Filmmaker Zack Snyder’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” is something of a divisive beast. Some elements were embraced from the get-go, like Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman.
Others were more of a sticking point, which was visibly seen with Jesse Eisenberg’s take on Lex Luthor. We didn’t get Gene Hackman’s genius conman, John Shea’s ruthless charmer, Jon Cryer’s unhinged supremacist, Clancy Brown’s overconfident mogul, or Michael Rosenbaum’s heady mix of daddy issues and betrayal.
This Lex Luthor was a long-haired, twitchy and kooky tech millionaire with verbal diarrhea, an approach that prompted a large online backlash and often sits high on lists of what’s wrong with the film. Speaking at the Sarajevo Film Festival (via Deadline) recently, Eisenberg discussed the poor reception to his character and how he took it to heart:
“I felt very personal about it. The writer, Chris Terrio, is a very serious writer, and he’s a very emotional person. He thought a lot about my character, and I thought a lot about my character too. I talked with my acting coach about the character a lot, about his backstory with his father and his emotional life – and then people hate me.”
Eisenberg did end up reprising the role in a cameo in the post-credits scene of “Justice League”. Asked if he would appear in a DC movie again, the actor doubts the opportunity will come but is open to the idea:
“I’d be shocked if I wound up in a DC movie, but it would be a pleasant shock. Listen, I’m not a comic book fan. To me, it was not playing a role that I’d envisioned since childhood. To me, it was a chance to play this great character that this great writer wrote, and I loved doing that.
So, to play it is a joy, and to not play it isn’t something that I’m going to be ashamed to tell my kids about because that is not an important genre in my life, even though I loved doing that movie.”
Warner Bros. Discovery currently seems to be closing down its various DC projects ahead of a ‘ten-year plan’ to turn DC into a Marvel-style mega franchise with Lex Luthor likely to turn up as a character at some point.
