‘Moon Knight’ Tackles Mental Illness in Comic Adaptation

SUPER HERO PROBLEMS –

Mar. 30, 2022 – In a cinematic universe populated by gods, aliens, supersoldiers, galactic guardians, witches, androids and immortals, Moon Knight journeys into a previously uncharted territory of the mind. Head writer Jeremy Slater and lead actor Oscar Isaac take on arguably one of the MCU’s biggest challenges yet: dissociative identity disorder (DID). While looking at mental illness through the lens of comic book characters has a long, and admittedly messy, history, it’s something that Marvel adaptations have rarely touched on outright in any precise way until recently through WandaVision’s exploration of grief and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Hawkeye’s look at PTSD, a subject given more time than it was in Iron Man 3 (2013).

Leave all your preconceived notions at the door as Moon Knight reinvents a significant chunk of the mythology surrounding the antihero. While key elements of the character created by Doug Moench and Don Perlin are retained, the series approach feels similar to another recent Marvel adaptation, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which departs from the comics and delivers an end result that is stronger for it. We’re at a significant moment in terms of the value we place on comic book accuracy, especially when it comes to the portrayal of racial, social and psychological issues. Moon Knight is in an odd position where both comic book accuracy and medical accuracy will be placed upon scales of just portrayal for a general audience outside of geekdom, psychologists and patients — an audience that isn’t familiar enough with either to comment definitively, but surely will regardless.