Warning: This piece contains spoilers for Superman.
Pull out your party hats, DC fans, because James Gunn’s Superman film is now in theaters. The first film installment in the new DC Universe franchise is entering its opening weekend with mostly positive reviews, including an 8/10 from IGN’s Tom Jorgensen. After the previous DCEU flamed out at the box office and with critics, Gunn’s relaunched DCU is at least starting on the right foot. Yet although there’s plenty to praise, like the great cast, optimistic tone, and David Corenswet’s Clark Kent and Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois Lane having actual chemistry, the MVP of the film is Nicholas Hoult as perennial Superman nemesis Lex Luthor, who is a fantastic character both on the page and in Hoult’s performance.
Why is he such a standout? Because he’s petty as hell. James Gunn and co. understand that Luthor–as well as most supervillains, but him especially–should be petty people driven by emotional impulse instead of grandiose ideology. Unlike other recent comic book movie villains who the movie tries to give “a point” to, this Luthor stays true to the source material by being solely motivated by absolute contempt for Superman, as it should be. Let’s take a look at what other comic book films could learn from Superman’s Lex Luthor.
Drinking the Haterade
If there’s one trait of Lex Luthor’s that even your average person on the street would know, it’s that he hates Superman with every fiber of his being (and that he uses his brains to fight him). Even from the trailers, much of the social media discussion about Hoult’s Luthor was centered around how much of a “hater” he appeared to be. Luthor in the film is a man of immense power and influence, commanding resources on a global scale. But all of it is funnelled into a single goal, which is destroying Superman, both physically and in the court of public opinion. There is no greater agenda at play, nor does Lex try to conceal his motives with a faux-philosophical school of thought. He freely admits to Superman that he’s doing this all out of jealousy, and his actions back up his words.
Part of Luthor’s machinations involve shady dealings with the fictional nation of Boravia, providing weapons Boravia will use to invade and annex the neighboring country of Jarhanpur. Superman’s subsequent defense of Jarhanpur is an off-screen incident that sets the plot in motion. Although Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) discover that part of the deal would be Luthor getting half of Jarhanpur’s landmass for his own purposes, he tells Superman in the third act that this was all a means to an end, with his manipulating the Boravian conflict being a catalyst to getting governmental approval to kill Superman. He doesn’t care about further enriching himself or consolidating his power. He just wants that Kryptonian gone.
We see this with how much of his go-for-broke plan is spiteful and even somewhat self-defeating. He has an army of literal monkeys posting non-stop slander towards Superman on social media, he takes a massive financial loss on the Boravian arms deal so long as it furthers his “let me kill Superman” petition to the government, and he shows no indication he cares that Metropolis, including Luthorcorp headquarters, is destroyed by the dimensional rift caused by one of his pocket dimension portals so long as the catastrophe draws Superman into the open. Luthor’s hatred for Superman’s alien influence, lacking a moral or ideological justification, registers as pure, unadulterated xenophobia and personal anxiety made manifest in grand sci-fi schemes. This makes not just Luthor a better character, but Superman a better film.
Bad Guys Should Be Bad
Luthor’s pettiness results in him being more fun to watch as a bad guy, but it also makes him feel more human than he otherwise would be. A recurring issue with both heroes and villains for the past several years of comic book movies is many of them being driven by abstract ideals instead of anything concrete. This tendency left many of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase 4 heroes struggling to keep up with villainous counterparts that are more credibly motivated. If you strip fantastical stuff like giant monsters and pocket dimensions away from Luthor, people like him do exist in the real world – overly emotional men of power brimming with rage and devoid of empathy, railing against immigrants for no reason beyond their own personal hang-ups. This may not be relatable to much of the audience, but they’re most certainly recognizable.
Not that the occasional well-intentioned extremist can’t be great. Magneto’s backstory as a Holocaust survivor driving him to violent ends to protect mutantkind makes him one of Marvel’s most fascinating characters. Poison Ivy having an understandable hatred for humanity’s environmental destruction gives her femme fatale foundation more nuance. And at least in the MCU, Thanos having a philosophical rationale for his crusade helped turn him into one of the most iconic CBM villains of all time.
But just as often, flimsy attempts at that kind of character fall flat, like Orm from 2018’s Aquaman paying lip service to ocean pollution when it doesn’t really factor into the plot, Dar-Benn from The Marvels hating Carol Danvers for inadvertently destroying her home planet of Hala without giving us a reason to care about her beyond that, or even Zod from the last Superman reboot, Man of Steel, seemingly being intended as a tragic villain (because he was designed to be nothing but a warrior in service of Krypton even after its destruction), but never generating any pathos because of the film’s poor storytelling and dour tone.
Gunn and Hoult’s take on Luthor also stands in stark contrast to previous film iterations of the character. The Donnerverse Lex, played by Gene Hackman in the original Christopher Reeve films and Kevin Spacey in Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, was more obsessed with bizarre real estate schemes than Superman, who he hated more for interfering with his plans than on a visceral gut level. The DCEU’s Lex, played by Jesse Eisenberg, was an incoherent antagonist because he seemed to have four or five different motivations at once: a desire to keep metahumans in check (of which Superman was but one), issues with an abusive father, a vague fixation on God, and his hypocritical desire to manipulate alien technology even if he knows that it also heralds a coming apocalypse in Darkseid. Superman’s Lex goes back to basics and winds up being the best film version of the character for it.
Lex Luthor’s Pettiness in the Comics
Of course, Luthor being a petty antagonist has also been one of his most recurring traits in the comics. Luthor’s Silver Age origin story, first depicted in 1960’s Adventure Comics #271, revealed that Luthor knew Clark Kent when they were both teenagers living in Smallville. An accident caused by Luthor’s carelessness during an experiment results in his lab being set on fire, destroying not just his research but also his hair. Superman (then known as Superboy) saves Luthor’s life, but the latter blames him for his losses, beginning his lifelong obsession with the Man of Steel. The fact that Luthor’s crusade largely started because his own actions made him bald goes to show how irrational his hatred of Superman is. Although the film doesn’t use this origin story, Gunn sticks to the spirit of the source material with Luthor’s characterization.
There are many other examples from the comics of just how deranged Luthor’s thought process is. Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman (which Gunn said was one of his biggest inspirations for the film) famously features a page where Superman pleads with a Luthor on death row to use his final days to help humanity with his intellect. Luthor responds by spitting in Superman’s face. In Paul Cornell’s The Black Ring storyline, Luthor becomes all-powerful after being infused with energy from the Phantom Zone. He could use that power to create universal peace and happiness, and seems tempted by that idea, until he learns he’d also have to give up his desire to kill Superman, resulting in him losing the power completely. And one of the most famous memes about Luthor, an image from the 1978 children’s book The Super Dictionary that claims he stole 40 cakes “and that’s terrible,” was actually canonized in Superman #709, with a flashback to Clark and Luthor’s schoolboy days revealing that Lex stole 40 cakes from the school bake sale because his science fair project was rejected.
Gunn following these examples and delivering a classic take on Luthor who is human without being sympathetic helps the movie avoid any accidental “both sides” messaging, firmly planting the audience’s sympathies with Superman and his worldview. The Superman vs. Lex dynamic in both the comics and the film is pure id vs. ego, with Lex having no choice but to embrace his villainous tendencies to counteract Superman’s goodness. Although Lois Lane challenges Superman’s idealistic stance in the interview scene, the film comes down on Superman’s side by never making it seem like Luthor has a good reason for what he’s doing. The sole counterpoint–the reveal that Kal-El’s birth parents sent him to Earth on a mission to rule it–is completely rebuked by Clark’s conversation with Pa Kent (Pruitt Taylor Vince), who stresses that Clark’s selfless choices have made him a hero no matter what his birth parents intended.
Lex not understanding that, nor that his own choices are what lead to his ruin by the end of the film, makes him not just an ideal mirror-opposite to Superman, but an ideal model for other comic book movie villains going forward.
Carlos Morales writes novels, articles and Mass Effect essays. You can follow his fixations on Twitter.