How Marvel's Moon Knight Flips the Typical Hero/Villain Relationship
Moon Knight will deconstruct typical relationships between heroes and villains, promises Ethan Hawke. Moon Knight will be the next MCU series to hit Disney +, when its six-episode run begins on March 30th. The series’ cast will be led by Oscar Isaac as Marc Spector, who makes his MCU debut after featuring previously in the X-Men, and Hawke who will be taking on the role of the show’s antagonist.
Isaac’s Marc Spector is a combat veteran turned mercenary, who lives with dissociative identity disorder. The mental illness forces Spector to unknowingly shift between his various identities, as highlighted in the series' trailers. The character is set to become entangled with Hawke’s evil cult leader Arthur Harrow, who worships the ancient Egyptian God Ammitt. In addition to showing Spector’s mental illness, Moon Knight’s trailers have emphasized the show’s darker tone, in contrast to other MCU shows like Hawkeye, which stuck with the relatively light-hearted Marvel formula.
At a Moon Knight press conference Screen Rant attended, Hawke revealed the show will use Spector’s mental illness to flip the usual hero/villain narrative. Commenting on what drew him to the ambitious project, Hawke stated that the series gave him the chance to play a villain who isn’t “crazy… a sane lunatic”. The actor said that this was a rare opportunity, explaining that there are “countless stories of mentally ill villains, and we have a mentally ill hero.” Check out Hawke’s full comments below:
“[T]he history of movies are paved with storytellers using mental illness as a building block for the villain. I mean, there's countless stories of mentally ill villains, and we have a mentally ill hero. And that's fascinating because we've now inverted the whole process. And so now as the antagonist, I can't be crazy because the hero's crazy. So I have to kind of find a sane lunatic or a sane malevolent force. And that was an interesting riddle for me to figure out how to be in dynamics with what Oscar was doing. And Mohamed was really embracing his mental illness as a way to create an unreliable narrator. And once you've broken the prism of reality, everything that the audience is seeing is from a skewed point of view. And that's really interesting for the villain because am I even being seen as I am?”
Hawke is right to say that, often, onscreen villains are simply defined as crazy. This allows the characters (such as The Joker) to commit unjustifiable, illogical actions without having to worry too much on the why. Instead, Moon Knight has committed to depicting its central hero as someone living with mental illness, which if done with the appropriate sensitivity and accuracy, could allow for the portrayal of a more complex villain.
Audiences will also be interested to see how the flipped dynamic impacts the show’s portrayal of Isaac’s Marc Spector, as too often mental illness is used as an onscreen short-hand for evil. Breaking out of that classic characterization could be a challenge for the series, but one that pays dividends if it succeeds. If Moon Knight fails to tackle the topic with the due respect and sensitivity, however, it risks opening itself up to criticism for playing into existing social stigmas and prejudices about mental illness. With its hero/villain relationship, Moon Knight has undoubtedly set itself a big challenge.