Jesse Eisenberg Needed This Superhero Movie

A lot of people emitted audible exclamations of "what?!?" when Jesse Eisenberg was cast as Lex Luthor in the Man Of Steel sequel Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice. It's an offbeat casting of an iconic role, that's for sure — and it's a role that Eisenberg took, in part, because of the benefits it supposedly offers in prolonging his career.

Eisenberg spoke to MTV and he pointed to one thing that big-name stars rarely mention:

It’s important to be in those big things. I happen to want to do this movie because the character is awesome, but it’s also important to be in those for some kind of longevity.

For Eisenberg — who floats between genres and budget sizes at a pretty high frequency — blockbusters are practically guaranteed to bring in a lot of press and a lot of money, and both are pretty necessary if he wants to maintain career mobility. It's kind of refreshing to hear a big-name actor talk about it frankly and acknowledge that sometimes, you just gotta take a role to get to the next one.

It also makes sense given the current environment of Hollywood blockbusters: Point to an A-lister and there seems to be about a 90 percent chance they've been in a superhero movie: George Clooney, Jennifer Lawrence, Paul Rudd, Scarlett Johansson, and Morgan Freeman have all done it, and those are just the first ones that come to mind. One of the surefire ways to embed yourself in the cultural canon is to embed yourself in a superhero movie.

Luckily for Eisenberg, he doesn't completely hate his villainous Dawn Of Justice character:

The character is, luckily, a really great character. Actors can sometimes find really cool things in characters that aren’t written well. This character is written really well.

That's certainly good to hear.