Superman (casting, rumors, pix till release)

[Admiral Buzzkill]

The important thing to the story is determining exactly how the villain challenges the hero as an individual - not whether they're going to blow up the world or how, but basically how the two get under one another's skin so to speak.

In that regard, there isn't another established Superman villain who comes close to the modern versions of Luthor. Ignoring the whole you-made-me-bald nonsense, Lex's motivations for opposing Superman range from the completely narcissistic to the rational all the way to a twisted sense of responsibility to oppose what he believes is a public danger.

 

[Greg Cox]

Yes, Clark has a few other villains, but the plain and simple fact is that a general audience is gonna know who Lex Luthor is. No one but comic book fans know who Zod, Brainiac, Metallo, are....

Actually, thanks to Superman 2, Zod is probably at least as famous as Luthor to non-comic book fans.

.

Zod and Brainiac and the others have also been popularized by the various animated shows, not to mention ten years of SMALLVILLE.

Trust me, my CW-watching niece, who has never read a comic book in her life, knows who Zod and Brainiac are now.

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

Does she say, the guy from Buffy and the guy from Dead like Me? well maybe not the latter.

 

[Greg Cox]

Does she say, the guy from Buffy and the guy from Dead like Me? well maybe not the latter.

Nah, I think BUFFY was before her time . . ..

 

[Captaindemotion]

You need Lex as much as you need Lois in a Superman movie.

Do you? Not every Batman movie features the Joker. We've had two successful Iron Man movies without the Mandarin. Lex Luthor is not Superman's only foe. It's just that the live-action Superman movies to date haven't been very flexible in their choice of villains. Just because something has been done repetitively in the past, that doesn't mean it needs to be done.

And the recent Sherlock Holmes movie managed quite well without Moriarty.

 

[Christopher]

And the recent Sherlock Holmes movie managed quite well without Moriarty.

Except that

Spoiler: Sherlock Holmes

it did set up Moriarty as the unseen mastermind behind its events.

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

Kind of hope that's where Lex's role fits in (if he does make it in) He is a criminal mastermind is he not? Not the main antagonist but a looming pain in Supes ass. Similar to BB and TDK with the use of the mob as secondary villains.

 

[A beaker full of death]

Lex is more than Superman's enemy. He is supporting character in Superman's cast, just like Jimmy Olsen and Perry White.

In some versions, yes, and prominently so in screen/TV adaptations and later comics that have been influenced by them. But it has not always been so. In the Golden and Silver Age comics, he was Superman's primary foe, like the Joker was for Batman, but he wasn't a "regular" cast member, just the most prominent member of the rogues' gallery. Luthor never appeared in the 1940s Fleischer cartoons. He wasn't in the 1948 Kirk Alyn serial, though he was in the 1950 serial. He never appeared in the George Reeves series. He was only an occasional guest villain in the 1988 Superboy series. He was a regular in the first season of Lois and Clark but was then dropped and only rarely reappeared. He was a prominent character in Superman: The Animated Series, but plenty of episodes got by without him.

So no, Luthor is not always portrayed as a core member of the ensemble on the same level as Lois or Jimmy. My whole point is that it depends on the version.

Would you make a Batman movie without Alfred or Commissioner Gordon?

Commissioner Gordon was hardly even there in the Tim Burton movies anyway. And not much better off in the Schumacher films.

It really bugs me when popular movie or tv versions supplant the popular conception of these characters (and ultimately change their portrayal even in the comic books themselves). And while I know that without this phenomenon Alfred would still be dead, there would be no Batgirl and I'd never have heard of Kryptonite, it still offends the purist in me.

Already people think that Kitty Pryde was one of the first X-Men, Sue Richards is a scientist and Captain America always wore a helmet.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Kind of hope that's where Lex's role fits in (if he does make it in) He is a criminal mastermind is he not? Not the main antagonist but a looming pain in Supes ass. Similar to BB and TDK with the use of the mob as secondary villains.

So he's not an evil real estate mogul?

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

I think he was a mad scientist first and then later became an industrialist.

 

[Christopher]

I think he was a mad scientist first and then later became an industrialist.

Yes, in the comics from the '40s through the '80s he was a scientific genius who used his brilliance for crime and for battling Superman. He actually became a somewhat sympathetic character, someone who could've done great good if he hadn't developed hatred and jealousy of Superman (or the belief that Superman's existence was a threat to humanity) and turned to crime in order to battle him. Then, when the continuity was restarted in '86 or thereabouts, Lex was reinterpreted as a corporate mogul who owned most of Metropolis and had all the best scientists on his payroll. Since then, he's increasingly been portrayed as a mix of both; for instance, in Superman: The Animated Series, Lex started out as the business mogul, but "Ghost in the Machine" established that he was actually a gifted scientist as well, and later in Justice League he was portrayed more along the classic evil genius/high-tech criminal lines, at least until he "reformed" and went into politics. And in the comics these days he's portrayed as both mogul and scientist, I believe.

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

So...I guess we're both right? Nerys and I that is.

 

[Aragorn]

Random unsubstantiated internet rumor of the day #1,143:

Edgar Ramirez (The Bourne Ultimatum, Che, Vantage Point) is being eyed for the still-unrevealed villain.

 

[Too Much Fun]

he was actually a gifted scientist as well, and later in Justice League he was portrayed more along the classic evil genius/high-tech criminal lines, at least until he "reformed" and went into politics. And in the comics these days he's portrayed as both mogul and scientist, I believe.

And yet, in the movies, he was repeatedly portrayed as being ambitious about real estate more than anything else, including science and politics. I wonder where that idea came from.

It was a cute running gag that lead to some funny lines for the Gene Hackman interpretation for the character, but bringing it back for the Kevin Spacey version was lame. I really hope that if and when Lex Luthor is depicted on the big screen again, we get a version more in line with the animated one.

The real estate angle is played out and I'd love to see a Luthor who poses a challenge for Superman partially because he protects himself well by convincingly setting himself up as a legitimate businessman. This arrangement always made the interaction between he and Superman more dynamic in animation.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

There was a long period in the comics where it was necessary for Superman to unambiguously win against Luthor and for Luthor to be seen as punished in (almost) every story. Once that requirement was disposed of, IMAO Luthor should never be definitively defeated - simply stymied or frustrated in a specific aim at any given moment. He ought to be as nearly equal to Superman by virtue of his differences as possible.

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

Random unsubstantiated internet rumor of the day #1,143:

Edgar Ramirez (The Bourne Ultimatum, Che, Vantage Point) is being eyed for the still-unrevealed villain.

Looks like he's scheduled to be in Wrath of the Titans too. If this is true, are we gonna have to prepare to put our kneepads on?

Oh and not in that way, coz you know, because of all the kneeling we'll have to do.

 

[Christopher]

And yet, in the movies, he was repeatedly portrayed as being ambitious about real estate more than anything else, including science and politics. I wonder where that idea came from.

It was a cute running gag that lead to some funny lines for the Gene Hackman interpretation for the character, but bringing it back for the Kevin Spacey version was lame.

In the Reeve films, I think it was really just the first two (which were written back-to-back as essentially a single 2-part story) where Lex was concerned with acquiring land. And I think that probably arose because it was a way to motivate his scheme to topple most of the West Coast into the ocean, which was probably picked because it was a big enough scheme to be worthy of Superman and because it touched on timely fears like nuclear weapons and the destructive potential of the San Andreas Fault. So they probably started with the villainous scheme and worked backward from there to come up with Luthor's justification for it. And his desire for a country to rule in S2 was just a continuation of that, as well as being a pretty standard trope (a character backing a potential world conqueror in exchange for being given a minor kingdom of his own). When Luthor returned in S4, as far as I recall, his goal was simply to kill Superman.

As for Superman Returns, bringing the "land grabbing" motivation back was just part of the movie's excessive imitation of the Donner films. So I wouldn't call it a running gag; it was something that was established as part of the character in the single work that encompasses Superman and Superman II (as scripted), and was then imitated by a single later work that was basically a very expensive fanfic.

 

[Captaindemotion]

On top of the Ramirez rumour, it's now been suggested that the excellent Michael Shannon, so good in Boardwalk Empire, may be up for a villainous role:

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/48995

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

I can see him as Lex.

But before Admiral Young pipes in...just a rumor for now.

 

[Aragorn]

Michael Shannon, without any superpowers, looks like he could take on a Kryptonion.

He can be Zod and Ramirez can be Brainiac.