There are some new images and details for Marvel's Moon Knight, thanks to a newly
published article by Empire magazine here in the UK. We get new details from actor Oscar Isaac,
producer Kevin Feige, director Mohamed Diab and show creator Jeremy Slater, discussing more about
the grittier approach of this particular project. In this video, I'm going to be
discussing the images and details, breaking down the newest looks at the Disney Plus show.
But before I get into it, if you want to see much more videos on Moon Knight, including when
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which is all linked in the description below. But without further a do, lets
discuss the new images and details for Moon Knight from Empire magazine.
So while Oscar Isaac's last attempt at playing a Marvel character with X-Men Apocalypse,
didn't go down as well as he wanted it too, it seems that now with a grittier series in the
Mcu, he has a lot more confidence surrounding the type of creative approach that is being put
on screen. With the MCU series Moon Knight, the actor is about to enter the world of
Marvel once more, now playing a brutal vigilante with multiple personas, whether that
be Steven Grant, Marc Spector, or a supernatural crimefighter connected to the Ancient Egyptian
god Khonshu. The new Empire magazine gives us much more details on what the actor thinks and
how he's going about this return to a Marvel project with a lot more focus. The magazine
had two covers that you might have seen, both artiscally quite beautiful to look at, and I
myself picked up the subscriber edition which came out a few days ago. There was also plenty
of cool images from the article and I'm going to be inserting them throughout this video
as I discuss the interviews that were also included.
Coming to that article, there's a segment with Isaac about how his return to a Marvel project,
and how it involved having a lot more to do. Following his experience on X-Men Apocalypse
and working on the new Star Wars films, the actor wanted to take a step back from these franchises
and mentioned that he would only get involved with a bigger property or franchise
again, if it was something that brought a unique creative vision. He said, “Often on these big
movies it can feel like you’re building the plane on the runway. The idea of getting back
to ‘handmade’ films, character studies… I was desperate for that feeling.” And when
speaing Moon Knight, he continued saying, “It felt ‘handmade'. And it’s the first legitimate Marvel
character-study since Iron Man. I thought, ‘Maybe I can hijack this thing. Maybe this
is the chance to do something really nutty on a major stage.’” So for Oscar, it was the
complexity of the character incolving a man dealing with dissociative identity disorder,
that really attracted him to the project. He continued by stating, “What I love most about
this thing is that it’s an exploration of a mind that doesn’t know itself. A human being
that doesn’t know his own brain. I found that really moving. What the mind is capable of as
far as survival. But the workload was massive. The technical challenge of embodying these different
characters, physically, the way I manifest my body… It required a lot of energy.” So
clearly, Isaac would not have joined a Marvel project, if he thought it was not going to have
a layer of complexity and a sort character exploration that didn't go further than the
traditional superhero troopes. Could this actually be a Marvel universe project that
goes beyond being one that has similar traits to the others and actually tells a character study
about a man suffering with these persona. Well, according to Isaac that is the case and we can
only see if his comments reign true. I for one though am excited to see if this turns out
to be what they have created and his comments do reflect the footage we've seen so far.
Kevin Feige also weighed in the more darker infuse of tone that is going to be surrounding
this series. Obviously, seeing that poster with the blood around the character's knuckles,
and on the tips of his crescent moon-shaped weapons, Marvel are communicating stright away
that this is the difference this time around. There seems to be a harder edge to Moon Knight
with Marvel boos Feige, saying they aren't shying away from. Feige says that the Disney Plus
streaming service has become a space to experiment and said, “He’s brutal. It’s been fun to
work with Disney+ and see the boundaries shifting on what we’re able to do. There are
moments[in the series when Moon Knight is wailing on another character, and it is loud and brutal,
and the knee-jerk reaction is, ‘We’re gonna pull back on this. No, we’re not pulling back.
There’s a tonal shift. This is a different thing. This is Moon Knight.” And it’s not just
Moon Knight’s bloodied fists that mark a departure for the MCU as Feige suggests, as for one,
his power-set is linked to a bird-skulled Egyptian deity known as Khonshu. But like we
mentioned before, at the heart of this is the sensitivity with its central character’s mental
health condition. Isaac stated, “It is risky. He’s an obscure hero, and the things we’re
dealing with are very different. But because it’s a limited series, rather than a movie,
the pressure isn’t there to make sure the opening weekend is massive. We’re able to take more
risks, to bring that experimental quality on a huge scale.” Feige added saying, “We’ve always
loved Moon Knight, He always fascinated us as something we hadn’t seen before, so when
the Disney+ idea came up, it quickly became one of the first things we wanted to do,
because we loved the story.” So hearing this kind of claim from both Isaac and Feige, instantly
make me excited about the idea of this being drastically different. Character studies are
something we haven't had much of in the MCU and if we get that with Moon Knight, then to me
that is a great step in the right direction when it comes to telling a deeper story with
more nuanced and investing characters. We'll have to see but it's quite good to hear and
hopefully the show delivers on that. And speaking on Isaac's different character,
it was early noted that this had to be different from a very-often comparison that was
brought up. Grant is perhaps one aspect of Moon Knight that isn't that original, as in the comics,
it was essentially a copy of Bruce Wayne. As a Billionaire, when he's not attending charity
galas, he's fighting bad guys with his lunar-shaped gadgets. This comparison
to Batman was something that the show creator's were apparently keen to avoid
right from the start. Slater said to Empire that "it was never a
comparison I was interested in making. Batman has an 80 year head start on us and you're
not going to beat him at this own game. We've seen that side of Moon Knight..., but I don't
think that's the coolest possible version of the character". Essentially, the creators take
involved de-Wayne-ifying the Grant alter ego by stripping away his wealth and weaponry,
focusing more on the themes of mental health and Egyptology. He said "there's all this
amazing stuff from Egyptology in the comics and Raiders Of The Lost Arc was actually a big
reference when I first pitched it. How can we tell this dark, complex story but also inject it with
some big fun, supernatural, amblin-style magic at the same time?". So from this
we learn that Moon Knight is gonna be quite the balanced approach. One that has the key
ingredients of a classic blockbuster, but one that also get's more twisty and complex, all with
Isaac's character study at the centre. But what sort of things does
Isaac actually dissect as being quite unusual about his performance of a complex figure.
Well, Oscar, Slater and Diab went a bit further when discussing Moon Knight himself,
with Slater saying that "he's playing radically different people". That's scary, and a lot of
actors could have phoned it in. But Oscar's thing was, 'this may be a superhero show
but I'm going to approach it like it Shakespeare'. The actor also went on to talk about about the
voice of the character, hinting at the choices behind the unusual accent. He said,
“I stand by the sound of Steven 100 per cent. It’s cool and the accent got people excited, and some
were like, ‘That sucks!’ and others were like, ‘That’s great!’ But there are reasons…”. Empire
claims that the exact reasons, wouldn’t be discussed but that the actor did hint that
it’s not supposed to be an entirely convincing British accent. Isaac said, “That voice is about
where Steven’s from, where he’s living now, and some of his believed heritage. It’s not
an idea of what Brits actually sound like.” Also, the idea of having different accents
for Moon Knight’s different personas came from the Oscar himself. Writer and creator Jeremy Slater
said, “In the initial script, the difference between Steven and Marc was in attitude. It
was Oscar who said, ‘What about an accent?’” And director Mohamed Diab continued by saying
that answers are on the way. “Anything Oscar does is deliberate. I won’t comment any more
than that…”. So it's clear that there's a lot of secrets waiting to have context in the show
and that Moon Knight is going much deeper on the detail behind specific choices. This is of
course very exciting and hopefully the choices they have made fel right for the character
and story and don't just situate for the sake of a cool coice.
I'm confident that this won't be the case and I'm excited to see what they do with this
potentially different MCU entry come the end of March.
But they were all the main images and details from the new Empire edition of Moon Knight. It's
going to be interesting to see how this show actually turns out, as it's one of the more
exciting and unique projects that Marvel have been working on,
and these new images and details continue to show us that this could be the case.
I've personally wanted to see Marvel really start to mix up their approaches to
making these kinds of projects, and the interviews here do build the excitement and show us that
we are most certainly in for something much grittier and character driven. We'll soon find
out how the series turns out, but I'm quite optimistic surrounding the Oscar Isaac show,
and this new article just gives us a further tease of what to expect from this character,
story and the production. But I'm interested to hear what you guys thought towards the new images
and interviews, alongside what you are personally looking forward to seeing
in Marvel's Moon Knight series. So let me know down below in the comments section.
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