Ethan Hawke Shares A Fascinating Insight Into His Moon Knight Villain
"Moon Knight" is set to deliver a brand new superhero into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with "Star Wars" and "Dune" star Oscar Isaac leading the impressive cast as the titular white-robed vigilante. When he's not leaping around rooftops and communing with ancient gods, Marc Spector lives some interesting lives — because he has Dissociative Identity Disorder. The hero has another personality, Steven Grant, who is completely unaware of his condition — nor does he know about becoming Moon Knight and working for Khonshu, the God of the Moon. Grant is clearly the audience's escort into this strange new world of gods and monsters, and it looks like it's going to be a wild ride.
The hero doesn't just have to deal with his own mental illness, there's also an intriguing villain on the horizon: Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke). It's not quite clear what Harrow's motivations are, but he has already amassed a devout group of followers by the time the series kicks off. Hawke has circled a few superhero roles in his time, even coming close to playing Bruce Wayne in "Batman Forever" as well as the Sorcerer Supreme himself in 2016's "Doctor Strange." So it's a big deal that he's finally joined the MCU.
Hawke recently opened up about his "Moon Knight" villain, and why he was so drawn to the project in the first place.
Ethan Hawke took a unique approach with Arthur Harrow
When speaking at a "Moon Knight" press conference, Ethan Hawke opened up about how the series flips the stereotypical dynamic between the hero and villain (via Screen Rant)."The history of movies are paved with storytellers using mental illness as a building block for the villain. I mean, there's countless stories of mentally ill villains, and we have a mentally ill hero," Hawke said. "And that's fascinating because we've now inverted the whole process. And so now as the antagonist, I can't be crazy because the hero's crazy."
The star explained that this forced him to find "a sane lunatic or a sane malevolent force" as a way of balancing with Oscar Isaac's hero. Hawke also praised director Mohamed Diab for approaching Moon Knight by "embracing his mental illness as a way to create an unreliable narrator." He added, "Once you've broken the prism of reality, everything that the audience is seeing is from a skewed point of view. And that's really interesting for the villain because am I even being seen as I am?"
It's a fair point. Is Harrow a villain simply because Marc and Steven believe he is, or has Khonshu's influence got the better of the hero? It's clearly something the series will explore in each episode, and it'll be interesting to see whether Hawke's character appears in future shows or movies further down the line.