Marvel Cinematic Universe

Raoul Bushman is mediocre. He mostly runs and carries himself on having a It's Personal connection to Marc Spector, Grandfather Clause and on being utterly repulsive. His character has never gone much beyond "he's a sadistic psycho".

Black Spectre and Midnight Man are just middling Evil Counterpart types who never really managed to come on their own for me.

There are only two Moon Knight antagonists that really struck with me and both were very underused (both are also "antagonists" in quotes due having moments where they're allied or at least not confrontational with MK). The first one being the obscure The Profile, the CIA data analyst guy whose superpower is just analyzing everyone he meets to a terrifying extent. Besides the creative powerset (needs to get by solely on that, no superhuman physique or anything), I enjoyed the idea of man whose power effectively makes him into a superpowered shrink fighting a man who is effectively a superpowered mental illness patient. They also contrast in that The Profile is portrayed as a rather calm, collected and stable individual in contrast to Moon Knight. They make good foils. But he's been used very sparingly and never really approached with that much focus.

The other one was (to me) the better "Moon Knight, except evil" concept, Stained Glass Scarlet, due having a legitimately tragic and sympathetic backstory (if a tad convoluted), a interesting relationship of shared plight (tragic pasts and mental illness) with Moon Knight and the whole intriguing psychic link with MK and Khonshu. But again, I also don't think she was ever used to her full potential.

I like that show pitch you went on, but I think you actually go through too many MK villains, I'd trim that down a bit. Dig the idea though. I'd also make Spector Egyptian-American of Jewish ancestry to tone down the whole Mighty Whitey thing.

EDIT: also, solid soundtrack (if a bit overkill). I'd have Scarlet'a episode set to She's Lost Control rather than "She's not there" though.

Edited by Gaon on Dec 13th 2018 at 3:49:10 AM

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

I wouldn't worry too much about his rogues gallery. Even if all his villains suck, the nature of adaptation is such that there's plenty of opportunity to make them not suck.

Personally, I would actually like to see a Moon Knight film or series as long as the producers are willing to bring the same level of care for the demographic as "Jessica Jones" and "Luke Cage" featured. A dramatic piece on a superhero wrestling with mental illness could be fascinating.

I mean, I know "Legion" exists. But Marvel's take on it could be fascinating.

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

Perhaps I’m being unreasonable or bitter because I keep remembering our Marvel movie ratio is 19-1 male to female leads, but I can’t find myself excited about any new MCU or tv stuff unless the starring role is a woman. (Black Panther excepted, because it’s a role starring a black superhero and the female supporting cast was very rich and developed.)

She-Hulk as a legal-crime drama would be awesome.

I’d recommend a Kate Bishop movie or seiries in the vein of the Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye series.

Though it’s important that they maintain how much of a loser Clint could be & transfer that to Kate.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Something akin to Terriers but with Kate Bishop would be awesome. (Lots of things would be awesome, okay.)

Edited by alliterator on Dec 13th 2018 at 4:54:37 AM

It's a gamble, though. Daredevil and Jessica Jones got great villains in no small part because Kilgrave and Kingpin were already pretty engaging characters in their original selves. In contrast, Jessica Jones season 2 suffered from (among other things) a lack of a caliber antagonist in part because JJ does not have a rogues gallery, Punisher and Luke Cage (season 1) also went the route of trying to improve the weak rogues gallery of their characters with some very mixed success. Punisher didn't really manage to make them any more engaging than they were originally (i.e not much) and Luke Cage season 1 got a tremendous success with some (Cottonmouth) but failed abysmally with others (Diamondback).

This even goes to some movie franchises. Iron Man has a mediocre at best rogues gallery (being composed chiefly of Iron Man knockoffs or Corrupt Corporate Executive Stark knockoffs) with perhaps the single exception of The Mandarin and the movies show this running trend extensively (even moreso than the comics, going by its complete self-sabotage when it came to IM's best villain).

It's a roll of the dice. Having a solid rogues gallery facilitates your life a lot in comic book adaptations.

The most interesting antagonists in MK, as far as I see it, were The Profile and Stained Glass Scarlet, so that's where I'd start.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

It's a toss up. Luke Cage had its best success with probably the worst of it's chosen antagonists from a comics point of view. Either way, it's usually not the antagonist's fault, it's the execution's.

I think Iron Man ran into the problem of not knowing how to balance the villains with the heroes' personal arc: IM 2, especially, suffers from this - while the SHIELD arc gets scapegoated for eating up time, there's also the problem that the arc they wanted to do with Tony leaves Vanko behind right away, and there isn't anything for him to do after his first defeat.

They also really wanted to do the "each villain is the greatest, most personal threat the hero has ever faced" bit every single time (the same thing that eventually tripped up the Raimi Spider-Man series, imo). I think Iron Man's Rogues Gallery would have been better served with an approach similar to what GOTG Pt 2 or Antman and the Wasp did later: there's a primary antagonist in the sense that they're the most prominent, then a bunch of minor antagonists with their own motives, but all secondary to whatever the hero is going through.

Or even something like Homecoming, where the villains have gang with a small-time vs big name dynamic. The majority of Iron Man's villains are designed to be superpowered Mooks and thugs who can be thrown at heroes in consequence free battles that don't necessarily require tons of plot to justify, and the MCU probably could've done more with them if it had played to that strength more.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Dec 13th 2018 at 6:01:35 AM

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

All I want (okay, not all I want, but I do want it) is a Legends of Tomorrow-style adaptation of Nextwave.

The main issue with Vanko is the movie wasn't interested in doing anything with him. There are a few scenes that show that he had potential for some gravitas, but the movie is way too focused on SHIELD and Tony's self-destruction (both of which are handled badly) in order to actually give Vanko his due. Instead, he feels like a superfluous bad guy that was added because the movie needed a "villain" as per the genre convention, with Mickey Rourke doing his best to elevate the character but ultimately unable to due the fact that he couldn't change the fundamental structure of IM 2.

So in that regard the failure of IM 2 has very little to do with Vanko being a bad villain and more the fact that the script isn't properly built around the conflict between him and Tony. If that had been the case I'm sure he would have proved more than adequate.

What did happen to his bird?

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

According to the Avengers tie-in comic, it died when Vanko’s remote control system self-destructed.

Kilgrave was based on a reinvention of the character in the 2000s. The original version was a forgettable Daredevil villain before being used as Jessica Jones' source of trauma in Bendis' Alias. And even then, the Netflix version took some liberties.

So yeah, I wouldn't worry about Moon Knight's villains being adapted to t.v.

Yeah, Netflix Kilgrave actually has very little in common with comics Kilgrave.

Netflix Kilgrave got his powers as a child and grew up to be an emotionally-childish hedonist with a sexual obsession with Jessica. Comics Kilgrave was already an adult and a master spy before getting his powers, uses them for more typical supervillain goals than immediate pleasure, and actually found Jessica unattractive (though he did keep her around as a bodyguard/enforcer).

Comics Kilgrave was also Croatian, not British, and literally had purple skin following the accident that gave him powers.

You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!

Comics Killgrave (note the two L's) also was immortal for a little bit. He literally couldn't die.

And here I always thought that Vanko killed the Burd himself because it was the wrong one….

Anyway, they can make every villain interesting (see Vulture, who isn't exactly a great Spider-Man villain usually), and they can fail to adapt interesting villains properly (see Baron von Strucker). So it doesn't really matter what is in the source material, the question is always if there is something which can be used for a compelling story).

I am sure we will get more leads which are neither Male nor White in the future. After all, the movie currently in the works include Black Widow, Black Panther 2 and Shang Chi.

Also, isn't Moon Knight Jewish?

I think he's Jewish and powered by Egyptian Gods. Which, if they actually acknowledge how weird that is, could be a really fun dynamic.

Yep and his father was a Rabbi. In some of the Jeff Lemire issues, there are flashbacks where you can see him where a kippah as a kid, too. Unfortunately, most writers don't really delve that much into the dichotomy — although I do think that the current run by Max Bemis is delving into it.

They could turn Moon Knight into someone of mixed race, too...maybe explore how it is to kind of belong to various cultures at once.

Well might as well cast an Egyptian to portray him to stave off any racial controversies to be had from having a white guy be the Avatar of an Egyptian God.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Honestly, I'd prefer it if they dropped the whole Egyptian God nonsense and focused more on his mental issues instead.

Edited by Forenperser on Dec 14th 2018 at 9:37:16 PM

Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% Scandinavian

I don't really consider Moon Knight to be an example of Mighty Whitey — for one thing, Khonshu doesn't choose him because he's the best at anything, he chooses Marc because, well, Marc is there and dying and there really were no other choices for Khonshu. Even then, Moon Knight doesn't really have any "powers" per se — sometimes it was said that his strength increased when the moon was full, but that was quickly dropped. He's basically just Batman with DID, powers-wise.

Edited by alliterator on Dec 14th 2018 at 12:43:08 PM

Still you know there’s gonna be a bunch of people claiming he’s one.

Without the Egyptian mythology it just be about a crazy guy. Khonshu gives Moon Knight some pizzaz to go with his insanity.

Plus it creates the underlying question of “are the God’s real or is Mark really just insane?”

Edited by slimcoder on Dec 14th 2018 at 12:51:01 PM

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Well, the people who are living in Egypt today aren't really all that related to the people who used to live in Egypt when the whole Pharao and gods thing was going on. You know how it is, war, movement of people aso. Hence my idea to make Moonknight the product of many cultures.

Make it a Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane affair, with just enough evidence to point it either way, Bernard Cornwell-style.

As for race, why not just make him a descendant of the ptolomiac (I really hope that's spelled right) dynasty? Which also explains why Egyptian God person chose him as a vessel.