In the Moon Knight premiere, Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac) has an ordinary life — except when people start alluding to things he doesn’t remember. And there’s all the trouble he has sleeping. He has so many vivid dreams; or are they nightmares? What if those dreams aren’t in his imagination at all? What if Steven isn’t who he thinks he is?
Moon Knight Premiere
“The Goldfish Problem”
Mohamed Diab (director), Jeremy Slater (writer)
Oscar Isaac, Ethan Hawke, May Calamawy, F. Murray Abraham (cast)
March 30, 2022
As someone who’s dipped in and out of Marvel Comics (and comics in general, because life), I really didn’t know much about Moon Knight until I heard Oscar Isaac was going to be in the show. I did manage to hunt down a library copy of Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev’s 2011 Moon Knight comic, which gave me some context for what to expect. Most importantly, I knew Moon Knight was likely to have some psychological issues. In the comic, Marc Spector talks to the Avengers in his head, and sometimes imagines he is an Avenger — he even dresses up, over his Moon Knight suit. The comic did have a super-ick storyline with Echo, who we met in Hawkeye, and I really hope we don’t see anything like that in Moon Knight.
I wasn’t expecting the established Avengers to turn up in this show, but I expected there to be something. It didn’t really come as a surprise that the Moon Knight premiere focused on a protagonist who was having some difficulty keeping track of events in his life. I didn’t expect the protagonist to be called Steven Grant, but I know so little about Moon Knight, that I was happy to just roll with it.
I’d say that’s the best way to watch the Moon Knight premiere. Things keep happening around and to Steven and you’re just supposed to go with the flow. Feeling confused? That’s the point. That’s how Steven feels. We are meant to walk in his shoes.
And talking about shoes — there’s a super-disturbing opening scene that had me crawling under my blanket. No gore, nothing like that, but whoa, did it get under my skin (this is a pun you’ll understand when you watch the episode).
But let’s get to the main event: Oscar Isaac. He is a delight in the Moon Knight premiere! I’ve never seen Isaac do full-on comedy, especially physical comedy, before, but he does it brilliantly. I’m not talking about humour; I’m talking about actual comedy here. I couldn’t stop laughing at his expressions, his physicality, him screaming in fear (sorry about that, Steven). Why has it taken this long for Hollywood to let Oscar Isaac make the audience laugh? If you enjoyed Isaac on SNL, you’ll love his Steven Grant.
I don’t think the rest of the season is going to have this much comedy though. It doesn’t seem like Steven is actually our protagonist — in fact, he’s referred to as a “parasite” at one point. I don’t know what that’s about, but Moon Knight’s alter-ego in the comics is usually Marc Spector, so poor Steven may just be relegated to the background.
When the Moon Knight previews and teasers were released, there were a lot of comments online about accents being dodgy. I haven’t watched any of the previews — I still try and avoid them for major properties — so I wasn’t sure how bad the accents would be in the opening episode. Personally, I thought the Moon Knight premiere had no issues and Isaac’s English accent fit him surprisingly well. Maybe he’ll be doing different accents later in the show that aren’t as well-executed, but for the first episode, I thought he did a great job.
We get our very first glimpse of Ethan Hawke’s villainous character in the Moon Knight premiere. Again, it isn’t entirely clear what he wants or who he is, but that’s the point. Steven doesn’t know, so the audience doesn’t know either. I wonder if the show will use Steven as an audience stand-in, but that’s mainly because I want to see more of Isaac being funny. A person can hope.
One thing that really stood out to me was how absolutely stunning this episode was. We’ve come to expect high-quality visuals from Marvel properties, even the Disney+ shows, but wow! There’s an action sequence bang in the middle of the Moon Knight premiere that took my breath away. Way to kick my wanderlust into gear.
There are a lot of genre mash-ups in this episode, which was a surprise, but perhaps shouldn’t be considering Marvel’s success with WandaVision. I’ve already mentioned the comedy and action, but there’s a fair bit of horror too. I love non-gory horror, so the events of the Moon Knight premiere were right up my alley. There was one particular horror trope in this episode that’s a personal favourite, so I loved seeing it. Will the show do more with it? I can see it happening, but the show may go in a different direction.
I was surprised by how much music there was in the premiere, but the songs certainly have some significance to the plot. The Egyptian score, composed by Hesham Nazih, kicks in a bit later in the episode, and I expect we’ll hear much more in coming installments.
If you love Egyptology as much as I do, this opening episode doesn’t give you much. But that’s likely to change. I’m very excited for more of the Egyptian gods and goddesses to play a part in this show, as they do in the Moon Knight comics.
Now that I’ve mentioned Egypt, I might as well point out that in the first episode, at least, there’s nary a Middle Eastern person in sight, though we do hear someone. I assume Moon Knight will meet more people from the MENA region, especially Egyptians, as the show continues. Also, I’m still not sure why a story based so heavily on Egyptian mythology has a non-Egyptian actor in the main role. I really hope they explain that in the series.
I thoroughly enjoyed myself watching the Moon Knight premiere. Oscar Isaac was hilarious and engaging. The scenery was stunning. The story was confusing, but in a good way. There were some delightfully terrifying moments. I’m excited for what comes next!
