Metropolis: 10 Things The Superman Prequel Must Include

9. Lex Luthor As A Key Conspirator

Lex Luthor
DC Comics

Coupled with the announcement that DC were optioning Metropolis for production was the show's synopsis, which mentioned Lois and - who else - Lex Luthor, in the same breath as allies.

No matter how reluctant they might be, one can't help but feel like this is just a plain weird decision to take. Gotham's showrunners should know better, and while it's obviously gearing up for an inevitable betrayal in an unassuming season finale, no one wants to see Lex as a hero through and through. He's smarmy, cunning and irreconcilably ruthless. Make him duplicitous, sure, but be sure to hammer home his villainous credentials, especially since we've already seen 'Lex before he's Lex' in Smallville a whole ten years earlier.

Luthor needs to be the one pulling the strings, and while the concept of there once having been a 'good' Luthor is an interesting one to explore in a comic, it can't anchor a whole TV show, especially when the current Lex we do have is so horrendously unthreatening that he resorts to leaving jars of piss in congressional hearings to get his point across.

Make him bald, make him threatening, and make him thoroughly unlikeable. That's the kind of Lex that sells.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.