Lex Luthor
“I’m the world’s smartest man, so obviously that would also make me the world’s richest man. Because this world is legitimately a meritocracy.”
– One of the many reasons Lex Luthor cannot exist in our world
I think it’s a mistake when people ask, “Who’s Lex Luthor in OUR world?” and then write a version of Lex Luthor based on some shitty real estate developer or Silicon Valley asshole. Because I feel like that’s an extreme disservice to Lex Luthor. Just like Superman is the idealized hero, an incorruptibly good person who responsibly wields vast power, Lex Luthor should be the idealized villain, an all-powerful mastermind whose evil is controlled and methodical – the harm he causes is deliberate and never a result of incompetence.
When it comes to Superman, you can’t point at a real-life public figure and say, “That’s OUR world’s Superman! I’m going to write Superman to be just like him!” because Superman doesn’t exist in reality, he’s an ideal to aspire to. Lex should be the same – he is, by most standards, basically the pinnacle of humanity: the richest, most intelligent, most capable human on the planet; his tragic flaw being his ego, which keeps him in perpetual conflict with a true force for good like Superman. Lex Luthor is an ideal, and his real world analogue is absolutely NOT the likes of Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos, or Donald Trump, or any of the other wannabe oligarchs of our world – they all WISH they could be compared to Lex Luthor.
– James
