It’s a common belief among comic-enjoyers that, when judging the movie adaptations of characters, comic-accuracy is of the utmost importance. I believe that, just as we see in various comic runs, movie adaptations should allow filmmakers to have creative freedom and bring something new to the characters. If we confine these characters to their comic portrayals, there will be a lack of development and change. Anyone that reads comics knows characters and their stories change and develop across runs, as different writers and artists bring different concepts and views on characters. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but it often leads to the creation of characters that people know and love.
The “Moon Knight” series is a great example of inaccurate adaptations that were better for it. “Moon Knight” is a lesser-known Marvel character, meaning it was easier for people to overlook the inaccuracies or changed traits of the characters. However, some fans of the “Moon Knight” comics didn’t appreciate the changes made. I will mostly refer to the 2016 Lemire and Smallwood comic run of “Moon Knight,” as this is the one most similar to the show. In these comics, we follow Marc Spector, a former Marine, mercenary and the fist of Khonshu. Marc has several alternate personalities, including Steven Grant, who is a millionaire playboy in the comics. While he is normally a side character to Marc, he gets much more screentime in the show. In the TV series, he is a shy British guy who is obsessed with Ancient Egypt and works in a museum gift shop. Steven is kind, quiet, scared and a push-over—very different from his character in the comics.
The story itself is very different, with some important changes made. A big one is the cause of Marc’s Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). In the comics, Marc develops DID after witnessing a Nazi, who is masquerading as a Jew, torture a Jewish man. Marc’s Jewishness plays a much stronger role in the comics as opposed to the show, where it is only shown in subtle ways. Throughout the series, Marc’s complicated relationship with Judaism is an integral part of his character, seeing as in the comics, it played a huge part in his development of DID. It seems they tried to maintain his complex feelings, despite having changed the origin story of his disorder. Some people are unhappy about the changes made, believing they erased a crucial part of Marc’s identity. I would argue they kept the core of his Jewishness and complicated relationship to it, despite the changes made to the character and story. It seems they favored realism (for a Marvel series), wanting to focus on the struggle with this complex disorder. They chose to create a plot in which Marc developed DID due to abuse, a common cause of the disorder, thus adding more realism to it.
Another important aspect of the Moon Knight comics is the confusing nature of them. The reader isn’t able to fully know what is real or not, as we are put into Marc’s mind. This interesting approach is utilized greatly in the television series as well, despite being done differently. In the comics, the scene may switch without warning, and neither the reader nor Marc knows where he is or what’s going on. A strong component of this is the references made by other characters implying Marc has been in a mental hospital and is imagining his life as Moon Knight. We are meant to question if any of Marc’s life as Moon Knight is real. This is done in an entirely different way from the Lemire run, where we are introduced to Marc in a mental hospital. In the series, we are introduced to Steven, and then Marc. Then, in the second to last episode, we see Marc in a mental hospital. All the other characters and events we have seen up until this point are implied to be a figment of Marc’s imagination due to his disorder. We are told Marc has always been in this hospital and that Moon Knight is not real, but something Marc created to cope, like in the comics. They went about this concept in a different way, but still managed to create the same feelings of confusion and bewilderment in a different medium.
Not everybody can be pleased, of course, as there are people who want their characters to be done justice. For them, this may mean being accurate to the comics, but I would argue that changing the medium used to express this character may come with changes to said character. I think that as long as the core features are maintained, which in this case are Marc’s disorder, main backstory and powers, you can expand characters without confining them to what others have created. In my opinion, the characters were enhanced greatly, and this adaptation of them was creative and new. I really enjoyed the focus on Steven initially, as it showed his disorder in a way not seen before. It created a world in which we could explore Marc’s alteration on a deeper level, connecting with Steven and understanding the confusion and daily struggles he has. It made for a much more interesting character, as in the comics he’s rather surface level, and I would argue we don’t need another rich playboy character in the MCU. They managed to create another layer of the story by having two very engaging and opposite characters coming from the same back story. To give creators the freedom to make the characters their own, is to give viewers the opportunity to experience their favorite characters in a new way.