Marvel’s Moon Knight director Mohamed Diab says Wonder Woman 1984’s Egyptian scenes were a ‘disgrace’: ‘Egypt looked like a country from the Middle Ages’

He added, “I remember seeing Wonder Woman 1984 and there was a big sequence in Egypt and it was a disgrace for us. 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.”

Diab has directed four out of six episodes of Moon Knight. In the Jeremy Slater creation, Oscar Isaac’s titular Marvel superhero gains powers on account of his body being a conduit of the Egyptian lunar god Khonshu. Ethan Hawke plays the role of primary antagonist Arthur Harrow and May Calamawy portrays love interest of Marc Spector, one of Moon Knight’s multiple alter-egos.

“In my pitch, there was a big part about Egypt, and how inauthentically it has been portrayed throughout Hollywood’s history,” Diab tells SFX Magazine in the new issue, featuring the Halo TV series on the cover. “It’s always exotic – we call it orientalism. It dehumanizes us. We are always naked, we are always sexy, we are always bad, we are always over the top.”

Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige had spoken to Empire in a recent interview about the character. He described Moon Knight, both the hero and the series as “brutal.” He added that with Moon Knight, MCU undergoes “a tonal shift. This is a different thing. This is Moon Knight.”

Moon Knight premieres on March 30 on Disney+ Hotstar.