Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticLast year, Marvel made a serious run at using streaming TV to do something qualitatively different than what it does on the big screen.
With “WandaVision,” the first of its series to stream on Disney Plus, the studio used familiar characters to animate a story that, in its early going, was substantially more pliable and strange than what they were willing to attempt in a heavily leveraged movie. “WandaVision” played with the nature of its reality, and did so using characters familiar from more conventional works.That series ended up, in its final moments, reverting to form; despite terrific work by Elizabeth Olsen at its center, the conclusion of “WandaVision” looked like a Marvel movie, which is to say professionally made, blunt, and familiar.
It remains, though, as a signal of what Marvel is willing to attempt when it steps beyond its core franchises. Now the studio steps yet further out with “Moon Knight,” its fifth live-action Disney Plus series, and its first to be based on a character who hasn’t yet featured heavily in onscreen adventures.
Here, Marvel’s attempting to do something it hasn’t lately done: Break a new character through the medium of TV. And “Moon Knight,” an adventurous limited series, suggests a way forward for a content-creation engine that’s come to feel overwhelming.
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