Zack Snyder's First Plan for Batman v Superman's Jesse Eisenberg

Love or hate the Snyderverse — also known as the DCEU, starting with Man of Steel but kicking off in earnest with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice — people just can’t stop talking about it. The person who arguably can’t stop talking about it the most, of course, is Zack Snyder himself, which is why we continually learn new details about the films themselves. One of Snyder’s many controversial calls for Batman v Superman was the casting of Jesse Eisenberg as a young, hyperactive, Mark Zuckerberg-ish Lex Luthor with hair, rather than the middle-aged, bald businessman we’d seen from the likes of Gene Hackman and Kevin Spacey.

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As it turns out, Snyder originally planned for a more conventional Lex, and had a different role in mind for Eisenberg — that of Jimmy Olsen. Who doesn’t remember Jimmy Olsen in Batman v. Superman? Most people who saw it in the theaters, probably, as he isn’t named onscreen and gets unceremoniously killed off while escorting Lois Lane in Africa. Evidently he has no signal watch for Superman in this reality. In the R-rated extended edition, which is really the only version of Batman v. Superman you need to see, he does introduce himself.

The Original Reason Jimmy Died In Batman V Superman

Snyder realized early on that he wasn’t going to have much room in the story for Jimmy Olsen to play a significant part, so he thought he could use him to play with audience expectations. He thought that if someone famous and familiar played Jimmy, nobody would expect him to die, so it would have been a bigger shock when he did.

“I thought, if it were Jesse Eisenberg and he got out and he goes, ‘I’m Jimmy Olsen,’ you’d be like, oh my God, we’re gonna have Jimmy Olsen in the whole movie, right?’” Snyder revealed to EW. “And then if he got shot, you’d just be like, ‘What!? You can’t do that.’”

Snyder explained his point to Eisenberg, and as he watched Eisenberg overthinking the role out loud, it occurred to him that the actor could make for an interesting, new version of Lex Luthor instead. Michael Cassidy wound up playing the Olsen role, and The OC actor doesn’t exactly fit the bill of a familiar star on Eisenberg’s level. In the end, the only discussion surrounding the character was that there seemed to be little point in introducing the him, not really telling anyone it was Jimmy Olsen, and then killing him off immediately.

The Classic Movie Trope The Jimmy Twist Evoked

Nowadays, superhero movie fans and others freak out about the idea of spoilers, but that wasn’t always the case — movies used to run in continuous sequence, and it wasn’t uncommon for viewers to arrive during the movie and stay for the part they missed. Alfred Hitchcock helped to change the game, however, when he insisted that audiences for Psycho would not be seated after the movie began, the first such movie in the U.S. to ever require this. The reason? So they’d be suitably shocked and surprised when Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane, who is seemingly set up to be the lead character of the story, is suddenly stabbed to death in the shower. That’s precisely the sort of surprise Snyder was hoping to evoke with Eisenberg.

Thanks to contractual credits placement that is often based on screen time, it’s easier to figure out nowadays who lives and who dies, but Scream repeated the classic trick by killing off Drew Barrymore in its opening credits. Neve Campbell was not pushed in marketing as the female lead, and the initial poster featured a generic woman screaming who wasn’t immediately recognizable as any particular actress. The Scream franchise promptly turned it into a trope, killing off a name actor at the beginning of most subsequent installments. The recent Scary Movie reboot, however, managed to bring back the surprise by reversing the trope, with Teyana Taylor actually defeating Ghostface in the intro, only to have the scene be revealed as a movie within the movie.

Would the Original Jimmy Olson Trick Have Even Worked?

The cast of Batman v. Superman is so overstuffed with big names that audiences probably wouldn’t have guessed who would live and die. Jason Momoa was announced as Aquaman early in the process only for his final role to be in a brief online video, and Scoot McNairy’s exploding wheelchair scene was designed to catch people off guard. So, with so much else going on, would audiences have been moved by the trick? Probably not. From Man of Steel onward, one of the biggest knocks against the Snyderverse was its casual attitude towards human life in general, with Superman and Zod’s fight arguably causing mass casualties in Metropolis. Batman v. Superman pushes back on that somewhat, by having Bruce Wayne angered by the destruction in Metropolis, and commentators making clear that the area where the heroes are fighting Doomsday has been evacuated.

Yet, even in trying to address the criticism, the movie still angered some fans by having Batman fire machine guns from the Batmobile, apparently not caring if they kill anyone. Batman’s arc is one towards less violence and anger by movie’s end, but many viewers still felt he should never have been as cavalier towards human life at any point, and that superhero movies should be aspirational rather than dark and death-ridden.

That said, if Eisenberg’s hypothetical casting as Jimmy had led to someone like Bryan Cranston playing Luthor instead, it might have been a more popular choice. But it wouldn’t have stopped fans from ragging on Batman v. Superman‘s “Martha” moment, as they did and still do. Eisenberg, for his part, claims that playing Luthor hurt his career, so he might have been happier, at least.