Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice — oh, what could have been. That’s the feeling most fans will get listening to Zack Snyder's fourth-anniversary watch party for the film, especially after hearing the director talk about the parallels between Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne, which he failed to play up in the movie.
Throughout the commentary, Snyder describes how the two men both had life-altering relationships with their fathers, but in completely different ways. Wayne was extremely close to his dad and was forced to watch him die before his very eyes. Luthor, meanwhile, had a very distant relationship with his father, who wasn’t there while he was growing up, according to Snyder. This spawned a hatred for the man and ultimately served as a catalyst, of sorts, for Luthor’s transformation into the man we see on screen. But, fans wouldn’t know it, because Snyder never made it clear.
We never see Luthor’s father in the film. There’s no heroic backstory, like Wayne's or even Clark Kent’s. There's no one to teach him important lessons about right and wrong in the way the two heroes were taught--not even a mother to hold or be there for him. She was absent too.
Still, Wayne and Luthor’s life paths are so similar. They’re both philanthropic billionaires who want to see Superman stopped in BvS. They both put on a facade of emotions when around others. The main difference is that one idolizes and fights for his parents, while the other lives to spite them.
The parallels between Luthor and Wayne have never really been explored before. If only Snyder had chosen to actually capitalize on them, Batman v Superman would’ve likely had more substance, more emotion.
And herein lies the problem with a lot of Snyder’s movies. He goes above and beyond to create a world that is in-depth and interesting but winds up leaving a lot of his ideas and themes under the surface. Moviegoers can only go so deep before feeling bogged down and overwhelmed. They need a clearer sense of things, and Snyder has failed to execute this time and time again.
Imagine a BvS where Luthor tries to tear Wayne down, both emotionally and physically — all because he’s jealous of his upbringing. Todd Phillips did a great job exploring this idea in Joker, even having Arthur Fleck visit a young Bruce Wayne at home and making him believe that the two are illegitimate brothers. There was so much that Snyder could have done with these parallels, and it’s a true shame that he wasn’t able to flesh them out.