Superman is the most powerful superhero in DC Comics, able to go toe to toe with its most powerful villains, like Darkseid and Brainiac. That’s why it’s surprising that his nemesis is Lex Luthor, a man without any superpowers.
The best versions of Luthor across comics, television, and movies make him a threat precisely because of that disparity. He fights Superman with wealth and connections rather than with fists or energy beams. He understands Superman’s moral code and uses it to his advantage, knowing that even if Superman is convinced Luthor is behind the latest scheme he’s unraveled, he can’t do anything about it without hard proof that will convince the authorities.
But superhero stories require an exciting climax, and writers have struggled with how to put Luthor at the center of the action. Some stories put him in a war suit so he can survive a punch from the Man of Steel. Justice League Unlimited gave him superpowers by fusing him with Brainiac. In Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman, which James Gunn said was a primary influence for his 2025 Superman, Luthor uses Superman’s DNA to gain his powers.
Gunn found a different way to let Luthor fight Superman, one that leans more into his skills as a mastermind. It’s a spin that links up closely with a clever recent reinvention of a Marvel villain, and it forces Superman to find a new way to take his nemesis down.
[Ed. note: Major spoilers follow for Superman — and Spiderman: Far From Home.]
Image: Warner Bros. Pictures
Superman opens just after Superman (David Corenswet) gets absolutely pummeled by the Hammer of Boravia, a hulking armored figure who claims to be avenging his home country after Superman stops Boravia from invading a neighboring country. The supposed national champion of Boravia is capable of smashing the world’s most powerful metahuman into the pavement, but it’s quickly revealed that he isn’t actually Boravian: He’s a creation of Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), who is guiding every blow in the fight from a command center in his Metropolis skyscraper.
It’s a team effort reminiscent of how the illusionist Mysterio operates in Spiderman: Far From Home. While Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal) is disguised as a hero from another dimension, supposedly battling to save Earth from invading elementals, he has a whole crew working behind the scenes to make the illusion convincing, in a scheme to earn Peter Parker’s trust. Luthor’s Superman clone Ultraman is inside the Hammer of Boravia’s armor, delivering the big hits and taking Superman’s punches while Luthor directs his every move, with the help of a small army of lackeys. Luthor doesn’t need to fight Superman himself, because he’s used his intellect to stage a battle entirely on his terms. “Brain beats brawn,” Luthor crows when he has Superman at his lowest.
Like the MCU’s Mysterio, who spent 12 years uniting other disgruntled Stark Industries employees and plotting his revenge, this Luthor is patient. Luthor’s spent the three years since Superman entered the world stage studying Superman’s every move so Luthor could choreograph a fight against him. Luthor combed through the sites of his battles for blood he could use to clone Superman. Luthor convinced Boravia’s leader that the tech billionaire wanted a war for real estate — a nice nod to the land-grabbing versions of the character played by Gene Hackman in 1978’s Superman and Kevin Spacey in 2006’s Superman Returns — when Luthor was really just looking for an excuse to kill Superman. Even the Hammer of Boravia attack is just a distraction Luthor can use to infiltrate Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, in search of something he can use to fight Superman in the court of public opinion.
Photo: Jay Maidment/Sony Pictures
Both Mysterio and Luthor want everyone to know just how smart they are. Mysterio lays out every part of his plan at the villainous wrap party he hosts after successfully tricking Peter into giving him control of the tech Tony Stark deeded to Peter. Luthor similarly villain-monologues to Superman after imprisoning him, confident in the redundant defenses of having him trapped in a sunless pocket dimension in a cell with a living hunk of Kryptonite. The hubris might seem silly if it wasn’t so very core to his character.
While Gunn’s Superman doesn’t follow the plot of All-Star Superman, where the dying hero completes a set of Herculean trials to put his affairs in order, the movie is true to Morrison’s excellent version of Luthor. The brilliant scientist sees himself as an avatar of human potential and ambition, and Superman as an invasive species that threatens to smother those qualities. Luthor doesn’t think of himself as a villain, but as a savior of a threatened humanity. Gunn’s version of Luthor has even more of a point than Morrison’s, since this Superman was sent to Earth precisely because he’s so much stronger than humans that he could easily dominate the planet if he chose to.
Hoult beautifully delivers those same sentiments. His Lex is a petty tyrant who enjoys the fear he inspires in his subordinates so much that after dropping a mug full of pencils just to watch them scramble to clean up the mess, he immediately knocks over another one, like a sadistic cat. But he’s honest about his failings, admitting that he’s extremely jealous of Superman. He had to spend years scheming to create a credible threat for someone who fell out of the sky and became the most powerful man on Earth.
But while Luthor accounts for all of Superman’s fighting techniques, he doesn’t grasp his greatest strength: the ability to inspire others. Superman escapes from Luthor’s prison by enlisting the help of Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan). He stops his schemes in Boravia by getting the Justice Gang to take up the cause. His girlfriend Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) leads the investigation that exposes Luthor’s crimes. Even Superman’s kindness to the misbehaving superpowered dog Krypto helps him win the final battle.
Luthor ends the film shipped off Belle Reve, the base of operations of Amanda Waller’sTask Force X, so he will almost assuredly have more of a role to play in the future of Gunn’s DC Universe. Even defeated, this is a version of the character with huge potential. He’s already shown his skill at commanding a group capable of taking down Superman. With the ground laid for the Justice Gang to become the Justice League, hopefully Luthor will get to take on his other big role in DC Comics: leader of the Legion of Doom.
