Jesse Eisenberg has made a name for himself playing fairly neurotic characters, whether it’s in The Social Network, Zombieland, or the Now You See Me movies. It’s not surprising then that fans were sceptical when the actor was cast as Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
He delivered a despicable take on Lex, but became defined by some peculiar moments, including a certain jar of Granny’s Peach Tea (well, “Pee”). Filmmaker Zack Snyder had big plans for Lex after his Arkham Asylum imprisonment, which was evident from his eventual escape and two very different post-credits scenes.
In Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Lex sent Deathstroke to kill Batman ahead of what was meant to be a much bigger role in the sequels to that team-up. In Joss Whedon’s version of Justice League, the stage was set for Lex to assemble the Injustice League.
Talking to Josh Horowitz, Snyder elaborated on why he cast Eisenberg as Lex. “I mean, we were looking for someone who could bring a different energy. You know, Lex has always been this sort of older, more corporate, bald-headed guy traditionally. And we wanted to do something that felt more contemporary, more tech-bro, more unpredictable.”
“Jesse just had this manic energy that felt right for the version we were doing. He came in and read, and it was electric. He just got it. He understood the weirdness, the danger, the intellect,” the Man of Steel helmer continued. “It wasn’t about making him likeable necessarily, it was about making him scary in a different way.”
At the time, DC fans had been fan-casting actors like Bryan Cranston and Daniel Day-Lewis as Luthor, so Eisenberg came as an unwanted surprise. There was a fair bit of unhappiness online, and it turns out Warner Bros. was similarly sceptical.
“Yeah, there was definitely some pushback. But I think once they saw the screen test, it was pretty clear,” Snyder recalled. “He had this intensity. And look, Lex is a genius, right? But he’s also unhinged. Jesse could play both sides of that.”
“The scene where he’s talking to Superman in the room with the painting, or the whole Africa sequence—he brought this chaotic vibe that I think was necessary for the story we were telling. It wasn’t the classic Gene Hackman Lex. It was a new interpretation.”
Snyder was aware that casting Eisenberg as Lex had received a mixed response and compared the backlash to Ben Affleck playing Batman, as well as complaints about the movie’s “tone [and] colour palette.”
However, as the filmmaker puts it, “We were swinging big. We weren’t trying to make something safe. We were trying to make something that felt mythic, operatic. But yeah, the internet had a lot to say. [Laughs] Some of it was fair, some of it was…less fair.”
Had the Justice League sequels become a reality, Lex would have used the Mother Boxes to bring Darkseid to Earth before convincing the villain to murder Lois Lane (so he could control the Man of Tomorrow with the Anti-Life Equation).
However, things would have gone horribly wrong for Lex when the broken Superman tracked him down and killed the villain with his heat vision.
You can hear more from Snyder in the player below.