By When it comes to screen portrayals, Superman’s arch nemesis Lex Luthor has never really been particularly imposing.
Gene Hackman played him with a far more comedic take than the comics, Kevin Spacey made him into a smarmy opportunist, and Jesse Eisenberg played him as a twitchy tech nerd.
Contrast that with TV incarnations which have been far more interesting – from Clancy Brown’s voice in the various 1990s animated shows to Michael Rosenbaum in “Smallville,” John Shea in “Lois & Clark,” and Jon Cryer in “Supergirl”.
The just finished “Superman & Lois” series had Michael Cudlitz taking on the role as a genuinely dangerous, revenge-fueled thug who has the upper hand right up until the end.
With James Gunn’s new “Superman” film though, the work is going back to the comics with Gunn telling Happy Sad Confused that this will be a new kind of Superman not on the big screen before:
“I don’t think we’ve ever seen the big science fiction Silver Age Superman aspects that we have in our movie. We’ve never seen…you’ll see when the movie comes out, but we’ve never seen this specific part of Superman’s life.”
That includes Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor who will be much more akin to the dangerous, intelligent villain of the comics:
“I don’t think we’ve ever seen the Lex that [Nicolas Hoult] is. Nic is imposing. You go, ‘Oh, f—, poor Superman.’ That’s the thing we never see, not in film. Sometimes in the comics you go, ‘Oh, Superman is f—ed because Lex is so smart and so good at what he’s doing’ but in the movies, you’re going, ‘Lex is about to get f—ed.’ We’ve got a big old Superman and a pretty tall Lex too. You see now where Lex is, he’s not the person you want to have against you.”
Frank Grillo meanwhile, who co-stars in the film, tells KristianHarloff that star David Corenswet brings with him something old school that “Man of Steel” actor Henry Cavill didn’t quite have:
“Henry Cavill, beautiful dude. I mean, God touched him on the shoulder and said, ‘I’m going to make you handsome’. But with David, there’s something very Christopher Reeve about him. He’s got a stoicism. There’s a seriousness.
First of all, I’m 5’10. The guy stepped out from behind the curtain with the suit on, I was like, ‘Oh my, God! You are Superman!’. He encompasses this aura.
Superman to me was never morally derelict. Superman stood for something. He was steadfast. He was a naivete and a vulnerability about him – when I was watching Superman as a kid. And there’s something about this guy. I don’t know if I can articulate it but I was like, ‘Oh, this guy is Superman. He’s Superman’.”
The comments come as Grace Randolph is reporting that the film’s trailer is being shown to press the week of December 16th and so likely won’t be going online until after that – meaning it likely won’t hit until just a few days before Christmas.
“Superman” opens in cinemas July 2025.
The post Gunn’s “Superman” Gets An Imposing Lex appeared first on Dark Horizons.
