Comic book fans are, above all else, passionate people. We can spend hours scouring forums, comment sections, and social media threads to dissect every detail of a superhero story, and the arguments rarely stay polite for long. This week, James Gunn’s Superman went viral again as a vocal portion of DC fans zeroed in on a perceived flaw in the 2025 film. In the movie, Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) successfully cloned Superman (David Corenswet), engineering a genetic replica detailed enough to access the Fortress of Solitude. Yet, Lex never once connected that clone’s face to the mild-mannered Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent. The argument spread quickly, framed as evidence of a plot hole significant enough to undermine Gunn’s otherwise celebrated vision for the DC Universe. Gunn, to his credit, took the time to address the criticism directly on Threads.
“Lex doesn’t know who he is, but I don’t know how he would,” Gunn wrote, breaking his response into three distinct points. “A) Lex thinks Superman is a disconnected alien who wants to take over the world, so I’m not sure why he’d assume he has a ‘secret identity.’ B) Hypno Glasses are real. Clark looks like another person. C) Being a genius in some ways (in Lex’s case, genetics, electrochemistry, nanotechnology, nuclear & quantum physics, to name a few) doesn’t mean you are a genius in all fields. Like many scientists (& artists!), he can miss basic things.” In this case, Gunn didn’t even have to explain himself, as all fans needed to settle the debate was already available in DC Comics.
James Gunn Is Right About Lex’s Limitations
Image courtesy of DC Studios
Gunn’s defense reflects a decades-long understanding of Lex Luthor that the comics established long before any film adaptation tackled the question. The most telling entry in that tradition comes from John Byrne’s landmark 1986 Superman run, in which Lex is literally handed evidence that Clark Kent is Superman, but dismisses it. The reason, as Byrne framed it, is a profound failure of imagination, as Lex cannot conceive of why any being with god-like power would choose to spend half his existence pretending to be an ordinary person. Lex’s elitism and overconfidence are major character flaws that make the villain who he is, and Gunn’s Superman perfectly follows the comic book tradition. A man who believes power is the only honest expression of a being’s true nature cannot genuinely process the idea that the most powerful being on Earth chooses to work at a newspaper.
The Hypno-Glasses reinforce the point from a different angle, and their inclusion in Gunn’s Superman carries more comic book history than casual viewers might expect. The concept originated in Superman #330, published in 1978, written by Martin Pasko and illustrated by Curt Swan, following a suggestion submitted to the Superman letter column by a fan named Al Schroeder III. That issue reveals Clark’s glasses are crafted from Kryptonian materials, which amplify his innate power of super-hypnosis. Anyone who makes eye contact with Clark Kent is subtly influenced into perceiving him as a completely different person from Superman. The disguise, in other words, is an active psychic effect, operating constantly beneath the surface. Gunn embraced the Hypno-Glasses because they resolve the most persistent criticism of the Clark Kent disguise without requiring the audience to accept that everyone around him is simply oblivious. The Hypno-Glasses are admittedly a strange piece of Silver Age lore, and they never achieved wide adoption in the comics following their debut. However, their core logic holds, and Lex Luthor, for all his certified brilliance, would be subject to that effect the same as anyone else.
Superman is currently available to stream on HBO Max.
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