It’s very easy to forget that Iron Man was viewed as a huge gamble at the time, with the upstart Marvel Studios risking it all on a $140 million blockbuster designed as the launchpad for an unprecedented shared cinematic mythology, one that starred a title hero who was hardly a household name, and a leading man who’d been written off as a self-destructive liability several times over.
In the end, Jon Favreau’s acclaimed adventure went down in the history books as one of the most important and influential studio movies in history, one that ended up changing the face of cinema forever for good measure. Oscar Isaac is setting his sights very high indeed, then, but he’s hoping that Moon Knight will have a similar sort of impact.
While it’s not exactly a like-for-like comparison between the two projects, the actor did admit during an interview with Hits Radio that he wanted the Disney Plus series to follow the template of introducing a brand new, complex, and flawed hero, albeit one that audiences would instantly take to their hearts.
“I think that was a real inspiration to be able to try to achieve something like what they did with that film, that Jon Favreau and Robert did with that movie, which was to create this whole new character, introduce him to the world, and make this indelible hero that you want to follow.”
The early reactions to Moon Knight have been hugely encouraging, and with five days to go until the premiere airs on Disney Plus, the hype train is gaining serious steam ahead of its final stop next Wednesday.