Moon Knight Director criticizes Dwayne Johnson's Black Adam over lack of diversity

The upcoming MCU series Moon Knight and the DCEU movie Black Adam both are based on ancient Egypt and its culture. Moon Knight boasts the fact that it has a number of Egyptian actors and technicians working on the project were as Black Adam does not.

In Mook Knight, Marc Spector a mercenary is bestowed magical powers by Khonsu the ancient Egyptian Moon God and finds himself battling gods and monsters to save the world.

Director Mohamed Diab who is working on Moon Knight was praised by critics for including actual Egyptian actors and technicians of the show as well as adding his own personal insight into the culture and heritage of Egypt.

This is not the first time that Hollywood movies have done poor representations of Egpyt the most famous examples being the 2016 action-adventure movie Gods of Egpyt which featured white actors playing Egyptian gods and Ridley Scott's 2014 movie Exodus: Gods and Kings which had Christian Bale and Joel Edgerton in the lead roles.

While Black Adam is set in the fictional country of Kahndaq which is located near Egypt and Israel/ Palestine it is clear that the inspiration for Kahndaq is ancient Egypt as well as the fact that Black Adam in the comic books is a descendant of Pharaohs.

Speaking with Filfan the director expressed criticism for Black Adam and Warner Bros Studios. He spoke about how he saw Moon Knight be a good opportunity to showcase his country and its heritage.

“I wanted to showcase Egyptian talents as much as I could. Every culture should be represented by its people so I hired actors, an editor, a costume designer, an art director & a composer who are all Egyptian.”

He went on to say that while he knows the DC movie is based on a fictional city it should still address its roots.

“I was really annoyed with DC when they set Black Adam in a fictional middle eastern country as an excuse to cast non-Egyptians, when it was obviously meant to be in Egypt. Representation opportunities shouldn’t be wasted... But it’s not a full mistake since it’s based on an iteration of the comics that doesn’t mention Egypt.”

As representation is becoming more and more important in movies, especially superhero movies, studios should try and be more welcoming and inclusive.

While the criticism by the director is valid, Black Adam is still not out for public consumption so fans should also offer the movie benefit of the doubt.

Moon Knight will stream on Disney + on March 30 and Black Adam will hit theaters on October 21.