Extra, Extra!: Our First Look at Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor

In which I report on the latest in entertainment news.

With Dawn of Justice already in the news this week, perhaps it's only fitting that we're starting to get our first look of the movie's villain  Superman's greatest arch nemesis - Lex Luthor - is set to be played by breakout actor Jesse Eisenberg.  And while it might at first appear to suffer from the casting decisions that plagued the Fantastic 4 reboot, nothing could be further from the truth.

For one, there's no question that the casting fits.  Sure, he might be a few decades younger than how Luthor is traditionally depicted - and the comparisons between the Zuckerberg cum Luthor actor against the now blogger Von Doom are weirdly apropos - but this is not a radical reimagining of the character.  The baseline age of the characters in the film still fit their comic counterparts, even if Eisenberg might stand as an outlier in the cast.  And, most importantly, Eisenberg is a superb actor who doesn't leave the same lingering doubts in my mind as Toby Kebbell does.

Although the real conflict of the film is Batman and Superman duking it out, Luthor plays the real villain.  But until now, we don't know what his angle really is.  Is he manipulating the two heroes into fighting each other when they otherwise wouldn't?  Is he just a third party that will provide the two with a common enemy?  And what about these rumors of Metallo - Luthor's Kryptonite-powered robot - appearing in the movie?

The fact of the matter is that we don't know.  Despite the monumental press that the film's been receiving, everybody's been pretty tight-lipped about the whole thing.  This is our first look at what the principle villain looks like, for Gods sake.  On the subject of Luthor, however, director Zack Snyder recently commented that

“he’s not any of the Lexes that you’ve seen, that’s for sure, other than him being a captain of industry and one person to the world and another person to himself. And bald, of course. Our Lex is disarming and he’s not fake,He says what he believes and he says what’s on his mind. If you can unravel the string and decipher what he means, it’s all there.”

So what are your thoughts on Eisenberg's new look?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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