Egyptian mythology is a key part of Marvel Studios’ upcoming “Moon Knight” series which is one reason the series will serve as a showcase of talent from Egyptian filmmaking craft.
The show’s Egyptian-born director and executive producer Mohamed Diab says he specifically hired actors, an editor, a costume designer, an art director & a composer who are all Egyptian for the series to make sure his culture was represented by its people.
Out doing promotional interviews for the series ahead of its arrival next week, Diab spoke with SFX Magazine and took to task Marvel rival DC’s depiction of Egypt in “Wonder Woman 1984”. He says:
“You never see Cairo. You always see Jordan shot for Cairo, Morocco shot for Cairo, sometimes Spain shot for Cairo. This really angers us [Egyptians]. 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.
In my [‘Moon Knight’] pitch, 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.”
Diab’s criticisms aren’t just directed at the Patty Jenkins-directed sequel. Turns out the upcoming “Black Adam” unfolds partly in the fictional Middle Eastern country of Kahndaq, one which is an obvious stand-in for Egypt. He tells Filfan:
“I was really annoyed with DC when they set ‘Black Adam’ in a fictional Middle Eastern country as an excuse to cast non-Egyptians when it was obviously meant to be in Egypt. Representation opportunities shouldn’t be wasted… But it’s not a full mistake since it’s based on an iteration of the comics that doesn’t mention Egypt.”
You can see some of the “Wonder Woman 1984” Egypt sequence in the clip below. Meanwhile “Moon Knight,” starring Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke, begins airing on Disney+ from March 30th.
Source: The Playlist