Spoilers ahead for the plot and ending of Superman.
Lex Luthor is scary again. In the new version of Superman, writer-director James Gunn and actor Nicholas Hoult team up to infuse an old comic-book villain with a level of cruelty never before showcased in screen versions of the character. Hoult’s Luthor is the most psychologically complex, yet mixed and matched with elements from today’s headlines. In his thorough contempt for every trace of human decency, Hoult rivals the most upsetting versions of the Joker, implacably evil men who tap into prehistoric fears of the predator in the bushes. It’s a perfect negative mirror of David Corenswet’s kindhearted goofball version of Big Blue, who values life so much that he pauses during a super-battle to rescue a squirrel.
Previous screen incarnations of Luthor have had moments when they let the mask of normalcy drop to reveal a stone-cold monster. These tend to involve kryptonite, the substance that weakens the hero. In the 1978 Superman, Gene Hackman’s blustering Luthor is mainly comedic until Superman shows up at his hideout as he’s about to launch nuclear missiles into the San Andreas Fault in order to drop western California into the sea. “Is that how a warped brain like yours gets its kicks?” Superman demands. “By planning the death of innocent people?” “No,” Luthor replies coolly, “by causing the death of innocent people.” In the 2006 Superman Returns, Kevin Spacey’s smug, condescending Luthor seems wildly overmatched until he stabs the hero with a kryptonite shiv and drops him into the ocean.
Hoult’s Luthor, in contrast, radiates menace from the minute he’s onscreen, consistent through feats of cruelty like his game of Russian roulette with one of Superman’s admirers, an innocent falafel vendor named Malik Ali (Dinesh Thyagarajan). When the revolver goes off after only the second spin of the barrel, killing Ali, Hoult practically squeals with delight. In his all-in-a-day’s-work psychopathy, Hoult’s Luthor is closer to a Martin Scorsese gangster than to any previous big-screen Luthor.
Like the other Luthors, Hoult’s wants Superman dead for strategic reasons: He’s the main obstacle in the way of Luthor’s business interests and geopolitical fantasies. But his specific flavor of grandiosity is very of-the-moment. He’s in tune with all the internet-era billionaires who style themselves as a combination of rock star and monarch, rub their privilege in our faces, and believe their wealth entitles them to transform governments and lead nations. Like these rich men, Luthor embraces his villainy by styling himself as a sleek anti-hero and lording his privilege over the rest of society’s suckers. Hoult echoes chaos agents like Marc Andreessen, who is currently using his wealth as a cudgel to smash affirmative action in American universities. It brings to mind Peter Thiel, who opposes democracy itself, and Elon Musk, whose tenure at DOGE focused on damaging government agencies that had regulatory power over his businesses. He also looks quite a bit like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who has his own disregard for human life. Not to mention the similarities with our petulant current president, of course.
Luthor is driven mainly by envy. Superman is not just the physical embodiment of nontoxic masculinity, beloved by all, he’s a reminder that Luthor’s wealth can’t buy him the public’s affection or quiet the doubting voice inside him. When Luthor’s proxies bludgeon Superman with a decisive blow during a battle, Hoult wildly cheers and fist pumps as if he’s sitting ringside at a UFC match, a pastime Trump has himself enjoyed. “Yes, yes, yes!” Luthor hollers, savoring the fact that this is really happening, and he made it happen.
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This brand of villainy is par for the course with Gunn, who relishes old-fashioned melodramas where the bad guy is so evil that we can cheer lustily for his demise without feeling as if we’ve diminished our humanity by wanting it. Plainly put, this Luthor is a piece of shit. Hoult’s toxic man-boy body language often evokes Christian Bale’s performance as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho and, even more so, Bateman’s chief inspiration, Tom Cruise. Bale has said that his eureka moment during preproduction was watching Cruise on David Letterman’s old show and feeling that he “just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes.” Those last four words form the organizing principle of Hoult’s acting here. His Luthor is focused, ever present, and a great listener, but only in the sense that is he is always sniffing out weaknesses. He couldn’t care less about anyone else’s feelings — unless they’re suffering pain that he inflicted.
Hoult’s performance here is filled with Cruise-isms, from the way he clenches and unclenches his jaw as he’s thinking on his feet to the way his eyes widen with discomfort as he recognizes one of his weak points. When he paces around the control room, he specifically evokes Cruise’s self-help guru, Frank “T.J.” Mackey, in Magnolia. There are also echoes of Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance as stock scammer Jordan Belfort in Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, who struts around the trading floor and shouts encouragement and insults at employees who hang on his every word. Luthor’s Masters of the Universe presentation during televised interviews is much more even-tempered than the persona we see in the control room; when he feels like it’s time to mesmerize the public, he stops addressing his interviewer and talks into the camera, as if starring in an infomercial. He’s spewing justifications for bigotry and raw self-interest into the public sphere. Hoult’s eyes in these scenes are hypnotic, and they’re looking right into our hearts, trying to poison it.
This is never more unsettling than when Luthor is vocalizing his bigotry. He paints Superman as an other, a creature that is not actually human, and can therefore be imprisoned, tortured, and killed. “He’s not a man, he’s an it,” Luthor hisses at one point; Hoult’s sour tone suggests that Luthor is not just talking to the other people in the room but to himself, as if offering additional reinforcement of a justification for wrongdoing that, somewhere deep inside, he knows is false.
Luthor’s ultimate defeat is an unmasking that humiliates him by confirming his own worst fears about himself. Like all bullies who’ve had their nose bloodied by a former victim, he cries. When he’s arrested and taken away in the back of a Humvee, Hoult doesn’t look at anyone or anything — not in defiance, not even in abject misery. He is visibly broken. As the vehicle pulls away, he stares ahead at the back of the driver’s seat in front of him. Luthor has retreated into the recesses of his worst fears. As the character confronts the reality of his own negation by the same hero who activated his insecurities, Hoult’s face is a mask hiding what lies beneath: a black hole of anguish mirroring the black holes that almost swallowed Superman. What’s behind the eyes is the truth about himself, and he can’t stand it.
