We have gazed upon the somber face of Superman, felt really bad for Batman, wondered what was wrong with Wonder Woman, and avoided troubling the angry waters of Aquaman, but throughout the build-up to Batman V. Superman: The Dawn Is Just As Bleak As The Dusk, we’ve been most leery of Lex Luthor—a supervillain who is bald in his nefarious ambition, and also bald in his head. Could Jesse Eisenberg, an actor who is not bald, act like a bald person, in such a manner that convinces you he is bald? Finally, director Zack Snyder has shared this photo of Eisenberg in character, assuring you that he can. He can be as bald as anyone who’s expected to be bald in order to play a bald man should be bald. He is baldly bald. So fucking bald, dude.
Of course, some may look upon Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor and say, “Okay, so he’s bald, and a captain of industry, and a duplicitous guy who is one person to the world and another person to himself. He’s just like all the Lex Luthors I’ve ever seen. So what?”
Snyder isn’t having that crap.
“He’s not any of the Lexes that you’ve seen, that’s for sure,” the director tells Entertainment Weekly. “Other than him being a captain of industry and one person to the world and another person to himself. And bald, of course.”
Snyder continues to explain why his Lex Luthor totally upsets the paradigm on the stock, played-out version of the character you’ve seen countless times, except for the requisite elements that make up his pattern. For example, unlike some fake-ass Lex Luthors out there, his Lex Luthor keeps it real. “Our Lex is disarming and he’s not fake,” Snyder says. “He says what he believes and he says what’s on his mind.”
His Lex Luthor doesn’t keep secrets or pretend to be something he’s not, other than that part Snyder already said about him being “one person to the world and another person to himself”—but never mind that. His Luthor is a real straight-shootin’ guy’s guy when it comes to his plots for world domination exacted from behind the façade of a successful businessman. You would totally want to get a beer with Lex Luthor, and when Luthor clinks your glass, leans in, and whispers that he believes you should be subjugated beneath his absolute control, you’d say to yourself, “Goddamn, that Lex Luthor son of a gun doesn’t mince words! Also, he’s bald.”
“If you can unravel the string and decipher what he means, it’s all there,” Snyder adds, being very un-Lex Luthor right now.
Snyder didn’t elaborate on why Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor appears to be wearing hospital scrubs, which suggests his baldness can be traced to some sort of debilitating illness slowly ravaging his insides, as he has to save some fun stuff for his comic-book movie.