TV Show Review: Moon Knight

More information can be found at https://www.disneyplus.com/series/moon-knight/4S3oOF1knocS and https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10234724/

Score: 7.3/10

The superhero genre at this point has been done to death. I’m bored of it and I want something new…ish. Moon Knight fills that need and offers a darker twist on the superhero genre somewhat reminiscent of Netflix’s Daredevil series. I don’t mean that it’s the same kind of story as Daredevil, only that it’s a similarly refreshing change of pace.

Moon Knight is a six episode television series that you can watch on Disney+. It’s part a wider push by Marvel and Disney to put out a bunch of superhero content on Disney+. Accordingly, it also takes place with the Marvel cinematic universe.

Steven Grant is an ordinary guy working in a gift shop in a museum in London. Steven has sleep problems and often has gaps in his memory and sleepwalking problems. Thing start getting weird when the gaps in memories start getting worse and he starts waking up in places he doesn’t remember going to. Eventually, Steven must come to terms that he is not alone in his body and that he is deeply connected to an ancient Egyptian god.

The concept of playing around with memories and the perception of your audience has been done plenty in motion pictures. It’s the perfect medium for playing with audiences. This genre trope is often referred to as the unreliable narrator where what is shown to the audience is not what really happens. Some examples of this narrative device are Memento and The Usual Suspects.

For the first few episodes of this series, we get invited into this mystery where what the protagonist sees is not necessarily what is actually going on. It’s a fun mystery to get thrown into and I was interested to see how things were going to play out.

It was a bit frenetic though and while I followed along with the story pretty well, I know people who had trouble keeping up. It’s a fast paced show that throws a lot at the audience. There are a lot of jarring cuts from scene to scene and a lot of things are not explicitly explained, but implied. I think part of it is deliberately to disorient you as mental health and skewed perceptions are a big themes in this show. Unfortunately, for people who are not invested, it may be hard to follow. I really loved the style of this story.

The protagonist is played by Oscar Isaac and he is phenomenal. Not to go into the plot too much, Isaac must play multiple characters and must constantly switch off between them. Additionally, there’s a depth of emotion in each character that must also be portrayed. It’s just an amazing performance and he definitely deserves an Emmy or something.

Overall, this was a fun change of pace from your standard Marvel show/movie. I hope each show Marvel does in the future continues the trend of trying something new, whether it be in terms of style, pacing or target audience. Doing the same thing over and over again gets old.

TV Show Review: The Book of Boba Fett

Details: More information can be found at https://disneyplusoriginals.disney.com/show/the-book-of-boba-fett and https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13668894/

Score: 6.9/10

I went into this series with high expectations. I loved The Mandalorian and was hoping they’d do with Boba Fett what they did with the Mandalorian. I wanted a high quality, original story. Sadly, this wasn’t the same. The Book of Boba Fett is a somewhat boring series, where instead of being original, turns its second half into a sort of a third season of The Mandalorian.

The Book of Boba Fett takes place shortly after the end of The Mandalorian. Boba Fett was an intergalactic bounty hunter in the Star Wars universe, but now seeks to fill the void left by Jabba the Hutt and become a crime lord on the planet Tatooine. He’ll meet some resistance though since other crime organizations don’t really like him.

The first few episodes of this series go at a slow pace. We get some back story on Boba Fett about what happened after his apparent death in Return of the Jedi. We also watch him walk around a lot to meet other crime people. It’s just not well done and kind of stalls.

Then the second half we meet Mando again and it fully turns into a third season of The Mandalorian. We check up on Grogu and see how he’s doing. I loved this stuff since I loved The Mandalorian, but it was still disappointing in some respects.

I came into this show hoping they’d do for Boba Fett what they did for Star Wars in The Clone Wars animated series, and that is to fill in gaps left by George Lucas. Boba Fett was portrayed as one of the baddest persons in the galaxy, and in this series, he’s a good guy with a code of honor. They do a decent job explaining why that is the case, but it’s not what I wanted to see as a fan. I wanted to see this badass outlaw run around and kick but among the scummiest alien in Star Wars. Instead, I watch Boba Fett walk around the desert for a couple of hours with a new sense of morality. It was just too jarring and not what I wanted to see.

I also wanted to see Boba Fett stand as a character on his own two feet. Instead, we again rely on The Mandalorian as a crutch. If they were going to rely on The Mandalorian this much, then they should’ve just given Boba Fett a few episodes in what should’ve been a third season of The Mandalorian. Boba Fett seemingly did not deserve his own show.

Overall, it’s an okay show, but not exactly what I wanted as a Star Wars fan. Admittedly, I’ve been spoiled by The Mandalorian. The Mandalorian gave me exactly what I wanted as a Star Wars fan and I expected future shows made by Dave Filoni (the current creative head of Star Wars) to do exactly that. Instead, I get to see the chinks in Dave’s armor. The Book of Boba Fett is proof that no matter how good a series is, the showrunners are still human and capable of making mistakes. You’d think I’d figured that out after how Game of Thrones ended.

TV Show Review: Arcane

Details: More information can be found at https://www.netflix.com/title/81435684 and https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11126994/

Score: 7/10

Arcane is like that one guy you know who tries too hard to be cool, but ends up making everyone cringe. He’s an okay guy, he just doesn’t know what subtlety or finesse is, or how to relax a little. Arcane tries so hard to be this super cool animated show with action and music montages, and it is mostly entertaining. Unfortunately, it also made me cringe a lot in how corny and predictable a lot of the ideas were.

Arcane takes place in a fictional world and fictional city of Piltover. Here, the city is divided into two parts, the affluent part and the slums. With the development of a new technology that will seemingly change the world, the two parts of this city seem poised to collide. We follow this story through various characters in this city. The story primarily focuses on two orphans, Powder and Vi. We watch the two grow up throughout the show and have to deal with all the things that this city throws at them.

The story is all right. There are some high moments, but it’s mostly satisfactory. There’s some politics, drama, action, etc. As someone whose watched a lot of television, it’s all fairly predictable and progresses in a foreseeable way.

I think the most important thing about this series is the style. This show tries very hard to be stylish and that it is an animated show really helps that along. The visual style in general is kind of painterly mixed with 3D models I think. It’s a unique look that seemingly blends a bit of 2D and 3D. It works and looks pretty cool.

Where the style goes a bit wonky is at points where the story reaches emotional high points. Every time we reach one of these climaxes, the editing goes crazy, we get some contemporary musical track playing loudly, sounds get emphasized or drowned out, the animation changes and extreme use of color is used, we get extreme close ups of people grunting, and a whole lot of other things. And while I get that the creators of this show are doing this to emphasize the heightened nature of the moment, it’s kind of a bit too much and a little too on the nose.

For instance, any time there’s a fight scene, you can usually expect things to start speeding up or slowing down, kind of like all the fight scenes were directed by Zac Snyder. Each fight scene is played to its own single sung by some artist teenagers probably know the name of. Then there was this love scene later on where instead of focusing on the characters, we go into a music video played to another song and we get imagery of stars and stuff.

The problem with all these scenes is that they sap those scenes of any relevance of the story, break the fourth wall and tell the viewer that the story doesn’t really matter right now, sit back and watch this music video with some cool images. And there’s so many of these scenes that it just feels like this show often wants us to stare at pretty pictures rather than care about a meaningful plot. It’s distracting and jarring.

A common phrase in movie making is that you show, don’t tell. It means to convey a story through a meaningfully shot order of scenes rather than in one scene where a character just explains the whole plot to the viewer. Film is a visual medium and should be used accordingly. In Arcane, I feel like the saying should be to not just show, but convey. Arcane feels like a show where they let the artists animating this show run the thing and that resulted in an over stylized show loaded with montages and music videos. They’re trying real hard to be cool, but just ended up feeling really cringey.

Overall, Arcane is entertaining. I watch this show and I think about what it’s trying to achieve and that is a hyper stylized animation. Unfortunately, style without substance just ends up meaningless and the plot here lacks substance. There was one scene between Powder and Vi that actually kept me engaged, but that scene stands alone among all the other stylized montages and music videos that fill this show.

I remember watching a behind the scenes of the Pixard movie Coco where it was originally intended to be a full on musical, but they scaled back the musical aspects because it took away from the impact of the story. I wish this show scaled back a lot of the stylizations because I definitely think it takes away from a story that could’ve been more emotionally impactful.

TV Show Review: Hawkeye

Details: More information can be found at https://disneyplusoriginals.disney.com/show/hawkeye and https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10160804/

Score: 6.2/10

Hawkeye is probably the weakest Disney+ show that takes place in the Marvel cinematic universe that they’ve released so far. It just lacks agency. It feels like the characters just go around doing random things and none of their motivations make a lot of sense or feel urgent. It’s not believable. Instead, the best thing this show does is introduce new and old characters as a preview for future shows that will likely arrive on Disney+.

Spoilers ahead.

The story takes place some time after Avengers: Endgame. Clint Barton, the hero otherwise known as Hawkeye, is in New York, spending time with his family. Enter Kate Bishop, a college student and aspiring superhero who has idolized Hawkeye since she was a little girl. During an illegal auction, Kate finds the costume of Ronin, a vigilante who went on a killing spree in the criminal underworld a few years back, puts on the costume and then gets spotted by some members of organized crime. Now, the criminal underworld mistakenly thinks Kate was Ronin and hunts her. Hawkeye must now team up with Kate and find some way to resolve this without getting Kate killed.

The show is just very random. One minute we’re at a criminal auction. We then join a larping (Live Action Role Playing) festival. We then hop over to a gang of track suit wearing thugs. It’s just so random, so unexplained that it breaks that wall of believability and ruined the experience for me as viewer.

Part of it is the characters. There are so many and the tone of the show jumps around from serious to funny and it doesn’t do a great job of doing this believably. It’s just a mess of a show and all these varied characters smashed together just felt unnecessary and rushed, especially for a show that’s only six episodes.

Another part of this show that disappointed me is that despite this show being called Hawkeye, we learn very little about Hawkeye. Hawkeye has a history of being poorly portrayed in the Marvel cinematic universe. He has very little screen time compared to the other characters and he’s given relatively few lines. He’s just a poorly told character with little to no context or meaningful character development. I mean, they tried, but he just ended up looking lame no matter what they did. In fact, I read somewhere that Hawkeye was supposed to die in Avengers: Endgame, but Scarlett Johansson felt like retiring so took that spot and left the least popular Avenger alive for more poorly told stories.

So when I heard that they were making Hawkeye miniseries, I hoped that they would give him more context. Give him some history or maybe an origin story. Hell, I would’ve taken a five minute flash back to his early days or a training montage. I would’ve even taken five minutes of talky-talky exposition. Instead, they offer nothing of his history. They show nothing of this character other than what fans already knew, and that was already shallow and disappointing. In fact, Hawkeye goes through very little character development here despite all his screen time. Kate goes through more character development, yet that even felt rushed and shallow.

Instead of being a decent standalone show, this miniseries serves as simply a preview of what’s in store for the future of Marvel. Here’s a few bullet points.

• The biggest surprise was the introduction of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin character, a fan favorite from the Daredevil series. However, the way they portrayed him here was very odd. They seemingly gave him superpowers. Along with Charlie Cox reprising his role as Matt Murdock in the recent Spider-Man movie, it seems pretty clear that a Daredevil show/movie will be coming sometime in the future.
• In the comic books, Echo was a deaf martial artist with the ability to visually analyze and duplicate any fighting skills she sees. Here, she’s just a talented deaf martial artist… who is also missing a leg. I don’t know why Disney decided to tack on another disability, but it feels a bit cheap. Echo has her own show coming out next year I think on Disney+.
• Kate Bishop is arguably the main character in this show, even more than Clint. In the comics, Clint gives Kate permission to also call herself Hawkeye and Kate joins the Young Avengers, a group of young superheroes who aspire to be like the Avengers. With the introduction of Kate, it seems all but assured that we will get a Young Avengers movie/show. Almost all the members of the Young Avengers have been introduced in some form in prior Marvel shows/movies.
• Yelena was introduced as the Black Widow’s sister back in the Black Widow movie. Based on various scenes from that movie, the Falcon and Winter Soldier show and from this Hawkeye series, it seems probable that a Thunderbolts series is coming soon with Yelena as part of the cast. The Thunderbolts is a comic book series about a group of criminals going on missions for the government. It’s conceptually almost identical to the Suicide Squad movies from DC Comics.

And those are the things hinted at in this series, which would’ve been exciting if not for the lack of oomph that Hawkeye has.

Overall, this is not a terrible show, it just isn’t as good as any of the other recent Marvel shows like WandaVision, Loki or Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It’s just a poorly told story with too random characters introduced for no reason other than to advertise future shows/movies. I wish this show spent more time focusing on Hawkeye. Specifically, I wanted history, context and emotion. Instead, Hawkeye is a show that tries very hard to be funny most of the time, but just ends up falling flat.

TV Show Review: Rick and Morty Season Five

Details: More information can be found at https://www.adultswim.com/videos/rick-and-morty

Score: 7/10

Rick and Morty season five is just more of the same. If you’ve liked this series before, you’ll like it this season.

For those who don’t know, Rick and Morty is animated comedy whose plot often focuses on science fiction themed subject matter. The humor is often dark, breaks the fourth wall and contains tons of toilet humor.

The main big differences between this season and past seasons is that Morty has far more character development this season than in prior seasons. Many of the episodes, while comedic and hilarious in premise, actually take a more serious, dramatic tone than in past seasons. Some are downright depressing.

Overall, this is still mostly a comedy with some emotional stuff mixed in. It’s nothing extraordinary or groundbreaking, just more of the same.