Batman V Superman: Is Lex Luthor Secretly Kryptonian?
2. The Viral Marketing Spells It Out
A couple of months back Fortune published an in-universe interview with Lex Luthor Jr., kicking off some form of viral marketing campaign for the film centring on LexCorp (and potentially its links to Wayne Enterprises). Ostensibly it was revealing Lex was a Jr. and teasing his modern business ethos (he has a foosball table in his meeting room). But go back and look over it with an eye towards the Kryptonian theory and it is literally bursting with nods to the fact there's something a bit alien about young Alexander. It's so constant that about halfway through the article it goes from being interesting coincidence to pretty blatant foreshadowing. Various terms are used to describe Luthor and his actions throughout - "a superhuman feat", "down-to-Earth", "the prodigal son" - that wouldn't be out of place describing Superman, while the way he talks about his company and his father suggests something highly unconventional. He claims he made an "unexpected entrance" into his father's life, which a Kryptonian turning up certainly fits better than a standard birth, and the notion of "an adoring father building a legacy for his precious son" is stated as a business decision first, explaining that tricky issue of why Luthor Snr. would take in an alien child in the first place. Several other elements also have an interesting duality - "We are on the cusp of unveiling a technology that will change the world forever" is a near parallel to Zod. To cap it off, the whole thing ends saying "Its just lucky for us that, whatever the dangers lurking for us today, we have on our side Lex Luthor, a man of tomorrow." The obvious reading is the irony of Luthor's true intentions, but the idea of a hidden danger and suggestion of him being a "man of tomorrow" can be much more literally read as a clue to his alien origins. Maybe it's all just overthinking it, but for a tie-in piece intended to seed ideas and concepts of the film, there's an awful lot of alien allusions here.
