Moon Jones

[setsuled]

Last night's Moon Knight had a good, old fashioned adventure serial vibe. Writers Beau DeMayo, Peter Cameron, and Sabir Pirzada took the show into a slightly different tone but director Mohamed Diab returned to give us quality action sequences again as he did in the first episode. Though again with strangely unfinished looking effects.



I've seen other critics compare this episode to Indiana Jones and I can certainly see it. Layla (May Calamawy) is kind of a more battle-ready version of Marian Ravenwood. Also like Raiders of the Lost Ark, we're jumping into the story between her and the male lead in the middle, rather than starting with their first meeting. Considering how much Raya and the Last Dragon seemed influenced by Indiana Jones, I wonder if Disney is doing this to subliminally seed promotion for Indiana Jones 5



The Marc/Steven (Oscar Isaac) relationship feels more straightforward, more conducive to a pulp story. In the previous episode, Steven mysteriously had aspects of Layla's personality, as though he may have been constructed from Marc's impressions of her. Now he simply seems to be an entirely different person with a complete and plot-useful expertise in ancient Egypt rather than an amateur fondness. The previous episode seemed to imply Layla had equivocal expertise to Steven but that no longer seems to be the case.



I really like the scene where Khonshu (F. Murray Abraham/Karim El Hakim) changes the night's sky though it seems like they could've found a way to calculate the stars' positions. Or maybe Khonshu could've simply conjured a picture of the night sky. But it was a cool effect.

Moon Knight is available on Disney+.

Comments

[classysleuth]

I loved how the gods do appear to have godly powers. Both the times Khonshu effected the sky was pretty awesome, even if they probably could have just googled the information they were looking for. Who knows getting trapped in the stone may have been part of his masterplan as I'm not entirely sure stopping the current bad guys is his primary objective.

Steven contributing to the plot was so nice after how he'd nearly gotten them all killed how many times at this point. I feel things would have worked better if Layla hadn't been with him during the two deciphering scenes and Layla should have been the one to point out the night sky would have been different on that night as opposed to Steven. Like they could have been on the phone or something I don't know.

Her deferring to Steven on a subject that they spent the beginning of the episode establishing she's an expert at didn't make much sense.

Other than that I enjoyed the episode quite a bit and I'm curious with how things are going to be playing out next week.

[yourlibrarian]

Now he simply seems to be an entirely different person with a complete and plot-useful expertise in ancient Egypt rather than an amateur fondness. The previous episode seemed to imply Layla had equivocal expertise to Steven but that no longer seems to be the case.

Yes, I found this puzzling too. I mean, I guess Steven could be much more of an expert but simply unable to get any kind of stable work because of his condition.

And yes, I guess he did the whole night sky switch to save time (because it's certainly possible but perhaps not with a tablet's computing power?) Plus, for plot reasons, I imagine it's important to leave Marc, Steven and Layla on their own.