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Jesse Eisenberg played Lex Luthor in Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman as well as the Justice League movie, being more of a contemporary to Henry Cavill’s Superman than an older adult. Speaking at the 28th Sarajevo Film Festival after screenings of his directorial debut When You Finish Saving the World, the Oscar nominee was disappointed at the initial response to his portrayal of the character.
“I felt very personal about it,” Eisenberg said (via Deadline). “The writer, Chris Terrio, is a very serious writer, and he’s a very emotional person. He thought a lot about my character, and I thought a lot about my character too.” The actor talked about how he talked to his acting coach about the character and his backstory and how people hated him in the role.
Back in 2016, Eisenberg told the LA Times that Luthor has a backstory that’s tragic and emotional that’s authentic. “It was my interest in playing the character with a real emotional core, and this writer, Chris Terrio’s interest in creating a character that seemed viable in reality. He is a narcissist of the first order but complicated in that way as well in that he is terribly troubled and competitive and vengeful. He looks at Superman not as somebody to destroy but as a genuine threat to humanity.”
“Listen, I’m not a comic book fan,” he told Deadline after the When You Finish Saving the World screening to elaborate his thoughts. “To me, it was not playing a role that I’d envisioned since childhood. To me, it was a chance to play this great character that this great writer wrote, and I loved doing that. So, to play it is a joy, and to not play it isn’t something that I’m going to be ashamed to tell my kids about, because that is not an important genre in my life, even though I loved doing that movie.”
Eisenberg didn’t exactly say he’d turn down another comic book role but would be very surprised if he was offered one.
“I’d be shocked if I wound up in a DC movie, but it would be a pleasant shock,” he said. “As an actor, you do all kinds of different things, and sometimes great roles show up in really commercial things and sometimes terrible roles show up in independent films.”
Batman v Superman grossed $873.6 million worldwide at the box office, and despite turning in a profit, it performed below expectations and received generally unfavorable reviews from critics.
Eisenberg’s next acting project will be Manodrome, about an Uber driver and an aspiring bodybuilder Ralphie, who is inducted into a libertarian masculinity cult and loses his grip on reality when his repressed desires are awakened. When You Finish Saving the World is expected to come out this year.
