It is extremely tired at this point to describe any new piece of superhero media as “great if you are sick of the genre,” and Moon Knight is certainly of a piece with that late genre attempts at subversion. 

To the show’s credit, it does have a good bit going for it. It tackles a variety of concepts for the first time in the Marvel Comics Universe (MCU), such as Dissociative Identity Disorder and a more serious attempt to grapple with real-world geopolitics.

The setting and aesthetic are a fun change of pace, with the show getting into ancient Egyptian themes and styles previously absent from the entire film-verse, unless you are far enough gone to have been the one other person to actually watch X-Men Apocalypse.

As an absolutely shameless Oscar Isaac fan, it really is great to see how many major and even leading roles he has gotten in the past few years—oddly enough, including the X-Men film. And opposing him is Ethan Hawke, who has proven himself to be truly peerless when playing religious zealot characters, perhaps most notably in The Good Lord Bird from 2020.

The practical designs and outfits all look solid and are decently faithful to the original comics, but at the same time, the CGI definitely left some things to be desired. And as someone who has long railed against the overwhelming reliance on digital effects in movies, the weirdly cheap-looking effects—especially for a company that owns half the world—really just take me out of the series.

And to be honest, even with everything it has going for it, it’s just so much more Marvel content on a truly mountainous pile. According to online publication Lifehacker, the total runtime of the MCU “adds up to be: 5,154 minutes.” Even if the show were really good, which for the most part it is, there is only so much Mar content one can consume before it all blends together in one glob of capes and glowing lights.