Welcome to the fourth installment of “10 @ a Time: Batman v Superman.” Last week we talked about the continuing contrasts between Superman and Batman’s brands of justice (in the case of the latter, quite literally). We’ve had half an hour of good guys, so it’s time to see our film’s vision of villainy.
[For those playing the home game, we’re looking at the “Ultimate Edition” home video release; for today’s 10@T installment, we’re looking from 0:29:17 to 0:40:45.]
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| "Miss Teschmacher!" |
A lot of people really had a problem with Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of Lex Luthor, and so it may not surprise you to learn that I actually kind of liked it. I understand that there are shades of Mark Zuckerberg in Eisenberg’s Luthor, but I don’t think that’s accidental. Like Batman and Superman, Lex Luthor has always been something of a sliding signifier; he was a world conqueror in the 1940s, a small-town rival in the 1950s, a new-money titan in the 1990s, and so on. I think it makes sense, then, that well into the first quarter of the twenty-first century the apex of sinister human potential, then, wears the guise of social media and political savvy while still maintaining the two traits I feel are at the center of Lex Luthor – his abject hatred of that which is not human, and his smug sense of superiority over that which is.
Look, would I have wanted a version of Lex Luthor played by Bryan Cranston in all his snarling bald furor? Of course I would. It would have been amazing to see an actor of Cranston’s caliber seething over his hatred for “the alien,” but between Gene Hackman, Clancy Brown, and Kevin Spacey, that’s a Luthor we’ve seen several times before. However, there’s still enough recognizable that I think the core of the character remains unchanged. This isn’t, as some critics said, a Riddler disguised as a Luthor, though they both share the same penchant for planning and contempt for anyone less intelligent than they are – which is, to say, everyone. His verbal tics mask his insecurity, as we’ll see later at the charity ball, but his constant repetition of “y’know” is meant to insult his audience – he assumes they don’t know and need enlightenment from him.
There is also a kind of performative playfulness to this Lex, which we’ve seen on film before but not quite in the comics, from Hackman’s nutty wigs to Spacey’s train set. (The comics Lex, by contrast, is usually quite deadly serious.) Here, Eisenberg’s Luthor plays basketball with his employees, smiles often, claps like a nervous tic, and speaks in prose that is deliberately designed to show how clever he is. “Rocky is radioactive,” he alliterates of the kryptonite fragment, “among the fishes, a whale!” That particular line reads like a reference to the biblical account of Jonah and the whale, and it ties in with another thing I really appreciate about this Lex Luthor: he’s quite well-read, and he’s used that to inform his worldview. Superman just wants to be a man, while Batman is suspicious of how human he can actually be, but Lex alone sees this conflict as one of high mythology. The so-called “metahuman thesis” is, Lex proclaims, “the basis of our myths, gods among men.” Despite being the villain, Lex gets it – Batman v Superman is a mythic tale of the rightful place of gods in the lives of men. What makes him the villain, though, is how badly he mistakes the moral of the story. (We’ll see him make another overt mythic allusion at the charity ball next week, again misjudging the relationship he seeks to dismantle.)
Lex’s playfulness extends to his own supervillain costume. Did you catch it? No, you won’t see his green and purple super-suit (though we’ve spotted it on Supergirl). Nay, it’s the fact that twice in these ten minutes, he dons an all-white jacket – first, a white sport jacket to greet his governmental contacts, and then a lab coat to receive the remains of General Zod. I can’t say with absolute certainty just yet, but I’ll hazard a guess that Lex’s clothes get darker over the course of the film, culminating in the bright orange prison jumpsuit. Let’s keep an eye on that, shall we?
I’d be remiss if I didn’t note two more pieces. First, the Jolly Rancher he feeds to the senator’s aide. I’ll admit this is a weird and unsettling creative decision, though I think that’s exactly the point. If we didn’t know it already, this would be the moment we’d start to see the perverse mind games Lex is playing with everyone in his employ. I think it accomplishes what it needs to do, but I’ll concede this wouldn’t have been my first choice in presenting Luthor’s pertinacious puppetry. What I wouldn’t change, though, is Hans Zimmer’s “The Red Capes Are Coming,” which serves as Lex’s theme. Unlike Superman’s motif, which repeats a two-note ascent, Lex’s theme descends, darkly inverting the “Flight” theme, yet the quick fiddle, lightly reminiscent of Saint-Saens’s “Danse Macabre,” has a ludic streak to it, as does the synchronized camera work matching Eisenberg’s footfalls. This is a Luthor who, for all intents and purposes, plays at not being taken seriously, though the quirky spontaneity and giddy playfulness masks a sinister and manipulative intentionality.
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| "I teach you the superman. Man is something that shall be overcome." |
Although we don’t know it yet, Luthor’s machinations extend beyond the moments we see him on screen. Wally Keefe defaces the Superman statue with the “FALSE GOD” graffiti, spurred on by Luthor’s manipulation of checks from Bruce Wayne (we’ll talk more about the shape of Lex’s plan, such as it is, when we get to the “problems up here” monologue). Clark Kent, meanwhile, is reassigned to the sports beat, then to the let-them-eat-cake beat; though Perry White theorizes it’s the request of “a charity crone with a thing for nerds,” but when Lex tells Clark and Bruce that he “love[s] bringing people together,” I think he tips his hand. (Note: the “charity crone” line appears only in the Ultimate Edition, and while I intuited such in the theatrical cut, I understand Joe Popcorn might not have done.)
Surprisingly but I must say gratefully, it’s Lois Lane who remains fully in charge of her own plotline. And as we approach the long-overdue filmic debut of Wonder Woman in Batman v Superman – the character, recall, debuted in 1941, shortly before Pearl Harbor – it’s refreshing to see that Lois Lane is just about the only character who acts on her own agency, of her own volition, for her own purposes. Batman and Superman are being manipulated by Lex, who labors under the burden of abuse, self-loathing, and father issues to make Tyrion Lannister blush; while Wally, Knyazev, Martha Kent, and so many others get caught up in Luthor’s web, Perry White tries to bail out the water from the sinking Daily Planet. Senator Finch gets the upper hand only briefly, and even the dead body of General Zod gets implicated in the conspiracy. You might say that Wonder Woman, too, is in charge of her own destiny; having walked away from mankind, she rejoins the world after Luthor attempts to steal her identity, but I would say that Luthor doesn’t know she’s coming and is never actually aware she’s there. Bruce can’t control her, and she joins the fight when she wants, on her terms.
I’m actually surprised this isn’t a bigger deal in reactions to the movie – Batman v Superman gives its female characters far more credit than most Women of Marvel scrape together (Black Widow aside, but even then...). After the dismal laddish misogyny of Sucker Punch, I’d say Snyder redeems himself with the female characters in a movie named for its male protagonists. Lois pursues the story about the ambush in the desert, even against Clark’s advice – remember she hid the bullet from him? She admits now that she doesn’t want to be protected; she’s in pursuit of the story, the truth.
And in a way, isn’t that the same struggle everyone in the film is undertaking? The great questions of Batman v Superman are mythological and epistemological – how do we know what we know, and how do we acquire knowledge of the truth? Man of Steel was more ontologically grounded, asking questions of identity and being. Clark asked “Who am I?” until he got his answer, and not surprisingly his ancestors were also seekers of truth, explorers. Man of Steel put the “man” back into the Superman (the word “Superman” is only ever used once or twice, far fewer than “Kal” was), and Batman v Superman puts the truth back into “truth, justice, and the American way.”
I didn’t anticipate making a defense of Batman v Superman as solidly feminist, but that’s the whole point of “10 @ a Time” – to get deeper into these movies and see what’s buried beneath the surface. We’ve come a long way from Man of Steel’s “I think he’s kinda hot.”
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| "The line, it is drawn; the curse, it is cast..." |
Next time, we issue a statement in support of books and muse about a certain mysterious, albeit wonderful, woman.
Observations and Annotations
- Luthor’s xenophobia isn’t just a driving force to his
character. It informs his very word choice. When he calls Zod’s body “the
complete remains of the dead alien,” he’s refusing to cede any degree of
humanity to Zod. He won’t even repeat it when the senator’s aide corrects him –
“Zod’s body?” “Mm, okay.”
- Wally’s corkboard of Superman clippings has one in which
Superman lifts a car over his head while the citizenry flee. It is, of course,
the cover to Action Comics #1.
- The statue of Superman in Metropolis is bending down to help, which is interesting for a public monument since it doesn’t seem the world shares this benevolent vision of Superman. It’s also a far cry from the heroicmonument erected upon the comic book death of Superman in 1992.
- At the underground fight club, Bruce Wayne mentions a few nights of passion he spent with a “Bolshoi ballerina.” While the story is likely fictitious, a thin cover for why Bruce Wayne knows Russian, I can’t help but wonder if it’s a nod to the moment in The Dark Knight, when Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) brings a yacht full of Russian ballerinas to international waters, leaving Alfred (Michael Caine) to slather on the suntan lotion.
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