We’ve seen a handful of actors portray Lex Luthor over the years, but I’d wager that few would place Jesse Eisenberg at the top of the list. The actor played a quirky Mark Zuckerberg-esque version of the iconic DC villain in Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Although the film grossed $874 million worldwide, critics didn’t seem to care for it. In fact, during a recent appearance on Armchair Expert with Dax Shephard, Eisenberg said the movie may have actually hurt his career.
“I was in this Batman movie and the Batman movie was so poorly received, and I was so poorly received,” Eisenberg said. “I’ve never said this before and it’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but I genuinely think it actually hurt my career in a real way, because I was poorly received in something so public.“
Eisenberg continued, “I’ve been in poorly received things that just don’t see the light of day, and for the most part, no one knows. But this was so public, and I don’t read notices or reviews or movie press or anything, so I was unaware of how poorly it was received.” Eisenberg would return as Lex Luthor for the post-credit scene of Justice League, but by that time, it felt like the beginning of the end for the DCEU.
We’ve got a new Lex Luthor to look forward to, with Nicholas Hoult playing the character in James Gunn’s Superman movie (which recently dropped its first teaser trailer.
Eisenberg recently wrote, directed, and starred in A Real Pain alongside Kieran Culkin. The film follows two estranged Jewish American cousins who travel to Poland to honour their late grandmother. “At its heart, the film is a character study, allowing Jesse Eisenberg’s David and Kieran Culkin’s Benji to spar over eighty minutes without making their holiday too earth-shattering an event, with characters ending the film just as broken (or not) as the movie began,” wrote our own Chris Bumbray in his review. “It’s one of the few films I’ve seen in recent memory to get the vibe of a holiday just right, as when you end a trip – no matter how intense the journey has been – there’s a moment when you arrive back home and realize that you’re the same person you were when you left. This can either be a reassuring feeling or a melancholy one.“
What are your thoughts on Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman? Was his portrayal really that bad?
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