Techbro Lex Luthor is the Lex Luthor we deserve
Casting for James Gunn’s Superman: Legacy is on the transfer! Whereas Clark Kent and Lois Lane actors David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan had been confirmed in June, the previous week alone has seen casting information for the Every day Planet’s Jimmy Olsen, Lex Corp’s Eve Teschmacher, a villainous version of the superhero the Engineer, and, in fact, Lex Luthor himself. Nicholas Hoult, Variety reports, is in talks to play Superman’s archenemy.
And whereas we wouldn’t wish to typecast Hoult, precisely, a selection of the Mad Max: Fury Street, Renfield, and X-Males: First Class actor does appear to level at a sure tackle Luthor. A take first dropped at cinema by Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Daybreak of Justice.
A take that transforms Lex Luthor into an unstoppable, assholish tech billionaire.
Picture: Warner Bros.
There are two sides to Lex Luthor: The unflappable industrialist who’d run for president simply to piss Superman off, and the megalomaniacal mad scientist, who’d throw his presidency away by dosing himself with kryptonite-laced Venom, making out with Amanda Waller, and slicing a cope with a god of fascism for a Superman-battling mechsuit.
Nicholas Hoult has the vary to play that spectrum — between straight-laced nerd (Hank McCoy), twitchy beta male (Nux the Conflict Boy), and entitled mania (Emperor Peter III of Russia). And he’s bought the boyish construct to play a person who bought a lot energy so younger that he by no means fairly needed to develop up. All qualities you would additionally pin to Jesse Eisenberg and his Lex Luthor.
Snyder’s Batman v Superman, for all its flaws, acknowledged that the evil, manic billionaire of the fashionable age wasn’t a Gordon Gecko sort however a Mark Zuckerberg. And it’s exhausting to argue with that, when a few of Silicon Valley’s main technologists have spent the higher a part of every week embroiled in an online of firing, hiring, heart-emoji protesting, and subtweeting, all — probably, avowedly — as a result of a few of them suppose the others are getting a bit of too near possibly ending the world.
Techbro Lex Luthor is the Lex Luthor we deserve, and the Lex Luthor we’d like proper now — and hopefully it’s the one we’re getting in Superman: Legacy.
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