Thursday, May 05, 2022

Pop Culture: Moon Knight Review

Forgive me for being childish but I started to refer to Moon Knight as Poo Knight or Moon Poo after about three episodes of the six - I wasn't impressed. Now it's finished I'm left in a state of perplexity - should I just give up on Marvel/Disney+ because I'm simply spending more time moaning about their output than I am enjoying it?

Moon Poo is essentially an adult superhero story told through the U rated Disney filter and really seemed to miss the point. For starters, out of six 45 minute episodes, Poo Knight appears for about 7 minutes; we get almost all of Oscar Isaac showcasing his acting ability and his world renowned Frank Spencer impersonation, but very little of the actual superhero the series is named after. After a slow start this series simply stopped giving and clammed up like someone who had the runs and then took ten bottles of Imodium.

It looked BIG and splendid, full of Indiana Jones settings and a suitably dodgy villain, but it spent more time being confused and lurching from one Frank Spencer set piece to another and all the while the worst of the [violence] action was cut from the viewer; we just saw the aftermath. Imagine 45 minutes of a superhero show where all the superhero bits are cut out - that's Poo Knight.

Yes, it claimed to be focusing on split personalities and schizophrenia, but it didn't really; perhaps the mental health aspect was aimed at the viewer because you may feel cheated and bamboozled at the end of the show and want your money back - that is madness...

I want to spoil it for you, because I'm that disappointed by this and so many other Marvel/Disney+ TV shows. I want to tell you how it ends and what twists there were along the way, but I can't - not because I'm a decent person, because I'm not completely sure we saw a TV series or half a TV series where the other half is a secret that no one should see or know about. I'd like to spoil it for you so that you avoid wasting so much of your life waiting for something MCU to happen. Also I'd like to spoil it so you don't have to suffer two silly looking Egyptian gods having a stick fight metaphorically over Cairo (at least I think it was metaphoric, it might have actually happened) or about the hippo, who should have been some light comedy relief but was just a wee bit sinister and creepy.

I thought WandaVision was innovative and clever (and very obtuse); I really enjoyed Loki even though it didn't really do what I'd hoped it would and Hawkeye was okay - a kind of Avengers series without any of the proper Avengers in it - but it was spoiled by a wholly unsatisfactory ending and the introduction of a superpowered, lesser Kingpin (obviously not the same one from the Daredevil series given the way this one was far more Hulk-like with his strength), but they're knocking out as much wank as they are jewels. Like the MCU films since Endgame, nothing has grabbed me by the balls and teased me into arousal; they're just a bit boring, overwrought and absolutely not targeting a 60-year-old ex-Marvelite.

I think this might explain why I've been watching both the old MCU and non-MCU films again, because while some might not have been any good, there was an honesty about them sadly lacking from anything they do now.

Poo Knight or Moon Poo is a nadir. It promised so much, teased us with strangeness and ended up delivering a fantasy psychoanalysis of a character we didn't know anything about and was left not wishing to know anything more about. I struggle to see how this does anything for the Marvel/Disney line apart from further muddy waters that didn't need to be muddied.

Next up is Ms Marvel starting in June. The limited amount of previews available suggests to me that this is going to be a Marvel series that ties in directly with the forthcoming Marvels film but is firmly aimed at the pre-teen audience. Ms Marvel is going to be the most Disney of Marvel shows so far and that fills me with a lot of dread. Maybe it is time to call it a day with Marvel? 

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