Superman’s Lex Luthor Is the Most Comic Accurate Villain Ever

Superman is here and it has definitely met many of the expectations that were set for it. It has everything you could want from a summer blockbuster movie, and its biggest strength is its characters. David Corenswet’s Superman is amazing, capturing the human side of Clark Kent and the hopeful heroism of Superman. Rachel Brosnahan really brings Lois Lane to life, capturing the character’s gumption and intelligence. Skyler Gisondo’s Jimmy Olsen is great in every scene he’s in, as are Edi Gathegi’s Mister Terrific and Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner. Character has always been a strength for James Gunn, and the movie lives and dies by just how great everyone is written, acted, and directed. All of them are varying degrees of comic accurate, but there’s one character who I would say is not only perfectly comic accurate but also the most comic accurate villain in the history of superhero movies — Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor.

Superhero movies, especially Marvel Cinematic Universe ones, have had a lot of problems over the years. While there are definitely some great supervillains in the MCU and beyond, calling them comic accurate is a road too far for the most part. Even the ones who are great, like Thanos, are nowhere who they were in the comics. Superman‘s Lex Luthor is the perfect distillation of who Lex Luthor is in the comics. Lex Luthor is one of the greatest DC characters, and this new cinematic version captures all of that greatness and puts it right up on screen.

SPOILER ALERT — This Article Will Contain Spoilers for Superman

Superman‘s Lex Luthor Stepped Out of the Comics in a Way No Other Movie Villain Has

In general, villains in superhero movies have had a tough time of things. One of the great things about superhero comics is that the villains can get as much development as the heroes. Many villains have become extremely complex, going beyond the evil plans and monstrous actions to create fully realized characters. This is much harder to do in superhero movies. Superhero movies don’t have enough time to build the villain and they aren’t the focus of the movie. Superhero movies are more about building the heroes instead of the villains, and this makes sense. The heroes have their name on the posters, so they should get the lion’s share of the focus. However, this has always led to some very disappointing villains. Superman‘s Lex Luthor is able to truly capture who the villain is in the comics. Gunn’s Lex combines the corporate Lex of the post-Crisis DC Universe with the mad scientist of the Silver Age. He most reminds me of Lex Luthor from Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing run. Lex only appeared in one issue of the book — Swamp Thing (Vol. 2) #52 — where the government pays him for his services to stop Swamp Thing’s rampage through Gotham. Lex is able to figure out how to blast Swamp Thing’s consciousness away in seconds. This is the kind of science that Superman‘s Lex uses as well, things that no one would have thought of or had the gall to do.

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But that’s not all. The way he pushes Superman’s buttons — especially in the scene where Superman breaks into his office looking for Krypto — is text book comic Lex Luthor and reminds me of Luthor as President from the early ’00s. This version of Lex had to work with Superman, and he was always throwing shade in the Man of Steel’s direction. There’s also a smidgen of Grant Morrison JLA Lex in the movie as well. In that comic, Lex decides to use corporate tactics to destroy the League (in the classic “Rock of Ages”), which is exactly what Luthor does in the movie. He sees Superman as a rival company, creating a product to replace him, trying to get government funding, and engaging in corporate espionage style shenanigans to get Superman. His creation of Ultraman — a Superman clone — is lifted right out of post-Crisis Superman comics. All of these things are explicitly comic inspired, and when you enter his pocket universe (which could have destroyed the world if he got the math wrong) and learn that he’s created a black site prison/lab, it feels exactly like something you would see in a modern comic. In fact, it feels like All-Star Superman, where Lex teams up with Solaris the Tyrant Sun and endangers the Earth in order to destroy Superman once and for all. Gunn combed comic history for ideas about Lex, and brought them all to the screen. The arrogance, the pettiness, the charm, the way he’s unflappable when things are going his way and then a complete raging child when things are going against him are all vintage Lex.

Superman‘s Lex Luthor Shows Just How Great Comic Accurate Villains Can Be

Watching Superman, I was struck by how well James Gunn was able to take Superman comics and put them on the big screen, even with the changes made to the characters. This has always been a big strength of Gunn’s movies, and he shows just how great a truly comic accurate villain can be in a superhero movie. Superman‘s Lex Luthor stole so many scenes, bringing everything that comic Lex does to life. His final speech about why he hated Superman is lifted from All-Star Superman #5, where he’s interviewed by Clark Kent and tells him why Superman is a menace to humanity, and the way that you can tell that he’s talking about himself and how Superman makes him feel weak and lesser is poetry in motion, just like in the comic. This is perfect Lex Luthor, and it shows how much better Lex Luthor is than any other comic movie villains.

Lex Luthor is a complex character in the comics, and the movie is able to capture without spending all of the movie setting up who he is. Right from the beginning, you can see the comic Lex on the screen. The way Hoult plays the character, the mannerisms and the voice, are exactly what I picture and hear when I read Lex in the comics. A lot of times, aspects of comic book villains are left out of the movies because they’re “silly” or considered nonsensical, but Superman doesn’t do that at all. James Gunn used every aspect of Lex Luthor when he wrote the character and directed Nicholas Hoult to play him, and showed that you can take everything from the comics and put it on the screen. This version of Lex Luthor should make longtime Superman fans very happy, and will hopefully bring a whole new way of presenting villains in comic movies.

Superman is in theaters now.