Moon Knight Director Slams Wonder Woman's 1984 Egypt Sequence

Mohamed Diab, the director of the upcoming Marvel miniseries Moon Knight, spoke at length in a recent interview about his disappointment with Western cinema's standard of representation of Egypt. In advance of Moon Knight's debut on March 30, Diab spoke with SFX Magazine on how he hopes Moon Knight helps to change Hollywood's perception of Egypt.

"I remember seeing Wonder Woman 1984 and there was a big sequence in Egypt and it was a disgrace for us," Diab said. "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."

Added Diab, who made his directorial debut with the 2010 political thriller Cairo 678 added, "You never see Cairo. You always see Jordan shot for Cairo, Morocco shot for Cairo, sometimes Spain shot for Cairo. This really angers us."

In Moon Knight, Diab has plenty of opportunities to do Egyptian culture better. The series takes viewers into the world of Marc Spector, a man who lives with dissociative identity disorder and suddenly finds himself with the powers of Khonshu, an Egyptian god. In the comic, Ancient Egyptian lore plays a substantial role. The six-episode Disney+ series will premiere on March 30 and run through to May 4.

However, it should also be mentioned in this context that Isaac has been getting slightly dinged for his character's odd British accent. One of Marc's other personalities is a long-suffering British man named Stephen Grant--and as Isaac told Radio Times, Marvel "didn't know what the hell I was doing [with the accent], and they weren't sure it was going to work at all… In the end I’m glad we did that, because everyone says it kind of makes the show."