tv Archives - Graphic Policy

Tag Archives: tv

TV Review: Moon Knight S1E1

Posted on April 5, 2022 by Ricardo Denis

It’s not unfair to say that as good as the Marvel movies and TV series are, they’re all very much governed by a formula that makes them come off as predictable. Well, predictable up to a point. I can’t in good conscience say they’re merely copy and paste versions of the same story, but there are commonalities. The hero, or heroes, find themselves conflicted with the roles they’ve either played before or are going to play, they’re put on a path that confronts them with a villain that will eventually help them recalibrate their identities, and then they accept and embrace their hero status.

Disney+’s Moon Knight goes for different, at least as far as the first episode is concerned. It comes off as a kind of companion to WandaVision in terms of concept, being that it approaches the idea of fragile realities in an intimate manner. Magic, horror, and psychology take precedence over action and political intrigue. Whether it’ll sustain this or not remains to be seen, but it at least results in a very refreshing first episode.

Moon Knight follows Steven Grant (played by Oscar Isaac), a museum shop clerk that suffers from intense and violent dreams, blackouts, and an invading personality that the comics the series is based on have often treated as a kind of supernatural dissociative identity disorder (DID for short). Steven starts to get haunted by a booming and authoritative voice (supplied by the great F. Murray Abraham) that will reveal itself to be the entity that endows him with the power to become Moon Knight.

Ethan Hawke plays Arthur Harrow, a cult leader-like figure that is looking to harness the entity that has taken over Steven Grant. He gets to see the very British Steven become the very violent mercenary Marc Spector. It all leads up to Steven becoming Moon Knight to fight off the villain while trying to untangle his multiple personalities.

Isaac and Hawke on their own justify the watch. Isaac in particular plays a very emotionally convincing man that’s being tormented by his mind and how it disrupts his notions of reality and identity. It makes the Steven Grant character instantly likeable and relatable, not unlike Dan Stevens’ character in Fox’s own comic book series Legion (named after the titular character).

In Legion, the main character sees his powers in heavy contrast to schizophrenia, a condition that in Legion’s case blurs the lines between metahuman abilities and psychiatric symptoms. It remains to be seen how the DID aspects of Moon Knight’s character unspool, but so far it’s presented as key story element that builds the character sensibly.

Hawke complements Isaac by approaching his character as a kind of twisted spiritual guide that disarms people through words first and violence second. It makes for a very menacing display of villainy, one I’m eager to see develop as the show progresses.

The first episode’s director, Mohamed Diab, also shines, especially in how inventive his approach is to the show’s action sequences. Initially, we’re presented with a Steven that epitomizes defenselessness in the face of insurmountable odds. When put in a life-threating situation, though, Steven blacks out and reawakens instantly to see he has solved the situation he was in with a lot of spilt blood as evidence of his handiwork.

The fight sequence itself isn’t shown. Instead, Diab goes clever editing and quick cuts to make these segments play out like fractured instances of violence that demand viewers fill in the blanks the blackouts leave behind. It builds Steven’s character while in the middle of the action, especially in the bits not shown, and it’s something I hope the series explores more.

If the first episode of the series is any indication, Moon Knight has a lot left to impress us with. The performances elevate the material to impressive heights and make the wait for the following episode that much harder. This series might be the one to break with the MCU TV formula and come up with something different, if only just a bit.

Recap: Supergirl S4E22 – “The Quest for Peace”

Posted on May 20, 2019 by SHAY REVOLVER

Supergirl‘s season 4 finale “The Quest for Peace” starts off 24 hours before the death of Red Daughter showing us the aftermath of Kryptoclone Supergirl coming face to face with Kara. The show jumps to the 6-hour mark where we see Lex and Eve experimenting on aliens, the hour mark where Lex meets with the president, and then the pivotal moment where find out what happened to Red Daughter. Once again the first 10 minutes of the show called SUPERGIRL is devoid of Supergirl and focusing on a male sub character, in this case, Lex Luthor.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, after the first commercial break, we finally get to see a whole 2 minutes of Supergirl, figuring out a plan with her big sis Alex before we jump back to Lex, doing yet another experiment on Red Daughter. We then jump to Ben Lockwood who has captured the Eve clone and find out the fates of J’onn J’onzz and Dreamer in the Lex Luthor work camp for aliens. Luckily the duo runs into some of the aliens who Dreamer helped save in the last episode and they are more than willing to give them a diversion. Kara and Alex meet up with Lena and Brainiac and decide to release all the info that she and Lena collected on their overseas jaunt. While they think of what to do next, Lena is summoned to the Oval Office to meet big bro and mom for a creepy family reunion.

Lex in true supervillain form decides to monologue his evil and capitalistic plan that as his mom points out, sounds very Hitleresque. After Eve realizes that he plans to use his alien powered satellite to destroy Argo and kill Superman, she takes a stand and asks for an aside, only to discover exactly where she stands with Lex. Back at the facility Dreamer and J’onn use a fight to figure out how to take the facilities power killer down, so she can project and give her location and using breath on the window she writes the location of the facility and the team heads out to rescue them. While Lex gloating about how much smarter than everyone else that he is, ara’s story goes live and is instantly sent to everyone. When the team arrives at the island of Dr. Luthor, Brainiac discovers that Lex plans to destroy Argo with his new weapon and takes off to hack the system leaving everyone else to deal with Lockwood and his lackeys who literally come out of the woodwork (woods) to call out Supergirl because haters are gonna hate even if they don’t have a reason.

Jimmy, Alex, and Supergirl get to work taking down the Lockwood Lackies while Brainiac tries to figure out a way to take down Lex’s Argo killer. Lex takes off to see why his alien powered kill machine isn’t working leaving Eve to guard Lena and Mommy Dearest. Lena being the badass that she is easily disarmed Eve and Lex arrives raining down green fire on Supergirl, Alex and Jimmy who in the middle of a side effect fueled nose bleed.

Lex is surprised to see Supergirl still alive and the two of them have at it and when Lex thinks he has the upper hand because of his green Kryptopowered gauntlets but, thanks to Lena, Supergirl has a suit and some slick acrobatics to protect her. Alex and Jimmy keep fighting to take down alien powred Lockwood their tag team efforts leave him down for the count. J’onn and Dreamer take out the satellites power source with the return of Brainiac who finally telling Dreamer her loves her and they manage to rescue all of the aliens, including Red Daughter who takes a mega blast of Kryptonite to save OG Supergirl and her death allows her to suck up some of Red Daughters superpowered chi and defeat Lex who chooses to die rather than be saved by a Kryptonian. But, he doesn’t die, he just falls to earth, back into his lab where Lena cures him of his superpowers and Lena realizing that the world will never be safe with Lex around, decides to shoot him and with Lex’s dying breath he tells him that Kara is really Supergirl and makes it appear that everyone she loves doesn’t love her back.

To wrap up the episode, the president is impeached, Dreamer and Kara are back to work at Catco with a now one-eyed Jimmy. The Alien Amnesty act is reinstated and Supergirl gets thanked for her service which brings a smile to her face. We also get the thing we had been rooting for since Jimmy’s sister showed up, her and Alex decide to give it a go and when Alex kisses her while she’s explaining how she feels and we all cheered. Lena shows up to game night with the secret on her conscience and Kara and Alex decide to wait yet another day before telling her the truth. Lockwoods son becomes a crusader for alien coexistence and Dreamer covers the story while Supergirl gives a knowing smile from the sky. In an effort to tie up all the loose ends we find out that Leviathan was pulling the strings and he’s the reason Eve was working for Lex but, now she can’t escape them.

Overall, the season finale was surprisingly good even if it was only 50% Supergirl featuring. Considering the abysmal amount of screen time that the title character got this season it was a start to heading in the right direction. The writing was pretty good, the directing was flawless, the cinematography relayed the tone of every scene perfectly and the episode was entertaining to watch. They managed to fit a lot into the hour, wrapped every major storyline up and give us something to look forward to in season five. I hope that this return to being mostly Supergirl focused writing I saw in this episode continues in Season 5 because, while I love the other characters, I still think it should be about them in relation to her and not the other way around.

I give this episode a solid 8.9

Recap: Supergirl S3E16 “Of Two Minds”

Posted on May 1, 2018 by SHAY REVOLVER

There’s a lot to unpack in Supergirl‘s “Of Two Minds” and even more questions about the future that the Legion is trying to prevent. Pestilence is on the loose and Imra and the rest of the legion is out to kill her with their weaponized blood before she becomes Blight. Lena is still trying to find a cure for Reign using pain to induce her alien state so she can study her. A dead bird leads way to five sick city council members and there’s a mysterious mark appearing on those affected.

While the team is dispatched to the nearest outbreak site, Winn uses humor to deflect (and hit on an unimpressed doctor) and J’onn J’onzz says some foreshadowing famous last words about “not causing a panic”, which in formulatic terms means, a panic is about to occur. Imra of course, is the cause of the panic thanks to her putting up a forcefield around the building in an bid to show Supergirl just how much she doesn’t know about anything. Lena discovers new intel about Reign and the parallel universe Sam goes to when she’s not Reign.

Mon’El and Alex reach out to Imra & Supergirl ,respectively to get them to compromise. There’s a hint of everyone knowing that this rivalry is jealousy based , Imra was at the site of the their discovery of a possible Pestilence who turns up dead. Supergirl expresses her displeasure with Imra going rogue and leaving to kill the suspect without telling anyone but, their talk is cut shot by Winn coming down with the disease.

While Winn recovers Imra and Supergirl have a passionate talk about murdering WorldKillers rather than saving the human part of them and Imra storms off refusing to give up her killing objective. Sam and Reign have it out verbally in parallel plane with Reign trying to get Sam to surrender to her dark side. J’onn uses his troubles of dealing with a parent with Alzheimer’s to correlate with Kara’s problem with Irma’s quest. Mon’El calls Imra on her mission statement based on her emotions and begins to question the whole League and mission with Braniac.

Alex falls ill from the precursor to Blight as Winn’s condition worsens, the DNA based vaccine from the future doesn’t work on what they have because, it’s not the full disease. Winn ruminates on his relationship with his mom and having great friends , like Jimmy who dropped everything to be by his side, seems to make peace with his seemingly inevitable end. Sam goes toe to toe with Reign and it isn’t pretty, Reign plays upon her worse maternal fears causing Sam to ask for to beg for death to save her. When Pestilence is discovered the team sets out to stop her and save her human half, while Braniac alerts Imra who is ready to kill her.

Pestilence breaks in to a board room and confronts the insurance company that has been ruining the quality of patient care , using her godlike capabilities to kill people she finds unworthy. Imra decides to attempt to kill Pestilence with a sneak attack while Supergirl is trying to talk sense into her. Her interference causes Pestilence to scratch Supergirl who falls ill which sucks for the team because it gives Julia time to show up and take her away. On the upside as Pestilence fled with Purity ,she drops her needle giving them her pure DNA which is enough to secure and create a cure. Winn and Alex wake up and Supergirl and Imra finally have an open, honest heart to heart that clears to air. Imra finally seems more real than competitive, giving her a bit more of a multidimensional portrayal than the writers have given her. The other two Worldkillers, Purity and Pestilence, sense Reign’s presence and descend upon L-Corp , which sends the team there to help Lena and her secret gets out , unfortunately so does Reign.

This episode was touching, there wasn’t a hint of male toxicity in the whole episode, there was a lot of emotion and tears from the male characters showing us something that we rarely see in modern media. There’s also something nice about Sam wanting to call in her girl crew to fix her in stark contrast to what seemed like the girl fight bound Imra and Supergirl. While his wasn’t one of the best episodes of the series, it was one of the most human, emotions were toyed with and the writing was less pop culture feminism and more real life applications of feminism. It seems like the writers are veering away from the show being all about Supergirl, like Arrow or The Flash, and more about the team as a whole. This veer isn’t a bad thing, it’s just that the story is more defined and very paint by numbers heartstring storylines with real world themes.

Overall Rating: 7.9