Anna Daniels
Remember when Jesse Eisenberg had the time of his life playing a wacky goofball version of Lex Luthor? The type of Lex Luthor who puts a jar of piss on someone’s desk and then blows them up? The type of Lex Luthor who offers people Jolly Ranchers by forcing them into their mouths for some reason? Well, he’d be perfectly happy to do all that again. And honestly, we as a society should just let him at this point.
Jesse Eisenberg made his supervillain debut in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, playing a giddy version of Lex Luthor that confused nearly everyone. When Eisenberg’s casting was first announced, I thought it was inspired, and assumed he’d be playing Luthor in the same fashion that he played another morally corrupt rich guy – Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. Instead, Eisenberg appeared to be drawing inspiration from Jim Carrey’s Riddler performance in Batman Forever, going wayyyy over-the-top. Like it or not, it was certainly a memorable performance.
It seems very unlikely that we’ll ever see Eisenberg as Luthor again at this point, but if someone wanted to offer the actor the gig, he’d take it. “Oh yeah, I would very much like to [play Lex Luthor again] because it’s such a cool character,” Eisenberg told Comicbook.com. “Playing a villain in a superhero movie is the fun part. The good guys are fine, but the villains are the fun part because they get to be a little bit more flamboyant. Of course, the hero gets to, you know, survive. But, the villain has all the funny lines. I don’t know about the first part, but the second part is something that I could definitely be involved in, sure.”
Eisenberg isn’t wrong. People tend to gravitate more towards a colorful villain than a hero – after all, we just had an entire movie about the Joker, and it won Joaquin Phoenix an Oscar. Still, the DCEU is in such a weird state right now that it’s hard to know where things stand. Batman is getting a reboot in the form of The Batman, and while Aquaman and Wonder Woman both have sequels on the horizon, there’s no movement on a new Superman movie – which is where you’d expect Eisenberg’s Luthor to turn up if he was coming back. We’ll have to just make do with what we already have, like moments where Eisenberg’s Luthor says “The red capes are coming!” in a sing-songy voice as we all die a little inside.
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