Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the third episode of ‘Moon Knight’ – ‘Friendly Type’. Sadly, MK continues to not quite deliver, and-
-And nothing, sadly. First, Oscar Isaacs continues to
imitate Tom Hardy’s characters – he has Steven, he has Marc, and he can even do
Khonshu – though Khonshu got petrified by the finale of this week’s episode.
Second, MK continues to imitate the original Indiana
Jones movie trilogy and the like – we got a European adventurer in the exotic
foreign country with its’ treacherous natives and mysterious undercurrents –
the Dany plotline in the original ASOIAF novels has demonstrated the same
theme, and fairly recently too; Hell, the entire face-off in the arena where MK
on foot fought an opponent on horse is certainly reminiscent of a certain
showdown in one of the ASOIAF novels…
Third, the Rick Riordan factor. In his universe, the modern
Greco-Roman world is USA, (with Canada being Hyperborea, seriously!), while
Egypt is associated with the U.K. instead. Ergo, now, in ‘Moon Knight’, we got
the U.K., (especially England), and Egypt, delivered with barely more maturity
than the novels in the ‘Kane Trilogy’ series did! Yes, Disney owns both
Riordanverse and MCU, but still, this is not the sort of crosspollination that I
have expected in ‘Moon Knight’.
Fourth, I am guessing that this change of focus – from
USA, (and especially NYC), to the rest of the world, (especially U.K. &
Egypt) might have brought the sudden downfall in the reviews and responses
regarding ‘Moon Knight’ – the American public and its’ elite aren’t very fond
of pro-U.K. movies as people might think; remember the ‘King’s Man’ film? It
was done with all of the main American cultural tropes, but it was Great
Britain, rather than the U.S., that was in the focus of the film. The result
was mixed reviews, with some of them being quite scathing too – you do not try
to out-U.S. the U.S. and not pay the price!
That said, the geography in MCU is atrocious; whereas
DCEU went fully imaginary, with its’ world having mostly imaginary cities such
as Metropolis, Gotham, National City, Starling City and so on, MCU tries to
have some real-life places as well, especially NYC…and little more. Their
geography feels a lot more restrained, especially in the 90s and the early
2000s, though now it has improved – some, but not much.
Finally, all of the subtle nods to ‘the greater MCU’.
It is not very impressive, about the level of the ‘Eternals’ film. The latter has
been one of the least successful MCU films up to date – precisely because of
that detachment, and it seems that MK suffers from the same problem, (and the
same goes for the Sony films). Ah well, we have discussed this problem before,
and now it is too late for MCU to change anything in MK…and they probably did
not want to from the start…
Ah well, this is it for now. See you all soon!
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