The Batman vs. Moon Knight Repeats BvS & Daredevil's Battle 6 Years Later
With Marvel's Moon Knight and Warner Bros.' The Batman both set to release in March, there's an interesting parallel to be drawn with the release date battle between Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Daredevil six years ago. All four of these titles feature different masked heroes (Pattinson's Batman is distinct from Ben Affleck's in the DCEU multiverse), but there are some noteworthy parallels. It's all creating a sense of déjà vu for some avid comic book movie and TV watchers who feel it's all eerily similar.
While The Batman will be far from the first on-screen adaptation of the Dark Knight from DC Comics, Moon Knight, which stars Oscar Isaac in the eponymous role, marks his character's first step off the page. This isn't Isaac's first time working with Disney, however, as he's known for playing the pilot Poe Dameron in the Star Wars sequel trilogy of the 2010s. Meanwhile, Pattinson's career has taken him all over the place in terms of genre, from his infamous role as Edward Cullen in the teen romance saga Twilight, to A24's dark, artistic film The Lighthouse, to the big-budget Christopher Nolan original, Tenet. But while Isaac and Pattinson may have distinct profiles as actors, the comparisons between Moon Knight and Batman, and their MCU/DC adaptations, are almost endless.
This is why DC and Marvel seem to be coincidentally rehashing a battle from six years prior. Both Moon Knight and The Batman have March 2022 release dates, just as the release of Batman v Superman and the premiere of Daredevil season 2 shared that same month back in 2016. Of course, both studios are frequently putting out new material, meaning it's not all that significant when titles release around the same time. But the dark, street-level vigilante similarities between the characters of Daredevil, Batman, and Moon Knight and the respective styles of their stories make March 2022 a fun echo of the past that's hard to overlook.
Though Batman's countless movie and TV adaptations over the decades have varied widely in tone, the Caped Crusader most often comes with a healthy dose of brooding, darkness, and violence these days. Based on the trailer, Moon Knight, like Daredevil, is a brutal MCU addition that will make use of all these same tones and themes. Bruce Wayne and Marc Spector are both vigilantes who work at night and often wrestle with morality, and Spector, who suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder, even has a billionaire alternate personality, Steven Grant. There are obvious parallels in their nicknames and outfits, too. All of this adds up to the fact that March of this year will see the release of a DC movie and a Marvel show that feature very similar characters and matching vibes, much as March of 2016 did with Batman v Superman and Daredevil.
At the same time, however, Moon Knight is more than the MCU's Batman, as Marc Spector comes with a much different background and story that includes the aforementioned DID and a supernatural connection to the Egyptian moon god, Khonshu. Though the Disney+ show will certainly see Moon Knight beating up bad guys in a cape much like his DC counterpart, it will hopefully also give audiences a deeper glimpse into Spector's inner turmoil. Though he shares surface characteristics with Batman, this aspect of the story will likely take him in a much different direction. Regardless of what exactly Moon Knight has in store, it will inevitably evoke comparisons to The Batman, due to their close release dates that echo that of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Daredevil season 2 six years ago.