Moon Knight

 

Awkward British museum gift shop worker Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac) and hardnosed American former mercenary Marc Spector (Isaac again) have a dilemma: they are two personalities vying for control over one body. Spector has been working off a debt to the Egyptian moon god Khonshu (voiced by F. Murray Abraham), donning his ceremonial armor and serving as his vengeful, evil-punishing avatar Moon Knight. He’s fled to England to keep his archaeologist wife Layla El-Faouly (May Calamawy) out of harm’s way, but she won’t be deterred that easily. Meanwhile, it is Steven who seems to have gotten the pair in the most trouble, stumbling across a plot by charismatic cult leader Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke) to release the goddess Ammit and exact terrible judgment upon humanity.

 

Though he has graced comic books pages for decades, insofar as Moon Knight is known at all, it is as an Internet meme or Marvel’s Batman equivalent with multiple personalities and a mystical flair. The character’s obscurity actually played to writer Jeremy Slater and director Mohamed Diab’s advantage as it gave them considerable latitude in developing a short-run Disney Plus adaptation. Their vision is an eclectic one, and though the resulting show’s tonal whiplash may disorient some viewers, it makes for a refreshingly fun ride.

 

A broad-strokes distillation, Moon Knight makes a number of changes to the source material that are ultimately for the best. Comic book Steven was a suave, rich Bruce Wayne/Lamont Cranston type, but show Steven is a working-class blunderer. This quality, in the face of pending doom, gives the show a good bit of humor, especially when contrasted with Mark’s cool competence. It’s to Isaac’s credit that he handles both personas – and accents – with conviction. Layla is also a stronger and better-developed character than her comic equivalent, Marlene. While her status as an Egyptian heroine is obnoxiously trumpeted as Representation with a capital R (ironic given the casting of a non-Jewish actor as the definitely Jewish Marc), Calamawy nevertheless shows both toughness and heart. Hawke’s Harrow is an amalgamation of several different villains, and he exudes a creepy soft-spoken empathy despite his fanaticism.

 

From the streets of London to the streets of Cairo and from an Egyptian tomb to a mental hospital to the afterlife, the show’s settings change quickly. While these episode-to-episode shifts can be disorienting (albeit not to the extent of Legion), Diab’s direction is surefooted and energetic, and Slater, whose Fantastic Four (2015) script was largely butchered by Josh Trank, gains a measure of redemption here. Between Diab’s inclusion of modern Cairo and Hesham Nazi’s score, Moon Knight serves as an aesthetic corrective to a popular conception of Egypt rooted thousands of years in the past.

 

Moon Knight is, like previous Disney Plus Marvel series WandaVision, a show whose quirkiness masks powerful acting and an exploration of the extremes that grief and loss can push us toward. The pull of individual episodes may vary, but the series as a whole is more often than not compelling.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

 

Months have passed since Steve Rogers retired as Captain America and passed his shield on to Sam “The Falcon” Wilson (Anthony Mackie), who declined to take up the mantle. A tip from Air Force officer Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez) puts the wingsuit-wearing hero on the trail of the Flag Smashers, a group of serum-enhanced terrorists opposed to restoring the pre-Blip status quo. Sam teams up with the recently pardoned Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), who is attempting to make amends for the murders he committed as the brainwashed assassin the Winter Soldier. Their pursuit of the Flag Smashers is crashed by John Walker (Wyatt Russell), a decorated soldier tapped by the government as the new Captain America whose brash style conflicts with Sam and Bucky’s approach. Desperate to thwart one terrorist, Sam and Bucky reluctantly turn to another: the imprisoned Helmut Zemo (Daniel Bruhl), whose prior vendetta nearly tore The Avengers apart.

 

Following on the heels of WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier swaps magic and metanarrative for a much more grounded milieu that sees Bucky deny the existence of wizards and Sam fight lending discrimination to secure a bank loan to help his sister (Adepero Oduye) fix up their family’s fishing boat. For those seeking escapism, this may seem a discomfiting letdown, but for many more, the show’s exploration of relatable themes – confronting legacies and coping with traumas – is one of its strongest points.

 

In its own way, writer/creator Malcolm Spellman’s work here is as bold as anything in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He discards the colorblind fantasy of Sam simply being able to pick up the shield and put on the costume in favor of exploring the trials and travails of being a Black man tasked with embodying American ideals, an issue further complicated by Sam’s discovery of Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), a would-be Cap replacement who was secretly imprisoned and experimented on years ago. Spellman’s eye for complexity extends to the antagonists as well, allowing the Flag Smashers and their young leader Karli (Erin Kellyman) to tap into the “voice of the dispossessed” zeitgeist. Zemo isn’t exactly redeemed – if anything, revealing his closer-to-the-comics aristocratic roots would seem to make him a candidate for further villainy – but he too gets the “ruthlessness in service of a benevolent cause” treatment, questing to rid the world of super soldiers before they cause further damage. As worthwhile as these ideas are, a six-episode series seems at times too small a venue for them. While there is no shortage of powerful moments, the series can feel overstuffed and underdeveloped, with its pacing the most frequent victim of its ambition. The final episode in particular has an odd rhythm, compounded by Sam’s overly long and stagey rebuke to a senator whose life he just saved.

 

Unevenness aside, director Kari Skogland deserves credit for putting together a polished production amid the challenges of a global pandemic. The COVID outbreak during filming led to location changes and wreaked havoc with the schedule, yet the on-screen product doesn’t look like something put together on the fly. From immersive aerial sequences to tense, fluid fights, the action is cinema-smooth. The show also makes good use of local color whether it’s highlighting a Louisiana fishing community or the shimmering nightlife of the Southeastern Asian enclave Madripoor (astonishingly, shot in a well-disguised Atlanta neighborhood).

 

Beyond The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s technical merits, it’s also a much-deserved spotlight for Mackie’s talents. From The Hurt Locker to Night Catches Us to Pain and Gain, Mackie has proven adept at providing everything from panic to panache to pathos. His MCU debut, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, gave him a chance to do some character exploration, but the sheer size of the cast in recent Avengers outings has left him largely sidelined. Not anymore. Here, he gets to do everything from trade banter with Bucky to convincingly project having the weight of the world on his shoulders. Speaking of burdens, Russell too deserves plaudits for humanizing a walking jingoistic stereotype. Walker’s blunt embrace of violence, mirroring that of the Flag Smashers, is meant to be contemptible, but in both cases, we’re allowed to understand where the characters are coming from.

 

By its conclusion, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier has left a number of threads for future movies to tackle, but it is more than a mere placeholder. Tense and timely if sometimes also rushed, it offers fun without frivolity.

The Punisher

In the course of waging a war on the criminals responsible for killing his family, Force Recon Marine veteran Frank “The Punisher” Castle (Jon Bernthal) stumbles across a criminal conspiracy involving drug trafficking and extrajudicial military killings overseen by high-ranking CIA operative William Rawlins (Paul Schulze). Frank is aided by David “Micro” Leiberman (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), a presumed-dead former NSA analyst-turned-whistleblower and ex-Navy corpsman Curtis Hoyle (Jason R. Moore), who runs a support group for veterans. Another friend from the service, Billy Russo (Ben Barnes), has founded a private military firm whose operations are threatened by Frank’s quest for vengeance. Meanwhile, DHS agent Dinah Madani (Amber Rose Revah) is running her own investigation that puts her on a collision course with both Frank and the conspirators alike.

Since debuting in the 1970s, the Punisher has been a divisive character not only among comic book fans but among comic book writers. Some treat him as a fundamentally decent family man who was pushed by tragedy to resort to extreme methods; others portray him as a brutal psychopath who happens to be pitted against even worse people. Despite this controversy, Bernthal won much-deserved acclaim for his depiction on season 2 of Daredevil, and so a solo Nextflix series seemed like as much as a safe bet as could be made for such a violent character. While this show has a far narrower appeal than that of Luke Cage or Jessica Jones, it is far from mindless sadism. Tough yet topical, The Punisher serves up character depth and moral dilemmas with its expected gore.

Because Castle has never been one to stray from using lethal force, developing lasting plotlines and recurring characters has not been easy despite The Punisher’s longevity. However, rather than go the all-original route (a la the little-loved 1989 Dolph Lundgren movie), showrunner Steve Lightfoot borrowed when he could, pulling in characters from the comics’ regular continuity and adults-only MAX imprint. He also wisely gave the setting an update: Castle was originally a Vietnam veteran; here, he and other former servicemen are haunted by what they saw and did in Afghanistan. Add surveillance state concern, gun control advocacy and opposition, and the media’s glorification of violence to the show’s thematic mix, and suddenly we’re in quite a bit deeper than “Frank shoots bad guys.”

But of course, Frank still shoots plenty of bad guys. Bernthal humanizes Castle by showing him to be more than just a killing machine. He is, at varying times, a grieving husband and father with a massive guilt complex, a snide and sarcastic New Yorker, and a helpful and protective presence in the lives of Micro’s family (albeit for less than altruistic reasons). Once he picks up a gun (or a knife or a hammer), however, he becomes a growling mass of deadly rage.

It helps that he has some strong personalities (and strong performances) to play off of. Schultz plays Rawlins as a self-serving sadist, a man with no qualms about framing the murder and torture that he orchestrates as being in the national interest. Russo is a more complicated case. In the comics, he was a hot-tempered Mafia thug whom Frank disfigured and made an archenemy out of. Here, he comes across as more calculating and not without honor though still a ruthless operator. As Madani, Revah more than holds her own. She plays the agent as resourceful, tough, determined and fair, and her Persian-American identity is never exploited for cheap filibustering. On the other hand, Moss-Bachrach’s portrayal of Leiberman strikes an odd note. In the comics, Microchip was a scheming fat bastard whose partnership with Frank was of the love-hate variety. Here, as an Edward Snowden stand-in with a familial concern that parallels Frank’s, he is a lot more sympathetic though arguably not as interesting.

As with other Marvel Netflix shows, The Punisher is a slow build at times. The extent of the conspiracy doesn’t become apparent until several episodes in, and a side story involving a disturbed young vet in Curtis’s support group comes to dominate some of the run time. That said, the last few episodes are as tense as peak Daredevil, and there are high emotional beats (the presumed-dead Micro seeks a reunion with his family, Madani copes with loss and betrayal, etc.) to match the shootouts and fisticuffs. True to form for Marvel Netflix properties, there are also unpleasant post-combat medical scenes though this time Rosario Dawson’s nurse character is nowhere to be found.

The Punisher requires a strong stomach, but beneath the agro surface gloss is a character-driven show that offers a grim yet vital look at a war-affected violence-inundated society that rightfully distrusts its corrupt authorities. Sound familiar?

8/10

The Defenders

When sinister ancient ninja organization The Hand sets its sights on the destruction of New York, its archenemy Danny Rand, aka The Immortal Iron Fist (Finn Jones) resolves to stop it at all costs. Meanwhile, superpowered private investigator Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) is hired to investigate a missing man who has knowledge of The Hand’s activities. When she attracts police attention, blind attorney Matt Murdock, secretly the masked vigilante Daredevil (Charlie Cox), bails her out. The Hand’s decision to hire local youths as a cleanup crew also attracts the attention of recently released Luke Cage (Mike Colter), a nigh invulnerable watchdog who was wrongly imprisoned. The four heroes are brought together by a common foe, but will they be able to set aside their considerable differences long enough to make a difference?

Fresh off disappointing fans with Iron Fist’s mediocre solo series, Marvel’s Netflix team has again gone out on a limb. This time, the risks include a shorter format, a mystical menace, and a decision to use The Defenders name for a team that doesn’t resemble its comic book counterpart. While not all of these risks paid off, they do show that Marvel is capable of adapting and responding to criticism rather than doubling down on past mistakes.

Series creator Douglas Petrie is an old television hand (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and despite the short run, The Defenders has an episodic feel in the early going, gradually laying groundwork before ratcheting up the action in the latter episodes. This mitigates some of the pacing problems present in the characters’ solo series, but there is still some lag.

The decision to utilize The Hand as antagonists is both a blessing and a curse. The organization poses a threat of an appropriate scale to unite the heroes, and a look at its inner workings – there are five “fingers” that don’t always see eye to eye, mirroring the heroes’ dischord – humanizes the group to some extent. On the other hand (pun not intended), for a supposedly secretive organization, the group’s disruptive activities are laughably conspicuous.

The decision to involve the hand also places Rand front and center, a questionable move giving his poor reputation among fans. However, to the credit of all involved, he comes off better here than in his own show. His fight scenes are more fluid and convincing and his teammates regularly call him out on his stubbornness and immaturity. Still, the mysticism inherent in his plotline seems an odd fit for the grittier exploits of Daredevil, Cage, and Jones.

Though Rand (and Finn Jones’s portrayal of him) remains a point of contention, the rest of the cast generally comes off well. Luke and Jessica, a married couple in the comics, enjoy some nice banter, and their incredulity at the show’s supernatural turns casts them as audience surrogates. Matt reveals the difficulty of trying to compartmentalize as his worlds come perilously close to colliding. The supporting roles continue to showcase strong characters, from repentant ex-Hand swordswoman Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick) to tough yet sympathetic cop Misty Knight (Simone Missick) to Matt’s crusty, badass mentor Stick (Scott Glenn) to everyone’s mutual acquaintance/favorite nurse Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson). On the villain side of the spectrum, Elodie Yung gives a nuanced, emotional performance as Elektra, a recently revived Hand assassin with conflicting loyalties while Wai Ching Ho continues to drop veiled insults with aplomb as the recurring foe Madame Gao. Though Sigourney Weaver lends star power and a touch of deadly class to the role of Hand honcho Alexandra, the character is bland and familiar, with some clichéd dialogue to boot.

These performances, coupled with some well-choreographed fight scenes and a lively soundtrack, make The Defenders consistently watchable though it never reaches the highs of the best of the characters’ solo outings. Those who have yet to break faith with Marvel’s Netflix offerings will not be driven to do so now, and by the groundwork is laid for further developments. However, The Avengers this is not.

7.5/10