Batman V Superman: Is Lex Luthor Secretly Kryptonian?

6. Warner Bros. Have Been Trying To Make Luthor Super For Decades

Luthor's a character who's changed a lot in the comics since his first prolific on-screen appearance in the form of Gene Hackman in Superman: The Movie. Traditionally a devious property magnate, he's now the maniacal ultimate evil of DC and where once he would use unimaginable power to wreak havoc, through his robot suits and the like he's evolved into a more physical threat for the Man of Steel. That's something the movies thus far have never really shown, but boy have Warner Bros. tried. There's a long history of failed Superman movies wanting to make Luthor more fantastically powerful; way back with Superman Lives, Tim Burton's notorious failed attempt to adapt The Death Of Superman in the late-nineties, Luthor was set to be merged with Braniac (called Luthiac or Lexiac in various versions) because nineties. But what we really need to focus on here is Superman Flyby, a J.J. Abrams-scripted reboot planned to be filmed by Brett Ratner. Intended to be a modern reboot of Superman, elements from various drafts were cribbed for Superman Returns, while a lot of what wasn't ultimately found its way into Man Of Steel - the notion of Jor-El sending Kal away from Krypton well ahead of its destruction, with a greater focus on Kryptonian politics, was first seen here, while the villain of Flyby fills a very similar plot role to General Zod in Zack Snyder's reboot. One of the biggest, potentially controversial elements of Flyby (and something that has yet to be reused) was that Lex Luthor was going to wind up being a Kryptonian. Portrayed as a UFO obsessive throughout the film, Lex would spend most of the film focusing on a crashed Kryptonian ship, revealed at the end to be his. Not only does this show a past desire to take Luthor in this direction, but given the influence of Flyby it's highly possible this element will actually be used eventually. Heck, going back through all of the failed attempts at rebooting Superman since The Quest For Peace you'll see an awful of lot of reused ideas across scripts for various movies, many of which inevitably make their way into the few films that get made. Also, J.J. Abrams clearly has some link to the production, playing a cheeky back-and-forth Twitter game with Zack Snyder - possibly the result of a meeting to discuss ideas?