Who knew the bullied little kid from About a Boy might grow up to be Superman’s greatest nemesis? Deadline reports this week that Nicholas Hoult is being lined up to portray Lex Luthor in James Gunn’s forthcoming Superman: Legacy, and I must confess I have no idea how to feel about this one.
Hoult has developed into a fascinating character actor with fine comic chops, and it is beginning to look as if he may be with us long after his boyish good looks have faded – a 21st-century equivalent of Terence Stamp or Christopher Lee, rather than just the latest handsome Brit to make it big in Hollywood. His Peter III of Russia was an unexpectedly multilayered, bloodthirsty narcissist-sociopath teddy bear in the sadly cancelled The Great. And indeed, he was once in the running to play Superman.
But his choice of Luthor says something about the direction Gunn is going in here. While not exactly Smallville-esque, it all feels a little “young Superman” – despite the film-maker’s denials – with the 33-year-old Hoult squaring off against David Corenswet’s 30-year-old last son of Krypton. And while a youthful reset has been on the cards ever since Gunn made it clear he would not be working with the previous incumbent Henry Cavill, there’s a sense that we could find ourselves in similar territory to the much maligned Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which cast a fresh-faced actor who had barely put a foot wrong (Jesse Eisenberg) as Luthor, and certainly lived to regret it.
There are reasons to be cheerful. Gunn is a more adept curator of comic book worlds than the visually splendid but ultimately less-than-visionary Zack Snyder. And with the keys to the DC kingdom firmly in his back pocket, he has the opportunity to craft Superman: Legacy in his own image. This is someone who has dispensed with almost every element of the previous failed regime, even when certain elements of it – Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman and … OK, I can’t think of too many others – retained popularity. So if he has picked Hoult to be the big bad, presumably there is some thinking behind it.
Of course it’s also possible that this new Luthor isn’t supposed to arrive fully formed as the major supervillain in Legacy. Deadline also recently reported that Venezuelan actor María Gabriela de Faría will portray the nefarious Angela Spica, AKA the Engineer, a nanotech-fused antagonist who was first introduced in a 1999 comic book run. Gunn’s film already looks set to take a wider approach to comic book world-building than we saw in the early DCEU films, with superheroes such as Nathan Fillion’s Green Lantern, Isabela Merced’s Hawkgirl and Edi Gathegi’s Mister Terrific all making their debuts – so it would hardly be a surprise to see further baddies enter the fray. Some rumours even suggest that the impending arrival of Brainiac, a Superman antagonist who has never been featured on the big screen, could be the evil cherry on top of this enticing new comic book cake. That’s a prospect that with the current emphasis on all things AI in sci-fi, could represent excellent timing.
In the meantime, Hoult may just be the perfect Luthor to bide his time in the shadows, set his sights on the new Kal-El and wait for the right moment to strike. I can’t quite imagine Hoult as a sneering, leering, Gene Hackman-esque Lex, chewing scenery and wiping the floor with Supes in every scene (in terms of acting chops if not physical prowess) just yet. But he has certainly earned the chance to prove everyone wrong.