DC Cinematic Universe ( The James Gunn era)

Of course Lex doesn't have to be in every Superman story. Neither does Lois (he said grudgingly). But why bench your best players?

Again, I don't even think of Lex as a mere "villain" at this point. Superhero punching bags are a dime a dozen. Luthor is a central character in the core Superman story.

 

Why have the same starting lineup in every game? It's not "benching" if it's a whole series and the first movie is just the first inning.

And I disagree that Luthor is as central as Lois. Lois is on the same tier as Clark -- you can't do it without her, unless you're doing a Superboy story and have Lana in her place. But Lex is a step down from that in centrality. He's the primary villain, but he's one out of multiple villains.

An oddly narrow way of defining villainy. Surely villainy is in what they do, not what the hero does to them.

Sometimes more than others -- for instance, the radio series ran for a decade without ever using him, or any villain from the comics. He was never in the Fleischer cartoons either. Although it's true that he was the first comics villain to be adapted for another medium, in Atom Man vs. Superman.

Also, of course, Luthor wasn't in Man of Steel at all.

In the early comics, Luthor was just one recurring villain out of several, arguably second in prominence to the Ultra-Humanite. He didn't even get a first name until the fifties, when Superboy retconned him as Superboy's childhood friend. I guess it was around then that he was established as a central figure, but that was amplified when the Donner movie and the Byrne reboot included Luthor as a core part of Superman's origin story.

 

I'm not keen on this casting.

Hoult comes off too boyish and youthful for Lex Luthor, and I've seen Hoult's latest film. It would be a very Elseworlds version, and audiences need the definitive 80s corporate Lex Luthor finally.

Luthor is best played by a man in his 40s/50s. A Bradley Cooper type. Distance themselves from the Eisenberg mishap.

 

I didn't say, and would NEVER say, that Lex is as central as Lois. In fact, I specifically said, "He's an essential member of the Superman character ensemble, exceeded in importance only by Lois Lane and Clark himself."

I agree with you that Lois is on the same tier as Clark. If anything, she's MORE important than Clark to me personally.

But Lex is the third most essential character in the Superman mythos, IMO.

I'm well aware that Luthor has not always been as central to the Superman legend as he is now, but as you yourself have pointed out many times, stories such as these develop and are refined over time. I think you're spot on that it was the Reeve movies and the Byrne comics reboot that solidified Lex's preeminent status among Superman antagonists. Smallville probably contributed to it, as well.

I liked Eisenberg, though I realize that's very much a minority opinion. His eccentric performance brought some welcome color and energy to the otherwise dour proceedings.

 

I was responding to your "Neither does Lois [have to appear in every story]." I disagree that Lois is as expendable as Lex. I could accept a Superman debut movie that didn't have Lex Luthor in it. I'd object to the idea of a Superman debut movie that didn't have Lois in it.

And sometimes that means picking up bad habits, like the need to make every Sherlock Holmes movie be about Moriarty. Some traditions are worth breaking.

I don't question Luthor's importance; I just don't think that requires him being in the first installment in the series. The most important villain in the MCU to date was Thanos, and we didn't even get a glimpse of him until 4 years into the series. Not all gratification is instant.

 

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.

Look, my avatar is of different live-action iterations of Clark AND LOIS. (And one Lana, but I didn't create the image.) My sig quotes Lauren Winn's insightful observation that "Superman is inherently a love story. If it's not a love story, then revisit what you've written." I'm on record on this forum a million times about how important Lois Lane is to me, and to Superman stories.

My grudging statement that Lois doesn't have to appear in every Superman story is simple fact. There have, in fact, been numerous Superman stories over the years in which she is absent. But omitting Lois is NEVER to a story's benefit.

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. 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.

Fortunately, it appears that James Gunn concurs.

 

I'm interested in seeing what take on Luthor they'll use. Career criminal mastermind? Immoral Businessman? Mad Scientist? Boyhood chum of Clark? Jealous rival? Anti-Alien advocate?

 

I've like Hoult in most of the stuff I've seen him, I'm very curious to see what his Lex is like.
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.

 

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.

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?

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.

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.

 

That was my first thought. Is Smallville the only time we've seen that version of the characters' backstory onscreen?

 

Following this argument, because Kate Bosworth was a less-than-successful version, Lois Lane isn't among the franchise's "best stuff." These characters are bigger than any specific portrayal(s). It's clear you don't assign the same importance to Lex that I do, which is fine. Personally, I'm very glad he'll be featured in Legacy.

(BTW, if it wasn't clear in my post, I meant "framed" in the sense of framing an argument, not framing for a crime.)

The Superboy TV series had a variation on it. Clark and Lex attended the same college, and the series even adapted the Silver Age bit from the comics where Superboy inadvertently caused the loss of Lex's hair.

 

John Shea's portrayal of Luthor in Lois and Clark is hands down my favorite take on the character. It's a shame his performance is so often overlooked.

Charismatic, immoral businessman would be my pick. Middle-aged perhaps? I prefer Lex with a couple of years on Clark.

 

Shea was indeed great. Though I like almost all the live-action Lexes.

 

Spoiler

 

Please stop taking my quotes out of context. I meant what I said after that -- that the ingredients alone do not determine whether the results are good or bad.

Can we please stop now? I'm not interested in a fight. I'm just trying to say there's more than one possible approach that can work. I don't intend to pit them against each other to determine a "winner." I just want them all to be on the table for consideration. Yeah, maybe including Lex could work, but not including him could also work. Life is full of possibilities. I just want the full range of them to be acknowledged.

 

As already heavily rumored, Gunn has indeed cast Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen. In fresher character/casting news, Sara Sampaio has also been added as Eve Teschmacher.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/m...-casts-skyler-gisondo-jimmy-olsen-1235645745/

So over the past two days, the score is three actual Superman characters, zero DC also-rans. Things are definitely looking up.

 

Looks like the Redheaded League will finally be happy.

 

As a redhead I don't care as long he can do the job.

 

The character of Eve Teschmacher has had a weird trajectory. She was created for the 1978 movie and appeared only in it and its sequel, then nowhere else for the next 20 years. But then versions of her started appearing infrequently in the comics from 2000 onward, then Tess Mercer in Smallville was loosely based on her (but was later retconned into being a version of Lena Luthor), then a new version of Eve was introduced in Supergirl 36 years after her previous screen appearance and became a major recurring character. And now her appearance in this movie is being announced as if she were a familiar core Superman character as much as Jimmy Olsen.

It's weird how some characters created for comic-book movies/TV take off and get reused in other adaptations, while others are forgotten. Eve Teschmacher gets a new lease on life, Phil Coulson gets his own TV spinoff, Harley Quinn has become so big that the Joker and Batman are supporting characters in her star vehicles, and of course Jimmy Olsen and Perry White originated on radio. But aside from the occasional use of the "Jack Napier" name for the Joker, we've never seen a new version of any of the characters created for the Burton Batman movies, like Alexander Knox (though the original had a cameo in the Arrowverse Crisis), Carl Grissom, Bob the Goon, Detective Eckhardt (though he was basically a more corrupt Bullock), or Max Shreck. Nor have we ever gotten alternate versions (outside Arrowverse doppelgangers) for most of the characters introduced in the 1990 The Flash TV series like Julio Mendez, Megan Lockhart, Captain Garfield, Officers Murphy & Bellows, Fosnight the informant, etc. (although it looks like Richard Belzer's TV-reporter character Joe Kline has a comics counterpart in a story written by the show's creators).

 

I think Chloe Sullivan probably would have popped up in another Superman adaption post-Smallville (different actress, different/altered backstory such as when Chloe appeared in the comics towards the end of Smallville's TV run), but the Allison Mack cult situation and how she originated the character on Smallville probably have ensured the character never will appear again in anything.