With Marvel Studios producing several blockbuster movies and TV shows every year, and as part of an interconnected narrative, no less, it’d be a reasonable train of thought to assume that there’s zero creativity outside the bounds of what MCU producers know will work. But apparently, that couldn’t be any farther from the truth. In a recent interview with Collider, Moon Knight directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead have actually described the process as “incredibly collaborative.”
“Well, I think everyone has this idea of a bit of a monolithic structure to Marvel where people would question like, as independent filmmakers, were we going to feel shackled or something like that,” the creative duo said. “And honestly, it was just so incredibly collaborative. I think that was the big surprise. We knew that they would be collaborative. We know that they’re a very best idea wins kind of company, but we didn’t quite realize just how much freedom we would have.”
Benson and Moorhead further explain that it wasn’t just the two of them who had enough creative freedom to express their opinions and implement their ideas.
“And not just the two of us, but everybody. I mean, Oscar, Ethan, and May had so much of a hand in the story that we’re telling, not just as performers, but as writers, as storytellers. I think there was always a bit of like, ‘Can we do that exactly? Can we be that strange or go that far off the rails?’ Or actually even seeing WandaVision, we didn’t actually know that they would commit to that crazy format, that what you would think their target audience hasn’t probably even seen a black and white sitcom, but they did it. They just committed to it fully. That was really cool to find out how bold they were willing to be as long as we were the ones pushing it forward. Not just the two of us. I mean, we, all the collaborators on the project.”
It goes without saying, of course, that all of these novelties have been part of Marvel’s initiative to explore fresh ideas after the end of the Infinity Saga with Avengers: Endgame. In that sense, Moon Knight is probably one of the more experimental projects, up there with WandaVision, and it’ll certainly be interesting to see where this journey will take Oscar Isaac’s unconventional superhero next.