You Can’t Always Get What You Want, And That’s Okay: Jesse Eisenberg Cast As Luthor In Batman Vs. Superman

So by now you’ve probably heard: Zack Snyder has cast Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor in Batman Vs. Superman.

Sure, he also cast Jeremy Irons as Alfred Pennyworth – my co-Editor Amanda just said, “Yes!” when she heard that casting choice – but nobody’s panties are in a twist over Jeremy Irons. No, half the Internet has gone berserk over the idea of dorky Columbus from Zombieland playing Superman’s arch-nemesis. Of course, this is the same Internet that threw a rod when Superman killed a guy at the end of Man of Steel, and is completely missing the awesome possibilities that that choice opens up vis-a-vis Jesse Eisenberg, but that’s not the point right now.

The point is that, even though I am personally disappointed – when the botched report that Bryan Cranston was cast came out last year, I was as excited as anyone else, as I think he’d be a killer Luthor – I think that Eisenberg actually could be a good and interesting choice to play Lex Luthor.

It all depends on which Lex Luthor we’re talking about here… and I’m guessing it’s not one we’ve ever seen before.

Because what people tend to forget is that there is more than one Lex Luthor. When he was first introduced in 1940, he was an evil genius (with a full head of hair) who was plotting to pit two European nations against each other to consolidate his control over the continent. From his floating dirigible city. Yeah, I don’t know how the character became a classic either, but then again, Wolverine was originally supposed to be an actual mutated wolverine, so you can’t count on how any character is gonna evolve from his original incarnation.

By 1960, Luthor had changed from an evil, conquering villain to a genius young scientist dabbling in forces no human should understand, when Superboy extinguishes a fire in his lab that makes Luthor go bald and turn his scientific skills toward destroying Superman. On would think that if he had turned those skills toward curing baldness, he’d be a lot less sexually frustrated, and he would earn enough billions of dollars from grateful comb-over cases to be able to write Superman a check big enough to make him fuck off into outer space, but what the hell, it was the 60s.

After Crisis On Infinite Earths, John Byrne changed Luthor from an armored criminal mastermind who palled around with Brainiac into a corrupt businessman. As the owner of LexCorp, Luthor uses his fortune first to actually write that fuck-off check, and then to research ways to destroy Superman after Superman turns down his offer, making Superman the one person in the world that money, yachts and cocaine can’t corrupt or buy off.

The point is that there is no one Lex Luthor (and I’m not even counting the version from the 1978 movie whose “master plan” involved a crooked real estate deal. If that guy had made it into the comics and been allowed to evolve, Lex Luthor would be starring in 2 a.m. infomercials shilling house-flipping seminars right now), and that Luthor has changed over the years to match the concept of evil and darkness that plague America at that time.

That dude in the dirigible city trying to seize control of Europe in the early 1940s? Slap a toothbrush moustache on him and he sounds a lot like Adolf Hitler. A mad scientist in the early 60s, when kids were taught to Duck and Cover (probably because telling them to put their heads between their legs to kiss their asses goodbye would have been unseemly in Ike’s America), playing with forces beyond his understanding, and who might come up with something that can destroy the guardian of Truth, Justice and The American Way? Sounds a lot like Robert Oppenheimer, who led the Manhattan Project and the original nuclear Trinity Test, where some physicists thought that the bomb might light the atmosphere on fire and kill the planet. And a corrupt CEO with the means and lack of morality to buy whatever power he wants (the man was elected President of The United States in the late 90s, for Christ’s sake) regardless of the cost to the people around him and who count on him for employment? That’s a boogeyman for the 80s and 90s if ever there was one.

So what’s the perfect template for an arch-villain in 2013? Well, it might be a guy who fucks his friends out of their idea to build a multi-billion dollar company, and who then uses that company to get people to share their darkest secrets with him, often without their knowledge or consent, and who then uses that information to pad his own pockets by selling it (or giving it away – Hi, NSA!) to whoever can foot the bill, whether they have the people’s best interests at heart or not.

That’s right: a perfect candidate for being the face of evil in the early 21st century is Mark Zuckerberg. And Jesse Eisenberg has already played that guy. He played him so well that he was nominated for an Oscar for doing it. Besides, Eisenberg has shown some skill at playing genre stuff before – there’s the aforementioned Zombieland, which was awesome, and he’s done a couple of crime flicks that were all right.

And besides, look at it this way: if I’m right about why Eisenberg was cast, it means that we’re gonna see Lex Luthor as Mark Zuckerburg, who we all want to see take a punch in the mouth. And if you’re pissed about Eisenberg being cast, well, that’s two strikes against this version of Luthor, who after all, is a bad guy who we’re supposed to want to see take a savage beating. Which means that this version of Luthor is two-thirds of the way toward working without  anyone having shot a single frame of film!

And while I still would have liked to have seen Bryan Cranston play the part, it really wouldn’t have worked. After all: does anyone really believe that Superman could defeat Walter White? I mean, yeah, it’s Superman… but Superman’s no Gus Fring, and look how that turned out.

(Heisenburg not Eisenburg picture via Caligula- on Reddit)