many other topics competing for air time and website/newspaper space, so it’s easy to overlook news that at least two more Omicron subvariants could spread around soon, and that the death count in the United States could soon officially hit one million. Everything feels bad these days, but don’t worry, it could get worse. Hopefully no one reads these ledes for their comfort.

Geoffrey Barnes

Oh no, it’s more superhero stuff.

Moon Knight (2022)
Source: Disney Plus
Episodes: 6

There were plenty of understandable questions about how a live-action Moon Knight adaptation would fare before the show debuted. The potential for the series to take serious liberties with the character’s comic book origins was high, given the fluctuating character development and accompanying quality of the individual comic stories depending on who was writing. There were also questions about how the story would fit in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has been considerably more lighthearted than the content in some Moon Knight comics. Sure, MCU executive producer Kevin Feige talked up how brutal the show would be before it started, but we’d seen what passed for that in Marvel works before.

Here’s a quick answer for how the Moon Knight show fares: It is indeed as brutal as it needs to be. While it takes liberties with the comics that I’m conflicted about, it’s one of the most enjoyable MCU shows to grace Disney Plus thus far.

The series begins by following the initially mundane life of Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac), a largely normal tour guide who works at the British Museum in London, landing the job thanks to his extensive knowledge of Egyptian history and culture. But it all quickly becomes abnormal when he starts seeing frightening supernatural visions, when people he doesn’t know try to contact him, and when he occasionally blacks out and awakes to find himself in crazy situations.

It’s around this time when his life fully gets turned upside down and realizes that he’s actually hiding a second personality known as Marc Spector (again, Oscar Isaac). Marc is the version that made a deal with Egyptian God Khonshu to do his bidding and fight as Moon Knight. Steven, in this case, is the viewer’s avatar, who eventually learns why Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke) opposes Moon Knight and Khonshu and must be stopped, and the purpose of Marc’s love interest (and series-original character) Layla El-Faouly (May Calamawy). It’s a fun tale that develops over the course of six episodes.

It couldn’t have been easy for Oscar Isaac to play two versions of the character constantly over the course of six long episodes, but he did an even better job of it than anyone could have expected. There’s no clue as to how many takes it took for Isaac to get the scenes just right with Steven’s fake British accent and Marc’s extremely Northeast American one, but it clearly worked out. This only becomes more apparent over the course of the series, as the mind-screw elements and looks at the character’s mental health are further explored. I don’t mean to undermine the efforts of Ethan Hawke as Arthur, an unusual-but-good role for Hawke given his filmography, and May Calamawy as Layla, in likely the biggest role she’s received yet. But Isaac’s just that good.

No one should have expected anything deep or involving in a series about a vigilante fighting against CG-ified creatures of legend working on behalf of a powerful figure, but it deserves credit for its presentation. The Moon Knight comics largely take place in New York, but the creators of the live-action series wanted to take this quest between London and Egypt, with the writers utilizing figures of Egyptian history and mythology to weave them into the plot in both an interesting and entertaining manner. (This is where comparisons to The Mummy series came in.) It also made sure to depict Cairo, a middle eastern city, as a civilized culture instead of going for the backwater interpretation fictional works too often pursue.

The MCU Disney Plus shows had been perfectly, if not intentionally, consumable in weekly doses thus far. But it wasn’t until the end that I realized Moon Knight would have benefitted from a binge watch thanks to the story the producers wanted to tell and the way in which they told it, especially through how Marc and Steven’s personalities develop. At the same time, it would have been nice if the conclusion had more time to develop with two more episodes to ensure that it wouldn’t have felt so rushed, for an eight-episode series instead of a six-episode one. This, ironically, gives it the opposite problem of the Marvel Defenders shows originally on Netflix, which sometimes went too long. This might have been a budget issue, which would also explain the sometimes-dodgy CG work.

The Moon Knight adaptation producers also went out of their way to distinguish him from the character’s Batman and The Shadow-inspired origins, but stepped a bit too far from it for my liking. It’s not like the MCU is overflowing with detective superheroes or figures. But the series still works for the story they wanted to tell, and it’s good for some works to veer away from locations that aren’t often used in the MCU. Enough key aspects of the character’s origins were kept to prevent it from veering into an in-name-only adaptation.

Moon Knight was promoted as a limited series, but true to any Marvel work, the conclusion teases plenty more to come through its unique story, as one of the few series that don’t require watching any other MCU works to understand it. They ideally won’t keep us waiting, but the lack of even a rumor about a second season means it will be a little while. My hope is that the producers will include more elements from the comics if they get another season.

Joseph Daniels

During the first week of April, I suggested that our readers take a week to rest. Self care is definitely very important, and something that should be practiced often. So I think once a month, I’ll make the suggestion that everyone just take a break and rest. That means this week, again, I recommend being like the tiger and finding your serenity in the gentle caress of a luxurious catnap. Tigernap?

It can sometimes feel like the world is spiraling out of control, but we’re supposedly living in a civilized society. We’re not living out in the wild where survival means having to hunt for our food for most of the day. It should be noted that tigers living in a zoo don’t have to worry about hunting, so that’s why they’re often seen napping. They’re not always sleeping the day away, but they don’t need to use their energy looking for food and ensuring their survival.

I’ve seen people say that sometimes they feel like they live in a zoo, when things are chaotic around them. Being a zoo animal is not necessarily a bad thing! The cage might make it seem like a trap, and certainly some zoos don’t give their animals enough space to live on, but if life was truly like living in a good zoo, you could rest a lot more often because everything’s completely taken care of! Look for those moments of peace and serenity so that you can truly feel like a tiger in the zoo and find those moments of rest this week.

There’s no way to sugarcoat how bad it is out there for people who aren’t fascist sympathizers right now. Take care of yourself, assuming that’s not being prevented too.

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