Batman Vs Superman: 7 Essential Lex Luthor Details Eisenberg Must Channel

7. Intelligence Beyond His Years

This is the obvious one: if Lex Luthor can point to anything as the source of his success and status, it's his vastly superior intellect. His brilliant mind leads him to discover Kryptonite, create Bizarro, and design a few versions of the LexCorp Battlesuit, and his mind, too, is mostly what keeps him from incarceration during these forays into illegality, and keeps him positioned as a favourite son of Metropolis. There's no doubt that Jesse Eisenberg can play a smart little griper. But it's the "little griper" part that is perhaps where Eisenberg seems most un-Luthorlike, because Lex isn't the complaining type - he can be fault-finding, sure, but he's probably figured out a way to solve the problem in the short span of time it would take him to whine about it. That brain never rests, and Eisenberg should remember that above all regardless of which version of Lex Luthor he brings to the screen. The "Beyond His Years" caveat is also necessary because Eisenberg is 30 (even if he looks younger) - he could be playing older in the movie (perhaps he will look older without those curly locks), but it's still hard to imagine him seeming anything but an upstart crow against the likes of Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill. If anyone in the DCU rivals the intelligence of Lex Luthor it's Bruce Wayne, and it's clear that Affleck's Wayne is going to have plenty of experience under his belt by the time the film takes place. Crucially, the schemes of young Luthor need to herald his arrival as one of the most powerful foes imaginable. Again, intellect is Luthor's most obvious trait, and there's as much pressure on the script as there is on Eisenberg to impress us with knowledge (or blind us with science).