The late Gene Hackman was a rare actor who could play just about anything, and his legendary career included stellar performances in every conceivable genre. Comic book fans will always love him for Lex Luthor -- however, the openly comic nemesis in the original Superman: The Movie proves far scarier than he first seems. Hackman's performance represented many people's first exposure to the character, which he returned to twice more during Christopher Reeve's up-and-down run as The Man of Steel. The original is still one of the greatest comic book movies made, and the first to properly bring superheroes to big-screen blockbusters.

He wasn't the last, of course. Numerous actors have gone on to memorably play Lex, including Michael Rosenbaum, Jon Cryer, and Clancy Brown, with Nicholas Hoult waiting in the wings for 2025's Superman.All of them owe at least some of their efforts to Hackman, and in the case of Cryer, he shares a unique connection with the late actor's version of Lex. It's safe to say that the character wouldn't be the same without him.

. The character premiered in April 1940's Action Comics #23 (by Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster), where he actually resembled Marvel's Doctor Doom more than the scheming businessman he's often presented as. He uses his technology in an effort to plunge the rest of Europe into war, then claim global domination once the nations of the world are in ashes. Superman exposes the plot and prevents war from breaking out.

Luthor appears to be killed in a crashing dirigible, but soon returns, eager for vengeance against Kal-El, which came to define him in most of his incarnations. This led to his first live-action version in the 1950 movie serial Atom Man v. Superman. He plays the titular villain, who keeps his identity hidden in the early parts of the story as he unleashes wave after wave of technological devices on Metropolis. That includes a synthetic form of Kryptonite which renders Superman powerless, though over course, the Man of Steel triumphs in the end.

The serial doesn't get much replay these days, and of the two to feature Superman in the 1940s, it's easily the weaker of the pair; Luthor is little more than a stock villain. It's notable, however, for actor Lyle Talbot's performance in the role. His visage became the template for the comics' version of Luthor for decades afterwards. That extended to Luthor's appearance in various DC animated series, beginning with 1966's The New Adventures of Superman cartoon. That served as a springboard into the vaunted SuperFriends series of Saturday morning cartoons.

Luthor became a staple, notably in 1977's Challenge of the SuperFriends where he served as the leader of the infamous Legion of Doom. The SuperFriends played him as almost comically evil: constantly scheming, gleefully cruel, and openly hostile. That was the overwhelming pop-culture impression of the character when Superman: The Movie went into production.

Director Richard Donner wanted to honor The Man of Steel's roots while still updating the story for the then-contemporary (and extremely cynical) 1970s. Kal-El needed to be sunny and upbeat, and yet not feel corny or outdated. The balance was surprisingly tricky, and Donner reportedly hung signs around the set that stated "we are not making a parody," to stress the limits of humor and jokes in the story. That required a particularly careful touch with Luthor.

On the one hand, he needed to reflect people's expectations of the character, particularly adults who might have grown up with the comics, and only remembered him as a slightly buffoonish baddie. Hackman needed to honor those memories, while still being knowingly funny. At the same time, he presented a viable threat to the Man of Steel (the supervillain he was always intended as) without disrupting the careful use of humor.

Hackman plays it beautifully, presenting Lex as an unconscionable narcissist dwelling in a bargain-basement lair deep beneath Grand Central Station. He exudes certainty and self-confidence, rightfully treating his flunkie Otis like a court jester and periodically pronouncing his brilliance: "Doesn't it give you, like, a shudder of electricity... to be in the same room with me?" Yet there are signs early on that he's far more than a joke, starting before he even appears onscreen.

Luthor murders a policeman following Otis by forcing the man into an oncoming subway train, and the dialogue leading up to the moment suggests that Luthor is the unquestioned leader of Metropolis's underworld. He also parses many of Superman's secrets more or less as a cold read, which backs up at least some of his grandiose claims. It leads him to deduce Kal-El's weakness, as well as orchestrating his genocidal plan to sink California into the sea.

As he sets his plot up, Lex serves entirely as comic relief, bickering with Otis and Miss Teschmacher while Superman saves the day in various mundane ways. The audience falls for the rope-a-dope too, right up until the perfect turn: Superman opening the lead box to discover the Kryptonite. In that moment, everything changes. Luthor was really going to go through with killing Superman, and had Miss Teschmacher's mother not been in the way of one of his nuclear missiles, he might very well have pulled it off. Hackman sells the shift effortlessly and turns his throwback clown into a genuine threat to the Man of Steel without losing any part of the character.

Gene Hackman appeared twice more as Lex Luthor, first in Superman II, which brought his character arc to a conclusion and which was infamously marked by Donner's abrupt departure from the series. He's more actively comedic in the second film, with Terence Stamp's General Zod delivering the menace and Hackman's Luthor quietly scheming in the background. Even so, he steals his share of scenes, most notably when he leverages Zod into letting him be ruler of Australia in exchange for betraying Kal-El. His final appearance as the character comes in the universally acknowledged disaster Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.

Hackman phones in his performance, and the silly plot about the then-contemporary nuclear arms race caps a disastrous production. Amid the detritus, however, comes an interesting connection. Jon Cryer (then a very young actor enjoying his first flush of success after 1986's Pretty in Pink), plays Luthor's nephew Lenny. Their scenes together are cringeworthy, though far more for the cheesy dialogue and silly circumstances than the performances. Cryer claims he had a wonderful time working with Hackman, and, of course, the role came full circle in 2019 when Cryer became Lex Luthor for the Arrowverse. His performance in the role earned him a Saturn Award in 2020.

Cryer's Lutho is celebrated for many of the same reasons Hackman's is. Cryer's Luthor is unquestionably a narcissist, though he's less grandiose about it and does a better job of covering it up. While Hackman was inspired by Luthor's early appearances, Cryer drew inspiration from Marv Wolfman and George Perez, whose Crisis on Infinite Earths was replicated by the Arrowverse. A very different calculus took place with Michael Rosenbaum, whose portrayal of Luthor on the Smallville TV series is considered one of the very best.

According to Smallville: The Official Companion Season 1 by Paul Simpson, the showrunners wanted a more sympathetic character than Hackman's, and deliberately steered clear of his performance. Yet, they also wanted a comedic actor, believing that it would make him more sympathetic and reflect "a desperate need to be loved." Rosenbaum brought that, and -- like Hackman -- combined the softer side of a more sympathetic Lex with moments of pure, terrifying evil. The character was very different, but the balance perfected by Hackman is aptly matched by Rosenbaum.

Hackman's performance was so successful and prominent that even when future Luthors delivered their own take on the character, they had to frame it in relation to his. The influence was just one of many gifts the actor left behind in his amazing body of work. That includes one of the greatest villains in comic book history, who is all the richer for what Hackman brought to him.

Superman: The Movie is now streaming on Max.