Lex Luthor's hatred for Superman has been a defining trait of the character, but why he hates the Big Blue Boy Scout has varied throughout the decades.
Nicholas Hoult's Lex Luthor has already been deemed the "main villain" of James Gunn's Superman. The last time these characters went head-to-head was in Zack Snyder's Superman v Batman: Dawn of Justice, where Luthor was a squirrely tech billionaire with daddy issues.
Luthor's motives have changed in the comics and film over the decades, with even Gene Hackman's version of the character being driven by real estate. However, Gunn plans to make his Luthor a bit more fantastical and his hatred all the more intense.
Why Lex Luthor Hates Superman
Before the 1980s, Lex Luthor was a typical cackling supervillain who often tussled with Superman, using almost magical superscience. One of his driving motives for hating Superman was even something as silly as him accidentally causing Luthor to go bald as a teenager.
It wasn't until writer John Byrne portrayed Luthor as a captain of industry that his deeper ideology began to flourish. Luthor sees Superman not as a beacon of hope but as stagnation and that his arrival on Earth degrades all human achievement, convincing the masses to depend too much on Superman.
What Luthor won't fully admit is that he believes Superman overshadows his achievements, not humanity's, and that Superman stops humanity from depending on him instead. Luthor believes he will be the one to lead humanity to a better tomorrow, not Superman.
No story makes this clearer than Grant Morrison's All-Star Superman, where Luthor is wholly convinced that "[he] could have saved the world if it wasn't for [Superman]!"
Of course, Superman easily deconstructed Luthor's feeble declaration with just one sentence: "You could have saved the world years ago if it mattered to you, Luthor," revealing that it was never about any sense of altruism with Luthor, but pure ego.
Nicholas Hoult's Luthor Already a Hater
Select entertainment outlets were able to speak with James Gunn during the production of Superman, who revealed how most of Clark's relationships would be established by the start of the movie, including Luthor already "[hating] Superman’s guts from the beginning:"
"We just start in the middle of the action. Superman’s already existing. Lois and Clark already know each other. Lex hates Superman’s guts from the beginning, although they don’t know each other personally. So we start right in the middle of the action. It takes place over a short amount of time."
Gunn also admitted how, unlike past live-action iterations of the character who were more firmly grounded in their use of super-science, he wanted his Lex Luthor's gadgets and inventions to take inspiration from stories like All-Star Superman and the Silver Age, making Luthor "a sort of sorcerer:"
"To take that sort of Silver Age feel, that sort of science fiction approach to it with gadgets, Lex [Luthor] is really a sort of sorcerer in a way. He's a scientist, but he's so good at science and I think of him as like a sorcerer. So everything [influenced me], and then it's just something that's completely us."
During a Q&A with the press, Nicholas Hoult described his Luthor as "smart and ruthless" when faced with the insurmountable might of Superman. How that, "hopefully," while audiences won't "agree with his process, there’s an element where you could understand [...] where he’s coming from:"
"Obviously he’s smart and ruthless, and he has to outmaneuver Superman on certain levels, because he can’t match him in others, but there’s also something about this character, hopefully, from my standpoint, where even though you perhaps don’t agree with his process, there’s an element where you could understand, on some levels, where he’s coming from and why perhaps what he’s pushing as his ideology is perhaps better for humanity."
Gunn specified that while Luthor already hates Kal-El, both of them "don’t know each other personally" yet, which could change in Superman. Additionally, Hoult has already given clues to Luthor's deeper motives, such as "his ideology" being "better for humanity."
Considering his emphasis on his Luthor's ideology, it's likely that his motives for hating Superman are similar to his All-Star Superman counterpart. It could also lead further credence to him being the creator of Ultraman in Superman, a clone of the Man of Steel that he can control to push his own interests.
It's even possible that Luthor is using Sean Gunn's Maxwell Lord and his Justice League International as proxies to push Superman out of the public limelight, leaving a space for himself and his personal super man.
Superman lands in theaters on July 11, 2025.
