Goddammit, I am not going to be framed as saying that Lois Lane is "expendable" in any way, nor that I am equating Lex's importance with hers. My whole argument is how IMPORTANT both characters are, Lois especially so.
Okay, we're talking past each other. First off, I'm not arguing here. I'm not angry or confrontational -- this is just idle chat about a trivial subject. I'm certainly not trying to "frame" you. Maybe I chose my words poorly, but it's not worth making a fuss over.
As for your other comments, I'm not sure why you keep making the idea of a "debut" film central to your argument. So because it's the first movie in what's hoped to be a series, it makes sense to withhold your best stuff for the anticipated sequels? Sounds like a good way to find yourself with no sequels at all, to me.
If you're saying that Lex Luthor automatically equals "best stuff," I direct you to
Superman IV, the first season of
Superboy,
Batman v Superman, and the most recent few episodes of
Superman & Lois. "Best stuff" isn't about what characters you use, it's about how well you tell your story, regardless of who's in it.
More to the point, there's more than one kind of "best stuff." You can tell a solid introductory story in your first movie and still leave room for a buildup to other things if you get the chance. Adapting a long-running series means picking and choosing what parts to focus on in a given installment. And since there have been multiple Superman adaptations, it's good if they make different choices from one another on how to approach their first installments.
I mean, let's look at Luthor's counterpart, the Joker. He wasn't in the '40s serials. He was one of four equal villains in the '66 film. He was the sole villain in the first film of the Burton/Schumacher series, and not in any of the others. He was saved for the second film of the Nolan series. His DCEU incarnation wasn't in Batman's debut film there, but in a separate film altogether. And he was only hinted at in the first Reeves film. Different approaches for different reboots. What's wrong with that?
Especially given Superman's frustratingly problematic record on the big screen, I think it makes sense to make Superman: Legacy the absolute best it can possibly be, right out of the gate. That means using your best storytelling ingredients, and when it comes to Superman villains, that means Lex Luthor.
See above. If ingredients determined quality, everyone who followed the same recipe would produce equally good results, which is obviously not true. It's the execution that matters. Remember Gus Van Sant's
Psycho remake? A word-for-word, shot-for-shot recreation of Hitchcock's version, with the exact same ingredients, but the execution was vastly worse.
A good chef can produce a satisfying meal with whatever ingredients they're given. And it's not bad to experiment with new combinations.
And from what's been announced it sounds like they're going with a Superman who's already been established, so it makes sense Lex would be involved.
All the more reason that it's odd to have such a young Luthor. Although he's only about 3 years older than the new Superman, so maybe theyr'e going with the childhood-friends backstory? That could be interesting.
