Marvel is moving rapidly towards full employment: new Disney Plus series Moon Knight is based on a superhero ranked one from bottom by comic book experts in a rundown of the top 50 Avengers. But the juggernaut must rumble on, and so it does with this standalone story, which is free from intertextual references to the studio’s broader “cinematic universe”.
Airing in the UK with an unusually severe 16+ certification, it’s grislier than the usual Marvel outings. Bodies pile up, blood spills and viscera squelch. But the most disturbing act of violence is the one lead actor Oscar Isaac inflicts on the English accent. His effort as museum gift-shop worker Steven Grant is, to use words from his character’s limited vernacular, bloody bollocks.
The fact that Isaac is in fact a supremely gifted actor serves as an extra-narrative clue that Steven may not be who he says he is, or even who he thinks he is. As a habitual sleepwalker, even he doesn’t know what strange activities he gets up to at night. After shackling himself to his bed in desperation, he wakes up in another country with a dislocated jaw, a sacred ornamental scarab in his pocket, and no recollection of his journey. Border-hopping somnambulance soon gives way to daytime blackouts, hallucinations, voices and visions of another self called Marc (still Isaac, but thankfully no accent).
The first episode doesn’t make clear how Steven/Marc relate to Moon Knight. Things only get more confusing once the show tries to outline how Isaac’s characters inhabit one body and serve the ancient Egyptian god Khonsu in his conflict with the goddess Ammit, represented on Earth by the soothsayer Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke). “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Bonkers!” says Steven when all this is explained to him. Seconded.
Moon Knight is so bewilderingly convoluted as to be almost invulnerable to spoilers. It is less immune, however, to criticisms of lacklustre scripting, tortuous plotting and pseudo-philosophical musings about human nature and identity. In short, a show befitting an Avenger ranked 49th.
★★☆☆☆
On Disney Plus from tomorrow; new episodes released weekly
Marvel series Moon Knight is so convoluted it’s lunacy
Pinoy Variant