8 Annoying Comic Book Movie Trends That Must Die In 2017
4. Villains Acting "Kooky" For The Sake Of It
What do you do with your comic book movie villain when you have no idea how to make them interesting for an contemporary audience?
Why, you channel the bizarre, idiosyncratic mannerisms best associated with Health Ledger's Joker, of course, which is what happened - to ill effect - when Jesse Eisenberg played Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. His Luthor made no sense on a fundamental level: he was a hodgepodge of quirks and tics and odd line deliveries, but with no context at all. Why was Lex the way he was? Nobody knows and it was never explained. He just was, 'cause.
This failure of characterisation pretty much proved that taking an established villain and making them "weird" for the sake of it doesn't cut the mustard. We can only hope that Eisenberg's messy portrait of an otherwise great comic book villain put an end to this lazy character type, killing the trend once and for all.