Superman Legacy – Lex Luthor – Smallville Lessons

This post is taken from the transcript of my Youtube video of the same name. The video can be found at the end of the post.

Welcome to Multiverseatile. My name is Jake Long, and today’s video is about another thing that I think Superman Legacy can learn from Smallville. My first video in this series was about the inclusion of Brainiac as a villain. In this video, I’m talking about the clever way that Smallville includes Lex Luthor in the Superman story. And yes, I know it’s a prequel to his Superman days, but anyway, the use of Lex Luthor is great.

In Smallville, the writers have Clark and Lex become friends. I don’t think they need to make Clark and Lex friends (although it could be interesting to have them be former friends), but the most important thing that I’m thinking about is to have Lex Luthor maintain a strong presence in the world of Superman. As I mentioned, my last video talked about having Brainiac as the main villain, so in my imagination for Superman Legacy, Lex Luthor would be a sort of secondary villain behind the scenes, causing trouble for Superman.

This also goes right along with an aspect of James Gunn’s style of writing for the Guardians movies. In an interview recently, James Gunn talked about how Ronan was the main villain in the first movie, and Yondu was the second villain or antagonist (Of course, Thanos was there too, but he wasn’t as involved as those two). In Guardians Volume 2, James Gunn had Ego as the primary and Ayesha. And in Volume 3, he has the High Evolutionary, and Adam Warlock (along with Ayesha).

Of course, James Gunn isn’t the only one to use this concept in his stories, but he obviously likes it, so it seems likely that Superman Legacy will have a primary and a secondary villain. Lex could also be more of a Thanos in Guardians Volume 1 type of character. However, he is included, I think that it would be valuable as long as there are things for him to do in the movie. I think it’s important to show that Lex Luthor is a big part of Superman’s world whether he likes it or not. And Superman has been saving kittens from trees for a little while now, so I think Lex Luthor should be on his radar.

Smallville went through many different types of story lines, and had many different villains, but Lex was a core part of the story the whole series. Even after he was gone, Tess Mercer’s actions were heavily influenced by Lex, and Lex eventually did return in a few different ways. It will also be nice to see Lex Luthor play an important role without seeing him as the main enemy for Superman. He is a phenomenal character, but it would be great to see some other Superman villains show up.

So that is my rant for that, but before I close out this video, I also want to say that I think there is a possibility that we will see Rick Flagg Senior in Superman Legacy. Recently, actor Frank Grillo was a guest on Michael Rosenbaum’s podcast, “Inside of You,” and he mentioned that he was joining the DCU. He said that he couldn’t say anything about the project, but he did mention that it was the first one. Now we could look at Creature Commandos as the first one, but it is animated series, so he could be talking about the first movie created by Gunn and Safran which will be Superman: Legacy. I could be wrong, but I believe Frank Grillo was confirmed to play Rick Flag Sr. in Creature Commandos, and if so, it would be really exciting to find out that Rick Flag Sr. will be in Superman: Legacy.

This would make sense to have a strong military presence in the movie since it seems that a lot of the movie will be about the world deciding what it wants to do about Superheroes. Also, I’m excited to hear the rumors that there will be other heroes in this movie. It seems crazy to think that they’ll have a new Batman cast and ready to film by then, but he would be a great one to see as well as Wonder Woman, and honestly many others.

Anyway, though, That’s all for me today. Let me know what you think in the comments below if you feel so inclined. What are you excited for about Superman Legacy? Or are you even excited for it? Thanks for watching, and take care.