I figured I’d do both of these under one review, since both shows fall under Phase Four of the Marvel Studios TV sub-label of limited series that focus “. . . on “second tier” characters from the MCU films who had not and were unlikely to star in their own films.” The other live action shows in this Phase Four are WandaVision (2021), Loki (2021), Hawkeye (2021), and She-Hulk: Attorney At Law (2022).
As I’ve mentioned in other Marvel reviews, I’m burnt out on superhero movies, and live action TV shows, and have been for some time, because of that the only live action that manages to grab my attention these days are mostly those that focus on characters that aren’t well known or haven’t been done to death in celluloid. Most of my viewing of some of these shows are through YouTube reactions, so I’ve sort of seen Hawkeye, Moon Knight and She-Hulk, the only ones of this Phase Four that interested me enough to have a looksy, and while Hawkeye and She-Hulk were entertaining enough, neither reached rewatchability status for me, which meant I didn’t go looking for BD-R sets to add to my physical media collection.
I’ve always known there was a hero in the Marvel Universe called Moon Knight, and I even knew what he looked like; he also made a guest appearance in the Ultimate Spider-Man (2012-2016) toon in Season Four in an episode titled, “The Moon Knight Before Christmas,” though I don’t believe I cared much for it. I found this live action version of him, however, to be interesting as all hell, since it delved into the supernatural side of the Marvel Universe, and the show was excellent enough to have me thinking if it ever made it to disc I might add it my collection.
The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, on the other hand, is a show I never once checked out in any YouTube reaction, I don’t know why exactly , since I liked the trailer, and think Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2019) is the best movie Marvel’s done. I’ve always been a fan of Falcon and a team-up with a now de-programmed Bucky Barnes looked like it might be fun!
Another reason why you’re reading this review is Disney has finally gone back to supporting physical media, and to start they decided to transfer a lot of their stuck-in-streaming-hell live action Marvel shows onto blu-ray and UHD. About the only other live action “show” they haven’t yet transferred to disc (yet), I’m impatiently waiting for them to do, is the one-shot, hour long film, Werewolf By Night (2022)! I can only assume it’s on the horizon. When it does, and if I can get a review copy, expect a glorious review on this blog!
There’s been a period of time between this part of the review and the above paragraphs where I’ve finally watched The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, and I ended up liking it a lot! It didn’t go where I thought it would in certain places, which is always refreshing, when dealing with any show, movie, book, etc.
Since I’ve never seen any of the Avengers flicks, outside of the first one, I only know peripherally that this is a kind of “sequel” to the two last movies: Infinity War (2018) and Endgame (2019); I’m not sure how much time there’s been between Endgame and this series, but the world is still trying to reorient itself after the Blip occurred (Thanos managed to wipe out half of life in the universe), after half of Earth’s citizens were Blipped back into existence five years later, thanks to a time travel mission by the Avengers in Endgame that resulted in Iron Man and Black Widow giving their lives, and with Captain America making a time travel choice to go back and live out the rest of his life with his love Peggy Carter, ultimately meeting up with Sam Wilson in the present, as an old man, to pass his shield on to him.
Cut to this mini-series and Sam (Anthony Mackie) appears to still be working for the government from time to time, while ex-Winter Soldier and best friend to Captain America, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), appears to be moving aimlessly through life; he’s been pardoned, but required to undergo weekly therapy with a psychologist, and still suffers horrific nightmares of the murders he committed as the brainwashed Winter Soldier. Later on in the series we’ll even get a flashback to his stay in Wakanda that helped him decompress from his brainwashing, but he still feels broken and unworthy and a lot of the contention between Sam and him has to do with Sam not taking up the mantle of a new Captain America, instead giving Cap’s shield to a museum. Most of Bucky’s worth as a person is tied up with that shield.
We’ll learn during those five years of the Blip, when half of humankind was taken out of existence, the nations began to work together and apparently the world sort of started to become better, but when those people blinked back in society it went back to the “same old, same old,” and there’s a faction of society that liked the world as it was in those five years when less humans populated the planet, and because of that this faction has risen up and dubbed themselves the Flag Smashers; seen as terrorists by some, depending what line you’re standing behind. At this point in the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe), the super soldier serum that created Captain America isn’t supposed to exist anymore, but here we are dealing with the core group of the Flag Smashers, led by a Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman), who got the serum from a lone ex-HYDRA scientist, and injected herself, and her closest compatriots with it.
Complicating matters is the government has just created a new Captain America (sans super soldier serum), an ex-soldier by the name of John Walker (Wyatt Russell) has been tasked with being America’s symbol, but it’s clear from the get-go Walker has some morality issues that are going to spiral him out of control later on in the show, exacerbating them will be the murder of his best friend and partner, Lemar Hoskins, (Clé Bennett), while fighting Karli and her group, resulting in Walker taking out his anger on the closest Flag Smasher he runs down and kills the dude, in public, while a crowd records the incident and it makes the national news.
It’s this Flag Smasher movement that brings Bucky and Sam together, with a reluctant team-up with Walker. To get leads on where Karli may be, Marvel villain Helmut Zemo (Daniel Brühl), (last seen in Captain America: Civil War), is broken out of prison, adding yet another wrinkle in a plot with many interesting wrinkles. Eventually Wakanda comes for his ass and puts him back in a better prison—The Raft.
Personal issues back on the table now, it’s eventually revealed Sam’s hesitancy to take up the mantle as Captain America 2.0 stems from the symbol it represents to white America; this subplot is fleshed out with a black character by the name of Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), who was dosed with super soldier serum and experimented on, no one knew he existed except for Bucky. Between the superhero throwdowns, the mini-series does an excellent job fleshing out the characters of Sam and Bucky and their dilemmas of who they must become in this MCU, with Sam eventually becoming the new Captain America, donning a very cool uniform that’s a blend of Cap and his previous Falcon persona, and delivering a hell of speech in the final episode, after he carries out Kari’s dead body (see photo above).
The series also gives us a famous Marvel location never once seen in live action—Madripoor! Zemo has connections there, and we get a fairly decent look at its massive corrupt society that has Sam commenting later on it could give New York a run for its money. I’m not sure if he was thinking of its underworld or the glitzy night life when he made that comment.
Action scenes and effects are spot on!
The Moon Knight mini-series is a hundred and eighty degrees from The Falcon And The Winter Soldier in every way possible. This show tackles the supernatural side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, specifically “Egyptian supernatural,” and why shouldn’t it? The MCU has already proven characters and creatures of Norse (Thor) and Greek (Hercules) mythologies are real, it’s about time Egyptian lore got its due and proven one way or the other if any of their characters and/or creatures are also as real, and Moon Knight says they are, with a definite, damn right Egyptian Gods walk the MCU earth, in many forms, and have just as significant a pull on the populace.
Now, before I start, I’m going to spoil a lot of shit here, since this particular show has a layer of mystery about it concerning the main character(s), and if you want to go in cold on this one (highly recommended), stop reading, go watch, then come back, if you feel the inclination, and then read. Then, again, if you’re a diehard Moon Knight fan, spoilers probably won’t hinder your enjoyment of this first ever, live action, debut of this Marvel hero. But, you have been warned . . .
Let’s address the grand scale of it first: there’s this Egyptian moon god by the name of Khonshu, whose purpose is to punish those who do evil. And there’s this Egyptian goddess named Ammit, who also punishes evil, but by killing those who have the potential for evil, essentially taking them out before they have the chance to chose to do an evil act. These two gods have “avatars,” humans who work with them, helping their cause, and so doing are bestowed superhuman powers that will allow them to do what their “masters” want them to do. Khonshu is not imprisoned, yet, as the mini-series begins, and is able to move about this material plane in unseen manners, but still affect its reality, like creating a solar eclipse and rewinding the night sky back in time. His avatar is a dude named, Marc Spector (Oscar Isaac), and he’s been blessed with the moniker Moon Knight by Khonshu and given extraordinary powers that comes with donning an equally extraordinary “supersuit,” when he wills it. Ammit’s avatar is a dude by the name of Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke), who wields the ability to determine, by touch, if a person has the potential to do evil, and if he or she does, he wills that person dead on the spot. He has no supersuit, but as a cane that has the power of Ammit to break dimensions and summon Anubis-headed jackal creatures to do his bidding. His personality is that of a cult leader. The twist with him is he was once Khonshu’s avatar, but then discovered Ammit and signed on to her view of “doing good.”
Ammit is imprisoned, if unleashed all of Earth’s inhabitants will be judged, and the world forever changed, but not for the good. Marc and Khonshu must prevent this. In the end, she does get released and we get a crazy battle of these two gods in the sky, while their avatars do battle with one another on Earth, with the help of Marc’s wife, Layla (May Calamawy), who unexpectedly becomes the avatar of Egyptian goddess Taweret, gets her own very cool Egyptian “supersuit,” and becomes known as the Scarlet Scarab in this form.
Now, let’s discuss the personal scale of this character: Marc Spector is mentally ill. He has three personalities, due to childhood abuse suffered at the hands of his mother who beat him; she blamed him for the death of his younger brother, which was a drowning accident in a cave, but a pure accident. The series starts off with us getting to know his Steven Grant personality; he lives in London, sports a British accent, works as a stock clerk in a museum but is intensely interested in Egyptology. He’s quite a timid personality, bred from a character named Steven Grant he saw in a movie as a kid. He hates to sleep at night, because he has terrible dreams, realistic dreams, where he believes he sleep walks. These are no dreams. His original personality Marc Spector takes over, and Marc is a no nonsense, sometimes brutal mercenary. Marc is the main one Khonshue deals with, and until recently Marc could keep Steven separated and unaware, but something happened where now he’s becoming aware of his life being “different” and full of black outs.
There’s one more personality, a Jake Lockley, who’s only seen as a cameo in the final moments of the show, but this personality is a lot more cold-blooded than Marc, and a secret; Marc and Steven have no clue he exists, but Jake cryptically raises his head in a couple of key moments in the show.
Isaac is brilliant at surfing between characters in scenes; come to think of it even Calamawy is fun to watch as she vacillates between herself and Taweret. It was strange, though, seeing Hawke play a villain. Has he ever before? I can’t think of one, but he was also great.
I’m trying to keep some things secret, but eventually Mac ends up in the afterlife, on a plane of limbo, where he and Steven are forced to confront their childhood and it’s here (episode 5) where we get an origin story, a very heartbreaking one too. I’d keep the tissue at the ready when you get to this episode.
The effects are extremely well done, especially the CGI for Khonshu, Ammit and Taweret, and the Moon Knight suit, which looked like a combination of mostly practical.
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment releases The Falcon And The Winter Soldier (2021) and Moon Knight (2022) on separate blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD formats in steelbook form, and are currently available to buy at Amazon together here, or separately here, here, here and here.
Video/Audio/Subtitles: 2160p 2.39:1 Ultra High Definition Widescreen—English Dolby Atmos, 7.1 English Dolby TrueHD, 5.1 Spanish Dolby Digital, 5.1
French Dolby Digital—English SDH, French, Spanish Subs
Extras Included (The Falcon And The Winter Soldier) . . .
- Assembled: The Making Of The Falcon And The Winter Soldier (59:30)
- Cap’s Shield (5:04)
- Gag Reel (2:40)
- 2 Deleted Scenes (2:26)
- 3 Concept Art Cards
Extras Included (Moon Knight) . . .
- Egyptology (6:09)
- Assembled: The Making Of Moon Knight (1:04:53)
- Gag Reel (2:11)
- 2 Deleted Scenes (3:48)
- 3 Concept Art Cards
The most informative extras on these two releases are undoubtedly the hour long Assembled: Making Ofs. Both of them cover a lot, from why the shows exist, to pre-production, filming, interviews with the casts and crew, and the character’s comic book counterparts and how they differ from their live action versions. With Moon Knight I was very impressed to learn how many of the sets were actually practical, especially the pyramid interiors, and the fact that both shows went on locations. It was refreshing to learn they didn’t cut corners creating these two shows; I mean, honestly, each episode, for both, looked like mini-movies.
The rest of the extras aren’t bad either, and who doesn’t love a good ole’ fashioned gag reel? Nice touch with the concept art cards too.
PHYSICAL MEDIA LIVES AT . . . 