"Moon Knight" Director Is Disappointed In Two DC Films For Misrepresenting Egyptian Culture
Egyptian director Mohamed Diab, who recently worked on Marvel Studios' latest Disney+ series, Moon Knight, has criticized two DC films for their depictions of his native land and his people.
The films that Diab has called out are Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's superhero debut, Black Adam, and the disappointing sequel/prequel Wonder Woman 1984.
Diab claims he was "annoyed" with DC for setting Black Adam in the fictional Middle-Eastern country of Kahndaq "as an excuse to cast non-Egyptians, when it was obviously meant to be in Egypt."
"Representation opportunities shouldn't be wasted," he said. "But it's not a full mistake since it's based on an iteration of the comics that doesn't mention Egypt."
Diab wasted no time in slamming Wonder Woman 1984 for its portrayal of Egypt just a few days later.
"You never see Cairo. You always see Jordan shot for Cairo, Morocco shot for Cairo, sometimes Spain shot for Cairo. This really angers us," he said. "I remember seeing Wonder Woman 1984, and there was a big sequence in Egypt, and it was a disgrace for us. You had a sheik — that doesn't make any sense to us. Egypt looked like a country from the Middle Ages. It looked like the desert."
This problem Diab found in both movies isn't anything new, as Hollywood has a long and nasty habit of inaccurately depicting other countries and their cultures on film.
"In my pitch [for Moon Knight]," said Diab, "there was a big part about Egypt, and how inauthentically it has been portrayed throughout Hollywood's history. It's always exotic — we call it orientalism. It dehumanizes us. We are always naked, we are always sexy, we are always bad, we are always over the top."
Since Moon Knight features a story heavily inspired by Egyptian mythology, Diab saw a chance to bring as much representation of his people and culture into the show and its production as possible.
"I wanted to showcase Egyptian talents as much as I could," said Diab. "Every culture should be represented by its people, so I hired actors, an editor, a costume designer, an art director, and a composer who are all Egyptian."
Starring Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke, Moon Knight tells the story of a mercenary with dissociative identity disorder (DID) who becomes a conduit for the Egyptian moon god, Khonshu.
This series will surely be a mystical and mind-bending trip through the protagonist's mind. But it will also be the Marvel Cinematic Universe's first deep dive into Egyptian culture and mythology.