Random Thoughts on Ranking Luthors

I read this article on the Geek Twins the other day comparing the various TV/movie Lex Luthors.  I had a lot of thoughts on it so I decided to write a blog entry instead of just a comment on the site.

First off, I think any sane person would agree with the Geek Twins' assessment that Jesse Eisenberg was the worst Luthor ever.  I mean come on, what a shit character he was.  Was he supposed to be autistic or something?  Eisenberg seemed to think he was playing Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory combined with his Zuckerberg in The Social Network.  Ugh.  Really brought down the movie.  And his plan was so dumb.  I'm going to piss off Bruce Wayne and then hopefully he'll want to kill Superman, who I'll blackmail into fighting him while I finish my Doomsday monster who'll rampage around destroying stuff for...reasons.  Then I'll contact Steppenwolf to tell him Earth is ripe for the taking.  And...what was the endgame?  Did he have any control of Doomsday or any way to stop him?  And what was the point of talking to Steppenwolf?  (Which we see in the Ultimate version or deleted scenes--or both.)  I hate this alien Superman so I'll serve up Earth on a silver platter to a brutal alien warlord.  Um...what?

And that stupid thing with getting his hair cut in prison.  It's prison, not the army!  They don't give prisoners haircuts unless you have lice or maybe if you have a nasty word carved in your hair or something.  I've spent a lot of time on this already but really, his character just sucked.

The next picks were from the old Superboy TV show in the late 80s.  I remember seeing that show on like Saturday afternoons or whenever.  And I remember how they switched actors.  It was pretty weird.  I mean typically if you replace actors (like they did with Superboy) you want to get someone pretty similar, not 20 years older.

I haven't seen the old Atom Man vs Superman movie or the 90s Lois and Clark show so I really have no comment on those.  I thought Kevin Spacey's Luthor was pretty good, but it would have been better if they'd made him more like Michael Rosenbaum's Smallville version that was based on the 80s comic reboot.  Trying to recreate the campy Gene Hackman version (only actually bald this time) was pretty lame.

Which really I hated Hackman's Luthor.  It probably wasn't as bad when I first saw it as a kid, but it doesn't age real well.  Rewatching Superman II a couple of months ago didn't really dissuade me in that thinking at all.  It's so campy and there's the fact he's not even bald, which was a central thing about the character.  I mean it'd be like if an actor says, "I'll play Captain Hook but not with a hook hand."  Or like having Dr. Doom without the armor in most of the Fantastic Four movies.  Why don't you have Dr. Octopus with only 2 arms or the Vulture with no wings?

I really liked the Smallville version.  At least the first few seasons there wasn't any cartoonish supervillainery.  He wasn't even a bad guy, just a rich guy with a troubled family history and a freak accident that caused him to lose his hair.  His dad left him in the rinky-dink town of Smallville basically to keep him out of the way and there was always his dad's shadow looming over him.  I remember in one episode they flashed back to one childhood birthday party and there was all this food and balloons and stuff and no one showed up because losing his hair and being super rich in the small town made him an outsider.  He was a complex character, unlike most of the other versions.  The Eisenberg version tried to incorporate a little of the conflict with his dad in his ramblings about that painting, but it didn't work nearly as well.

Looking at the list, it occurred to me that all of the actors were white.  and then I thought, Why not a black guy?  Sure the "SJW" crowd would complain like they always do, but black guys look so much better bald than white guys.  And since I'm a bald white guy I think I'm an authority.  I mean just looking at that list most of the actors either didn't go bald or it looked fake.  There aren't many white guys who can pull it off.  Patrick Stewart is one.  Jason Statham.  Bruce Willis, I guess.  There are a lot more badass bald black guys:  Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury, Laurence Fishburne in The Matrix movies, Michael Clarke Duncan in Daredevil, Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley in Space Jam, Shaq in Steel.  It's no contest!

That's the direction they should go the next time they're looking for a movie Luthor.  Idris Elba would be great but then I think he'd be great in most anything:  James Bond, Batman, Luthor, whatever.  He's awesome.  Samuel L Jackson or Laurence Fishburne would be good too.  Will Smith, Don Cheadle, Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, they're all good proven actors.  If you want to go younger you could get someone like Mahershala Ali, Jamie Foxx, Michael B Jordan, Donald Glover, or Daniel Kaluuya.  Any of them would be great and I doubt they'd put up much fuss about going bald either.  And they'd look cool, not fake.  I'm just saying.

But if you insist on a white guy my pick would be Corey Stoll.  He already played an evil businessman/scientist in Ant-Man and he's naturally bald.  So there.

Tomorrow I'm going to share not one but two potential Luthor movie ideas.