Despite all the superhero movies that we have flooding the system right now, one category I'm realizing we're pretty low on is villain-led films. But that might be about to change. Lex Luthor is in Justice League — which Warner Bros. announced in their 2017 press kit — and I'm hoping this means he'll soon get a film of his own. After all, the villain's addition to the film would be a great way to test the waters and see if audiences were interested in a standalone movie from Lex Luthor's perspective.
Justice League will be the second appearance of Lex Luthor, played by Jesse Eisenberg; fans first met him in Batman v Superman, which came out in March 2016. As you might recall, that movie wasn't the biggest splash of the season, #nodisrespecttobenaffleck. Eisenberg's performance was called out in particular, with the outlet Grunge going so far as to run a post titled, "How Jesse Eisenberg Ruined Batman v Spiderman."
It wasn't the most auspicious start for Eisenberg, but Lex Luthor is an iconic, big-name comic book character, so I'm not surprised to see DC Comics making another go of it by adding him to the cast of Justice League. That film already has a main villain lined up in the form of Steppenwolf, so there would be less pressure on Eisenberg's Lex Luthor to carry the movie. He'd be able to lurk on the sidelines a bit more, camouflaged by all the other huge names in Justice League, and do more of the character work that Eisenberg so excels at.
Ideally, this would help him build his confidence, and producers could get an idea for whether Lex Luthor should be the character to make the leap into the world of villain-helmed superhero movies. Welcome aboard.
If that isn't at least somewhere in their minds, I can't imagine why they would add the character of Lex Luthor to a movie that's already populated with a villain. Unless they're just trying to fill out the cast to get butts in seats, but even then that can't be the only reason. Who knows for sure? All I'm saying is it's definitely something to keep an eye on.
