Batman V Superman: 10 Mistakes It Made That Justice League Must Avoid

4. Characters That Don't Fit

Lex Luthor
Warner Bros.

The impact of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy can still be felt in the DCEU to this day - Zack Snyder and his team carried on the dark, gritty torch from The Dark Knight Rises into Man Of Steel, solidifying the DC slate as a more grounded take on superhero lore. But in Batman v Superman, in bounds Lex Luthor, an overbearingly cartoonish character that feels like he was plucked out of a Joel Schumacher Batman flick.

Luthor would have absolutely worked in another movie - just not this one. Imagine if Heath Ledger's Joker had popped up in Batman & Robin; it would've been ridiculous. Batman v Superman had a similar fish-out-of-water problem, and Eisenberg's quirky take on the villain just seemed at odds with the darker nature of the entire production.

Justice League needs to be careful here - a character like this can remove audiences from a scene and make them question whether or not the filmmakers understand the story they're telling. If the film is darker, then a Joker or Winter Soldier-type villain would work well, and if it's lighter, a Loki or an Ultron would be a perfect match. As long as everything feels like it belongs in the same picture, Justice League stands a better shot at being more enjoyable.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!