The Moon's Associates

Last night saw the premiere of Moon Knight, the latest MCU series to premiere on Disney+. It's not a bad first episode, not quite as good as Hawkeye or Loki's first episode but a bit better than Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Writing and direction were decent but most of the credit belongs to Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke, both of whom deliver excellent performances, particularly Isaac.

Isaac has already played one major Marvel character, Apocalypse in the Brian Singer-verse X-Men films, another character involved in Egyptian mythology. Isaac does kind of look Egyptian though he's actually an American who was born in Guatemala to a Guatemalan mother and a Cuban father. Moon Knight's principle alter-ego is the Jewish American Marc Spector, though supposedly his religion is never mentioned on the show, something that has led some to speculate that it's been removed. Apparently it's been enough cause for concern that Isaac has publicly addressed it and confirmed that his version of the character is Jewish. Isaac himself is Christian, another twist in the endlessly convoluted current political neuroses about actors having to play characters who represent them ethnically, religiously, and anatomically. It's a particular issue here because the series' primary director, Mohamad Diab, has criticised DC films for their representation of Egyptians.

Marc Spector has dissociative identity disorder and for 95% of the first episode we actually see Isaac playing Steven Grant, an English identity who lives in London and works at a museum gift shop. I wonder if anyone has complained about someone without DID playing something with DID. In any case, Steven is really sweet and charming with Isaac in the role and you feel for the poor guy who constantly finds himself in strange places and situations with no idea how he got there, particularly because he's such a meek and polite fellow.

I'd seen Isaac in movies before The Force Awakens but he never made an impression on me, nor has he been particularly interesting since then. Moon Knight is the first I've seen him capture some of that regular guy charm that was so effective in Force Awakens.

It's interesting seeing Ethan Hawke in a Marvel project after he famously criticised superhero movies a few years ago. Though, to be fair, he only said that Logan was only great for a comic book movie, not on the same metric as great cinema. I wonder if he's seen anything that's changed his mind or maybe all he saw was a dollar sign. In any case, though he hasn't had much screentime yet, I like the nuance he's bringing to the villain role, making the zealous man seem genuinely compassionate.

When Hawke's character, Arthur, tells Steven he has "chaos" in him, it made me wonder if the writers are consciously aiming for an order versus chaos theme, perhaps a counterargument to Jordan Peterson. The fact that the protagonist's superpower is apparently related to his mental illness, it certainly seems like the show could be taking a pro-Foucault stance. Foucault's History of Madness presents the idea of mental illness being a subjective and political construct and Jordan Peterson has routinely pointed to Derrida and Foucault as being responsible for introducing disastrous ideas into popular ideology. Peterson has also talked extensively about how he feels he's been vilified in recent Captain America comics by H.Y.D.R.A.'s reference to "order and chaos" and "rules for life", these things bearing resemblance to titles of Peterson's books. Although I like some of Peterson's lectures on YouTube, I thought he was imagining things with respect to the order and chaos rhetoric since it had also appeared in Winter Soldier, a movie that came out years before Peterson was a prominent figure. But now I'm starting to wonder if it is intentional.

I think there are a lot of potential problems in portraying a mental illness as a superpower but I did enjoy this first episode. Most of it was action and comedy and Diab does a good job with the action sequences. Despite the cgi being oddly mediocre, I did enjoy the car chase in which Steven steals a cupcake truck.

Recently, the old Netflix Marvel series have been put on Disney+ and I've picked up watching Daredevil where I left off years ago. I'd stopped after the first episode of the second season and over the past couple weeks I've finished watching the second season. I also saw the first season of Jessica Jones and the first half of the second season years ago and I'll probably pick that up again too. I haven't seen any of Iron First, Luke Cage, The Defenders, or Punisher. I'd stopped watching the Netflix series because I was getting kind of tired of superheroes at that point and some of the writing was starting to diminish in quality. I loved the first season of Jessica Jones but was finding the second unbearable. Picking up Daredevil again felt like a breath of fresh air, though, and the discussions in the second season about the differences between Daredevil's and the Punisher's brands of vigilantism were genuinely provoking and intelligent in ways the similar discussion in the recent Batman movie wasn't.

People talked a lot more on those old Netflix Marvel shows because there were more episodes per season with smaller effects budgets. This fostered some good old fashioned good writing, it seems. It also led to some drawbacks and finishing the second season of Daredevil this week I was reminded of why I tired of it. I'd gotten sick of the supporting characters constantly complaining to Matt about the fact that he's Daredevil and there are also many really dumb, contrived plot points, like when Karen decides to break up with Matt when she sees an old man in his apartment and an injured woman in his bed. It seems like a situation in which she ought to have at least been willing to hear him offer an explanation. But I do really like Deborah Ann Woll and I'm surprised to see the action sequences on Daredevil hold up against anything in the MCU to-day, including Shang-Chi. So I guess I will keep watching it.

Twitter Sonnet #1567

Guitars appeared to cook potato strings.
Affronts to falcons fell to pinion nubs.
Assorted stripes were bent to feature rings.
Refraction lights the little candle stubs.
Re-opened cases clutter wooden planes.
But time's a heavy bowl for spoons to fill.
Rejecting flakes, your post some milk regains.
Approach the duck; some sugar iced the bill.
Her thoughts were drawn to globes in outer space.
Acceptance shaved the tops of needle trees.
Revolving slow, the world revealed its face.
Bereft of honey, ships return to seas.
Approaching birds are flying fast in shade.
Declining flocks were fiefs too rashly made.