Moon Knight director criticizes depiction of Egypt in Wonder Woman 1984

With Disney+'s Moon Knight, director Mohamed Diab brings much-deserved representation of ancient Egyptian mythology to the Marvel Universe. With it, he hopes to change Hollywood's perception of Egypt, which he says has disappointed him — particularly when it comes to certain superhero blockbusters.

"I remember seeing Wonder Woman 1984 and there was a big sequence in Egypt and it was a disgrace for us," Diab, who made his directorial debut with the 2010 political thriller Cairo 678, recently told SFX Magazine. "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."

In the scene Diab refers to, antagonist Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) travels to Egypt with a stolen magical artifact and is pursued by Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) and Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) in one of the movie's biggest action sequences.

"You never see Cairo. You always see Jordan shot for Cairo, Morocco shot for Cairo, sometimes Spain shot for Cairo," Diab said in the interview. "This really angers us."

He then explained how his frustration fueled him when he was pitching Moon Knight. "There was a big part about Egypt, and how inauthentically it has been portrayed throughout Hollywood's history," Diab said. "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."

With Moon Knight, Diab was able to weave genuine Egyptian history into the plot while embracing its comic book origins and keeping the show fun.

"It's part of the show because it's part of the comic book. It's part of how he gets his powers. It's ingrained in it," he said. "There was definitely room to play but keep it as authentic as possible in the realm of being fantastical. Even in the original comic books they did a great job of researching and trying to make Egypt authentic."

Moon Knight premieres March 30 on Disney+.

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