This weekend, Jesse Eisenberg will follow in Gene Hackman and Kevin Spacey's footsteps when he appears as Lex Luthor in "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice." During a recent interview, Eisenberg explained how he sees his character and just what motivates Luthor to hate Superman.

"He is a classic xenophobe. He's hell-bent on getting this alien destroyed," Eisenberg told The Hollywood Reporter.

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"I think of the character more as a very emotional man but on behalf of no one else, on behalf of his own emotion," he added.

"He talks about the abuse he suffered as a child," he explained. "And in some kind of perverse Freudian parallel, relates Superman's power with his own father's power, and in some really dark way confuses the two."

Directed by Zack Snyder and starring Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Jesse Eisenberg, Laurence Fishburne, Amy Adams and others, "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" hits screens on March 25.