Moon Knight So Far: What’s Up With Marvel’s Inconsistency?

Moon Knight shines a light on the imbalance between creativity and control in the Marvel shows.

I recently watched the third episode of Moon Knight, which may seem odd to write about considering I neglected to cover the second one. The reason I chose to not analyze Moon Knight’s second episode was because I was simply dumbfounded on how little I enjoyed it. With such a promising start I wanted nothing more but for the series to continue to intrigue me with its interesting mystery, creative cinematography, and clever use of an unreliable narrator. Instead, I found the second episode to be strenuous to watch with myself genuinely cringing at a painful amount of dialogue. The worst part is, I found this disappointment inevitable. I wasn’t going into the second episode expecting greatness, but rather waiting with bated breath for something to go wrong, and it certainly did.

While Marvel is more than capable at making interesting action scenes, a consistent complaint with their projects have been their lack luster dialogue. Everyone is aware of the cringe inducing one liners that homogenizes every hero into the same struggling comedian template, but the episode as a whole felt very poorly written. What I found to be awkward pacing made for a pretty slow episode, and although slow does not inherently mean bad, it does mean the dialogue has to carry a lot of the entertaining weight. However, Moon Knight’s dialogue has essentially three categories: asking questions, exposition, and Mr. Knight. The majority of the episode is comprised of the “asking questions” phase, which for a mystery as interesting as this show’s, had potential to be engaging. However, it ended up being a very one sided conversation spread out for far too long between Steven and Marc Spector’s wife, Layla. The conversation consists of Layla continually asking Steven why he’s “playing this role,” essentially confused as to why Steven is acting as Steven instead of Marc. At this point, Steven is aware of Marc’s presence, but his character idiotically neglects to inform Layla on what’s happening. Meaning, for a good portion of the episode I sat screaming at the screen, begging Steven to just give Layla the answers. It wasn’t an engaging untangling of threads, but a false mystery developing at a snails pace that left me feeling impatient and bored. Eventually Steven meets with Arthur Harrow, the cult leader antagonist of the show, where he essentially explains his mission. While it was interesting to learn more about this mysterious figure, it was delivered in a boring manner. Steven did not have to overcome a challenge to get this information, there was no conflict until the very end of the conversation, there was nothing for the audience to engage with besides the expository dialogue, which is not the correct way to execute exposition. Then, Steven finally puts on the stylish Mr. Knight costume, where his dialogue was so quippy, so Saturday-morning-cartoon that I was shocked my ears didn’t bleed and my ten old next door neighbor didn’t burst out laughing. This episode essentially gave me no reason to return as I simply didn’t enjoy it, but alas, I found myself curled up on my couch Wednesday night with absolutely nothing better to do starting the next episode, and I’m honestly a bit glad that I did.

Where the second episode was a dull execution of what should have been a mind bending mystery, the third episode delves straight into the action and never lets up, which makes for a rushed, albeit entertaining, third installment. A return to some creative cinematography, more developed philosophical discussions, a greater look at Marc Spector, and the introduction of an invisible third personality, “The Friendly Type” does everything it can to bring this story back up to gear with only three episodes remaining, and generally succeeds. It was quick, violent, and void of Marvel’s signature intrusive dialogue for the most part, which makes me wonder, why is Marvel so inconsistent? While not being better than the first episode, I found it far more watchable than the second, and I felt this way with the other Marvel shows I watched. There seems to be a pattern to these series, with the pilot being the best episode, the crisis point episode (6-8) being the second best, the middle being the worst, and the finale ultimately disappointing a majority of fans. I found there to be two main reasons as to why this seems to be the case, those being that Marvel is yet to find a satisfying means of delivering exposition to the viewer and that the worst episodes are those that stick to the Marvel formula.

Let’s use Wandavision as an example. The fourth episode was hailed as the worst due to its focus on everyone outside of the bubble, it was essentially an episode meant for exposition, and because there was no interesting way this information was packaged to the audience, it fell flat. The finale felt dull because of its reliance on the “big bad villain” ending where there are few repercussions for the protagonist (there’s already another Vision alive, the village did nothing to Wanda, etc.) that have become a staple in Marvel projects. Overall, it’s a reliance on the MCU formula that makes their projects worse. Winter Soldier is a spy thriller, Homecoming is a coming of age film, and the pilot of Moon Knight was more inventive than the past five Marvel projects combined. What I am trying to say is that the best MCU projects are those that are the least Marvel-y. Those that break the mold and are unafraid to tell a story with a unique genre, creative vision, or tone are those that intrigue audiences, and the reason Marvel’s shows are so inconsistent, and that their films are so consistently claimed as being repetitive, is due to the imbalance of creative freedom and rigid following of the Marvel formula. The first episode of Moon Knight, as stated previously, was unlike anything I’ve seen from Marvel except for a couple of scenes, especially when talking about the visuals. Meanwhile, the second episode entertained itself in typical Marvel exposition issues and “funny” dialogue which made it borderline unwatchable for me. Then, the third episode is back to a more violent depiction of the anti-hero that, while closer to fitting into the MCU mold than not, was certainly more out there in comparison to other projects.

Essentially, I am begging, begging, Marvel to allow more creative control to the creatives they sign on to control their projects. I don’t want quips, generic filmmaking, and a familiar storyline. I want change in tone, genre and innovative visuals. In other words, I want the pilot of Moon Knight to be a staple for future MCU projects, not the second episode.