Kevin Feige Knows He's Taking A Huge Risk With Moon Knight
Marvel Studios has expanded its horizons since it started producing TV shows for Disney+. Whether it's "WandaVision" teasing the multiverse ahead of "Spider-Man: No Way Home" and changing its format with every single episode, or "Loki" bringing a trippy sci-fi story to the MCU, we're seeing the idea of what a Marvel story is change before our very eyes.
Now, we're getting what promises to be the first horror-adjacent MCU property with "Moon Knight," a different kind of show than we've seen before. Based on a lesser-known and weirder comic book character, "Moon Knight" follows the Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac), a regular dude with a menial job who suffers from dissociative identity disorder and shares a body with a mercenary named Marc Spector. Oh, and he also has the power of an Egyptian god, as well as a very cool costume.
So far, trailers and TV spots have tried their best to sell "Moon Knight" as a totally different Marvel TV show than we've seen so far, but if those are not enough to convince you, how about a word from Kevin Feige himself?
Get ready to rumble
Speaking to Empire for the new issue of their magazine, Feige spoke about the show's darker, more violent tone and how big of a risk it was:
"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, right?' No. We're not pulling back. There's a tonal shift. This is a different thing. This is Moon Knight."
Of course, this hard-hitting approach to action isn't entirely new to either Marvel, or even the MCU. When it comes to the latter, who can forget that time the new Captain America decapitated a dude using his shield in "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier." And then there's the whole thing about the Marvel shows made for Netflix, particularly "Daredevil," which was as gnarly as it could get. When the Netflix shows got added to Disney+ it prompted the streamer to revise its parental controls due to the more mature content in those shows, and as it was recently reported, they haven't been censored.
While it is unlikely that "Moon Knight" will show anyone being decapitated via car door smashing, or cut a man's face off, Feige's comments at least promise a darker show than, say, "Hawkeye."
'We're able to take more risks'
And that's before you add the story's portrayal of mental health. In that same Empire interview, star Oscar Isaac described the TV format as helping the show explore mental health in a more nuanced way than a movie could:
"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."
Much of Phase 4 of the MCU seems to be focusing on smaller, character-driven stories compared to the larger-than-life conflicts of previous phases. It seems "Moon Knight" may usher a new era for the MCU, or at the very least build its own little space within the Marvel Universe where the horror shows may be safe from the more family-friendly formula of the main franchise.
"Moon Knight" premieres on Disney+ on March 30, 2022.