The Reel Rejects - REJECT RECAP: Moon Knight Ep 1 REVIEW & Credits Discussion - PODCAST

Episode Date: April 3, 2022

Greg & John are joined by our resident comics expert, Coy Jandreau, to discuss the premiere of Marvel's new Disney+ Moon Knight series featuring Oscar Isaac, Ethan Hawke, and more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-reel-rejects/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance, fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit Progressive.com to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations. What's going on, people? This is Greg Galba with The Real Rejects, joined by my best friend, John Humphrey. John, say hello.

Hi, guys! This is John. All right, you guys might have seen us on YouTube before. The best YouTube channel ever. The only YouTube channel worth watching. We're pretty humble, and we don't say that about ourselves. No. But it seems like everyone else wants to keep saying that, so...

Okay, guys. I guess we'll take the title... Whatever you say. They're grudgingly. But, all right. Anyway, what we normally do is we do reaction reviews, And so right now, we are waiting for our friend, Coy Jondro, comic book expert, but no smarter than John Humphrey, that's for sure.

No, no. Step off, Coy. If anyone knows Moon Night, it's going to be John. He bought a comic. He knows how to do it. Right, John? I can read. He can read.

And with that reading comes expertise knowledge. So, with that, we are waiting for Coy, and when he shows up, we're going to do a reaction to Morbius, the first episode. Did I say Morbius? You said Morbius. Moon Night. Moon Night. You just can't wait for Morbius.

I'm just waiting for Moon Night. Morbius. That's my own joke. We're watching, yeah, Moon Night. The first episode. And I can't be the first one who's done that. No, not at all. They're coming out right at the same time.

You know, both their M.O. names. Yeah. You know, they're both dark and horror-tinged. There's a lot of potential crossover. I can't wait for Geroletto and Morpheus. Yes, right. Take the blood pill or the not. blood bill. So, yeah, we're going to watch

Mood Night, do a reaction to it, which you can catch up on the YouTube's, and then we usually do reviews afterwards. You might hear my cat in the background. Freaking out. He's really excited for more reviews. If this goes well, he'll have his own show on this network. Just keep on listening, enjoy the review, and yeah, keep an ear out for more to come. All right, guys. Well, best way to enjoy it is watch the episode first and come back and hear our thoughts. Thank you, peeps. did we make an intro yet

let's make an intro now roll that intro ban on necessarily loud rock and roll music for a movie talk special Commentary online is cool Cool explosion Yeah brother

Fire Enjoy Beautiful Beautiful beautiful work Hell yeah Wow Wow. Step out of the way, Hawkeye

Episode 1. We got a new favorite. God damn. That was insane. I'm so glad they saved. I never knew Oscar Ix's voice. I'm so glad they saved Mark from all of them marketing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it felt exciting to hear.

just Oscar Isaac. Yeah. He's so good at that British accent. He's so good. It dawned on me in the middle of like, I don't see an accent at all. Like, it's that thing where you just think that's his voice. You would assume that if this is the first time you're seeing Oscar Isaac, I would go, oh, the American accents, the voice he's putting on.

Yeah. And the duality between that like nasally, it sounds, you know, insecure versus his commanding Isaac voice as well as the accent. Yeah. You know, it's an Easter extra, of course. I mean, just the Nazis for X. Oh, my God, like three. Oh, my God, ex Machinard.

Right here. It did leave me with a question, though. Did he ask that girl out with an American accent? And then she was like... And then she was just like, whatever, you're British now. He's got jokes. I assume everyone thinks he's, you know... F. Murray, Abraham.

Nice. So it was not Sean Connery from beyond. Nope, no. I tried to bring him back to us. I'm a drug at all. Yeah, let's get one. as AI voices. That always goes on. That is a beautiful closing credits.

What a stunning show visually. Like, they're really great at expressive camera work. Express yourself. Express yourself. Don't hurt anyone. I like knew I'd like the show and I didn't know how hard it would go.

Like, you know, everyone's been concerned about Disney to the point where I was like starting to believe them and that was really violent. Oh, I signed my age restriction you know, pin and everything. Yeah. business now. Here it is. I mean, that's Moon Night. Like, they accomplish the really pondersome tone when he's piecing together, like, the existential dread.

But they also, the cinematography reads like the comics, which have this really, I mean, have you read the Greg Smallwood illustrated stuff yet? Is that the six-issue one? Yeah. No, I'm going to get the... So the visuals there remind me so much. Yeah. The Smallwood visuals there. You'll see.

The Von, it wasn't Von Noom on the... That's Easter egg? Cupcake truck. It was a lack of Easter egg because everybody's like, it's like, it's Vaughn Doom! I don't think it's said Von Doom on the cupcakes.

I don't know who actually believed that. A lot of people. But you guys are crazy. This is actually the most separated from the MCU out of the mall. That's why I don't, like, I didn't notice a lot of Easter eggs, personally.

I didn't feel, and I'm glad because the Eternals scenes where they were like shoehorning in, Marvel felt off to the tone of the film, or is this actually... Did it all this thing at the very honest? Is that an opinion of non-praise about the Eternals?

There is the occasional. There is the occasional flaw in a very good film. Boy, what are you doing? The occasional flaw. Occasion. You like everything. That's not true. Every single.

Oh, no. Coming from you that. Bring it back. Bringing it back. And I cut that out of the actual video. Now it's on the wreck. Now you know it's a cut out of this movie. Throwback to a cut out of this movie.

and now it's real let's talk about it let's talk about it so let's do this differently okay go our new comic book aficionado yes the one everybody wants to hear from no i i love this i thought this was really really terrific and yeah i mean you know from my extensive knowledge now of the comics i mean this does feel very spiritually sound i mean yeah stephen has been a bit recontextualized but i like the choice to do that i think he's a really effective yeah i mean he's not the billionaire guy you know the philanthropist playboy or whatever I like the choice to really bring us into his world as a character who is a bit more nebishy and down on his luck and I love the disorientation they throw you for with all these things that are happening in an episode like this they have to be economical with that time and I thought the way that they managed to hop to so many different things utilizing that lapse in consciousness was really smart all the way through their camera work was so complimentary and so expressive to the point where like Like, all of these are incredibly finely crafted, but this was a show, this episode alone was an episode where I was like, no shot is wasted here. Everything feels like it has a lot of thought put into it.

Oscar Isaac, it's hard to say enough things about him. And even though we've only had a few glimpses at Arthur Harrow, Ethan Hawk, I love his presence as well. And I love that even though he does have a sinister quality about it, there's something that is very, uh, ah, ha, ha, ha, your boy. even though there is a sinister quality about him something about him that doesn't seem like you know he's a mustache twirler you know like I like his dedication his devotion to you know

this you know almost prophet like role that he is playing you know in conjunction with the gods and I just can't wait to see more yeah I loved it I loved that was a moment where we all went like Oscar Isaac there was one like

acting choice after another that was so interesting, so captivating, and it's really hard because of the big change they did with Stephen. I think it's smart to have the Batman similarities separate because there's enough people talking about how he's Marvel's Batman, so you get rid of the Playboy first. So I love that the duality

between Mark and Stephen is that direction about weakness and strength, and I really enjoyed the disorientation we as an audience experienced. Having only Stephen's perspective, we only got to experience that and then his disorientation of losing time and losing cognizance. So it

would be his perspective. What I'm curious is if we'll get an episode where it's like, we're with Mark the whole time, or if we're an episode where we like meet the third identity and we lose time, or if they've played that just for the pilot, and now we're going to, or I don't know if they're considered pilots if you get a season older, but you know what I mean?

If we're going to play with different personalities, or now that we've already dealt with these two, if it'll be more streamlined, more a narrative structure. That being said, I loved Ethan Hawk so much. I think he's so talented. but seeing him in this darkness, I like that it mirrored the footsteps.

Like, we got that opening that was, you know, his punishing self-flagulation. We also then saw the walk of Moon Night. I do think we're going to see a lot more similarities in this hero, villain, pairing as we meet Mark. Like, I think we're going to see how similar they are, and I really liked that it opened with the villain in this case and then followed through.

Yeah. You know, the filmmakers, they did say, or one of the creators, said that this is like Fight Club meets Indiana Jones. I couldn't agree. more like already from the first episode i could just imagine how much more archaeological swashbuckling this is all going to feel like this didn't feel like r-rated to me or any straight it doesn't feel like it's r i don't know it's just the first episode but the first episode it was more like that dark pg-13 supernatural horror flare that i really love you and especially like staying within the museum

it is like Indiana jones national treasure but like better than national treasure one of those flares that i really liked a lot locking it into solely Steven's perspective a gives you a character to really endear yourself to you know it's like there's affirmisms about him that kind of remind you of a bit like how you get kind of endeared to like Toby McGuire in the first Spider-Man movie like everyone just seems to pick on this guy when he's when he's just a such a softy you know pathetic a little pathetic even chases a bus like Peter a little pathetic yeah even chases a bus like Peter at the very top of it locking it into his perspective allows you to do some very interesting camera choices and editing choices that can be kind of

shocking and cool and also that much more immersive and I thought that was one of the most unique things about what they did here was actually having the delays those shift those visual motifs without showing you the events when they're without showing you what mark specter is doing when he's taking over makes it more immersive to not actually see it which is so unique like you don't get usually to make it immersive you got to really envelop yourself and the actual thing that's happening in the present moment but throwing you into what he's going through really puts you there make me curious, like, what the overall character arc will be for him, because obviously they've established, like, I've had that same thought, too. I've expressed that quite a few times. The three main personalities are like Jake, Stephen, and Mark in the comments, right? And we haven't met Jake yet. We don't even know if he exists yet within this world or that he'll be introduced. He'll be the post-credit scene. Very end. Jake.

Lockley, too. Get in my cat. A weird thing. People that don't know are like, I'm not excited about taking post-credit scene, but it's a weird job shift, I guess. Sure. I'm fired from the museum. He's a cabby now. This is his arc, the way how the people were like, Bruce Wayne and the billionaire playboy in Batman.

This is it. This is his arc into becoming a billionaire playboy. By way of Caddy, that's where the money is. Well, I was wondering, like, what the character arc will ultimately be. Will it be one of those things where, because it seems like we're going to have some of that almost venom-and-ed-y thing, where, you know, it's interacting with Conchue within his head. Can we talk about how great-conchue looks?

Conchio looks. Conchil looks, correct. That bust scene, I think, might be my first. favor when he's just standing there for a few frames and then disappears just the scope of them the size the ethereal like up close we'd seen a couple shots but the the scope of what they were able to do and making him feel tangible but intangible the same time absolutely i think what they did with his music with the music around them too and yeah around this whole show like they had some needle drops but then they also had some just original score that had that like operatic egyptian flare to it

and sometimes it was very pulsating the scene work between arthur harrow and stephen grant is is phenomenal. What excites me most is because when you get two actors like that, they understand the importance of dynamics and the relationship. So when we have Mark Spector interacting with Arthur Harrow, it's going to be like, it's completely a different scene. It's going to be like two different actors are interacting with each other. And you have that Calvin actor for that reason. Because apparently, you know, they're friends and that's how Ethan Hawke got brought on. So I love the idea that they're actually going like, no, no, we want to have this fight, this actor fight. Like, we want to have this tat-a-tat. Speaking to what you're saying about

the arc, I really think it's going to be interesting to see if the show lands with him being able to control his identities more and being able to decide which one is serving the best purpose because in the comic sometimes that's the case not always but i do think it's going to be interesting if mark takes over to a level that we see you know the badass kind of steering more it's going to be like that scene in the two towers when gollum is like talking with himself yeah go away and never return yeah yeah that action scene was really well shown I think this just strikes a really cool mood and a really good mystery, but also keeping it refreshing. And what makes Oscar Isaac's performance, I think, so strong.

Just how much this all weighs on him, like starting it off where he just has no, you guys are using the word disorientation a lot. So I'll use it, you know, everyone used the dance for internals. Yeah, that's the new D-Orientation. Disorientation. Disney Plus. Disorientation. Disorientation plus. Oscar Isaac's performance of just how much that weighs on it.

That's why that restaurant scene was so powerful. was because it wasn't just that, like, oh, my God, he's crying, whoa, good acting, you know, which is the mark of any good actor. He cries. That's all you got to get. Good acting. Yeah, a lot of anger and a lot of crying. Good acting.

It's the way he interacted. Like, he's not receiving at all what the waiter's telling him. Like, he's vegan. They established that. He's giving into the meat, just, like, succumbing to it. Something he's had to, like, kind of discipline himself, I imagine, to resist that. Like, something's, like, little as that. Something's sort of nuance.

To make that choice would call him. Clearly, he likes meat, and then he has to, he's going against something that he's had to discipline himself to go against because he's just falling apart internally. But he's just asking him all his questions, he's just like, it'd be so polite, so affable. He's just like, yeah, yeah, whatever, yeah, okay, uh-huh, that's good. But you could see him just breaking down while trying to put on a face. Ah, powerful stuff. So, yeah, I think Oscar Isaac's performance here is just so strong.

Like, I care so much. I care so much about Stephen Grant. This is the first Marvel show that they've introduced a character, right? Like, as you're a protagonist. Kay Bishop's the closest. But that was still, like, the jumping off point was, we got Clint Barton here. I think it's the closest.

This is all brand new people. Everyone here's brand new. And that's what I was saying, I'm glad there's not a lot of Easter eggs and not a lot of references. I like that we get to live in the supernatural by itself for a second. I'm not looking for stuff.

Maybe I shouldn't be, but I'm enjoying, like, just the experience of it. And also, I keep bringing them up, but Greg Smallwood's, his art style has this really beautiful kind of, like, pencil shading, aesthetic to the underneath. And I'm loving how they're using shading.

I'm loving how they're using, like, darkness versus light. I love the little detail of having a light hood, but like the use of lighting is playing into how I visually see the comic books. There's always this very heavy inked book, and it makes it obviously the supernatural tone, but it also feels like more of a translation of the comic to the screen than some of the other shows have for me personally. Like sometimes the comic, it feels like a Marvel show. Like they're going for a Marvel color palette. This doesn't feel like a Marvel color palette. It feels like the comic inks are on screen for me. Yeah, yeah. It's got really expressive light. And I love that you name check J.

because it definitely has a certain element of that which is also very in a very sort of depths of the shadows kind of genre and to it we talked about in one of the trailer reactions about how you know they're talking about this is going to be a level up in terms of how harsh you know a marvel Disney Plus show can get and I've never been one to think that they'll go daredevil Netflix level but I do appreciate that like in that scene where he kills those people there is blood and the blood on his hand is very striking and it made me go we don't really often see blood of consequence in these things. And even that was something that was like really striking just from a color and just from a palette sort of standpoint. Well, I think the most disturbing thing is, honestly, the opening scene, stepping into a sandal full of gloves. That was so, like that. And that's such a bold way to open any show, much less a Disney show. Like any show opening that way is like, what am I watching? What am I investing in? I could just imagine a whole family getting around. Got the new Marvel show up. Remember Hawkeye? Remember that Christmas show we just watched?

Man, what of the light. Let's put on moon night now. It's spring. It's going to be like, what is going on in this show? Kids, kids, don't get any ideas. Walk away. Keep looking away. Keep looking away.

I also, I think it was really smart to keep all of the marketing largely in the first episode. Most of the stuff we saw in the trailers was it here. I know, I've picked the whole series together. Oh, okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, I know what's going on. Yeah, here we go. That's why you know about the cabby at the end. It's all about the fish.

Right to the post. Damn, if the fish has all the answers. Gus all along. Gus the fish. Is Gus the fish a future pet Avenger? That's the question. Definitely. That's the big Easter.

Guys, the Easterer is Gus. I'm right, got you. It's just all for me. You thought when they were going, Young Avengers, no doubt. You got pizza dog, we'll get Gus, we'll get the forking cat. Alligator from Loki. Loki Gator, perfect. Yeah, we got, I mean, that's five.

That's an Avengers team. Yeah. Do it. Cut the check. I stopped listening. I know. Guys, listen, Moon Night's done. We are done.

We are done. That's great. Everyone's done today. Listen, follow Koi over on his, um, tic-th-fuck, you forgot to tell me to my mom. I got a YouTube and TikTok. Oh, at the top? Top of the show. I'll just put a little logo on it.

Fucking asshole. I'm the worst. It's my fault. Can you show you? Yeah. I gave you one assignment. It just remind me. I thought my assignment was to know Moon Night.

That is the important. The show doesn't even. really need you to know moon night that's nice though right oh we didn't talk about that are unnecessary how approachable the show is considering how dense to use your word moon night yeah disorienting listen uh if you follow us on patreon thanks john for um doing it all man he's the moon night expert he's the moon night expert there's probably a split personality of john that just knows every go yeah he'd never hear when i forget meet him if i i would be so upset i would be so upset to find out I have the personality who's like, all the answers, the complete shadow relief of all the things I struggle with.

You're just a guy jollily reading, like your cutscene is this guy, like, oh, that's nice, gone, completely useless. One thing before we go. Arthur Harrow, I like the way they have drawn him as this prophet for people, this savior. It's such a unique way of cleansing the world, of talking about bringing heaven to earth of all right. Let the God judge whether or not you're a good person or not. Okay, you're bad. We're wiping you off. Mm-hmm.

That is fascinating. It's a fresh spin on the environmentalist villain that we see all the time, you know? And Lefano's Blan shit. One, like, heaven's gaity sort of cultism, too. Yeah, it's a lot of individualized. It's a much more, like, personal way to kill somebody. Like, you're seeing, it's almost like the penance there with Ghost Rider. Wasn't he like a Nazi in the comics or something?

Yeah, I mean, definitely like that, but with a high. Hydra doesn't really work as well, but yeah, like definitely in that tonality. Moon night. Pick up a comic today, kids. Yeah. And step on some glass while you're at. You got your shoes?