As villains go, Clancy Brown has covered the gamut of wicked characters across every medium with sinister perfection – but never is his evil expertise so evident as when he steps behind the microphone as the voice of Lex Luthor. Brown reprises his benchmark role as the focal point of
SUPERMAN/BATMAN: PUBLIC ENEMIES -- the next entry in the popular series of DC Universe animated original movies.
The film may be called SUPERMAN/BATMAN: PUBLIC ENEMIES , but this is a tour de force for Lex Luthor -- and Brown’s intonations captivate during every moment Luthor is on screen. In the film, Luthor has been elected President of the United States, and he uses the oncoming trajectory of a Kryptonite asteroid to frame Superman and declare a $1 billion bounty on the heads of the Man of Steel and his “partner in crime,” Batman. Superman and Batman must unite to stave off the pursuit of heroes and villains alike, stop the asteroid, and uncover Luthor’s devious plot to take command of far more than North America.
Here’s a bit from Brown about Lex and S/B:PE...
* On voicing Lex Luthor -- for nearly 2 decades now: "I'm pretty comfortable doing the voice of Lex, so the only challenges come from the script – and the PUBLIC ENEMIES script is tremendous. I think it suits everybody involved. It suits Kevin (Conroy). It suits Tim (Daly). It suits me and the voice characterizations that we created, you know, back right before the Civil War. I think that was when we started doing this. So there's not really much challenge to it anymore – it’s just a lot of fun now, and especially when you get to do it with Kevin and Tim and Andrea (Romano) and Bruce (Timm)."
* On his original audition for Lex : "Warner Bros. had been doing Batman and it was very successful, so they were gearing up this new iteration of Superman. They decided to sort of go outside the box as far as talent was concerned, and I had made it known that I wanted to do more voice work. I wasn't very good at it, but I wanted to get better. I enjoy cartoons and animation, and comic books were part of my life growing up. So they said 'Come on in, We're trying to cast Superman.' So I went in and just blew them all away with my Superman. And then they said 'Here's an idea (he laughs) nobody has ever thought of: What if Clancy played the bad guy?' (he laughs harder) So I rolled my eyes and said, 'Can I, just one time, play the good guy?' And Andrea said, 'No, you can play Lex.' So I said, 'Fine, I'll play Lex.' Honestly, Lex is fun. I'm very happy to be Lex. It's a lot more interesting than Superman to me."
* On being the "definitive voice" of Lex: "What I do with Lex, to me, is no different than how I always viewed Lex. I thought the early SUPERFRIENDS animation of Lex was kind of lacking in many aspects. It's fun to watch – it’s campy and all – but Lex wasn’t quite what I thought Lex should be. So when this started, you had this accident of everybody kind of being on the same page about what the story was and who the characters were. I just went in and did what I've thought Lex always should sound like. I totally enjoyed Gene Hackman's portrayal of Lex Luthor, but it wasn’t a Lex that I was ever afraid of. I enjoyed Kevin Spacey in the newest film, but again, that wasn’t the Lex that I thought made a good opposition to Superman. Lex is the bad guy. He's the archetype. He's everything that's ugly about who we are as people. But he is also what is seductive about that side, which is the wealth and the power. He's Darth Vader. Oh man, there’s the one I should've played – Darth Vader. Darn. Missed opportunity. Okay, so what do I bring to Lex? I don’t know. I'm just lucky enough to have a low voice and the highfalutin idea to play Lex where I think he should be. After that, it’s all about the quality of the scripts."
* On Lex being the Anti-Batman: "What does Kevin (Conroy) always say about the duality of Batman? There's a real dark side of the Dark Knight. Maybe Lex is a day bat. It would be more interesting to have Lex in Batman’s world, wouldn't it? I hadn't actually put that together because I don’t care about the bat world – it’s all Metropolis for me (he laughs). Boy, when you think about it, super powers are kind of a cop out. They’re not real. What’s real is what Batman does, although he dresses funny. So what’s really real is what Lex does, thought he doesn't go to the gym as much, you know? That’s probably why both of them are attractive – because you can conceivably become Batman or Lex Luthor, but you can't really be from Krypton."
* On what this movie is really about: "It’s the Lex Luthor story. It’s always the Lex Luthor story. Superman would have nothing to do if Lex wasn't out there stirring it up. And you never know what Lex is up to – he doesn’t ever really go through a character arc. You can depend on the fact that he's self-serving, that he's got his own agenda, and you really can't trust anything he says. It's always interesting to see how he manipulates everybody around him and how he's reinvented himself this next time. He’s benevolent, he’s a humanitarian or, like in this film, he’s an experienced politician and the right man for the right job. He tends to fool most of the people most of the time, but he doesn't ever fool Superman … (he laughs) or me."
* On Kevin Conroy as Batman: "It’s hard to imagine any other voice coming out of that cowl. The live action guys sounded like who they are. They didn't sound like Batman. What’s interesting is that Kevin is not like this personally at all, so I don't really know where it comes from. But his voice carries this dryness and sadness and, I would say, humorlessness. But it's not humorless. It's like it's been ripped out of him. There's kind of a fatalistic thing that's communicated just in the sound of his voice. That's why it’s always is a little weird when this Batman says anything that has humor or is pithy. Kevin's voice actually manages to take the pith out of the pithy. Kevin has the same thing in his voice that William Holden had on screen. It’s this kind of don't-mess-with-me gravitas, I’ve been there, I've seen it, I've been happy-go-lucky, I've been drunk in the streets, and I've seen it all. So when I talk, you listen. Kevin just holds you that way, and he does it with his voice. I never heard anybody like that. It’s like the perfect match of voice to character with Kevin in Batman. You can't get better than that."
* On whether or not he feels any sense of ownership of the role of Lex: "I respect it, but I think it goes like this: when I was growing up, the greatest basketball player was Julius Erving or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. For my daughter, it was Michael Jordan. And now, for my son, it's going to be Kobe Bryant or Lebron James. Whatever comes next for this generation, that's going to be the greatest voice. I think it's the greatest iteration of this cartoon, and I'm immensely grateful and feel very fortunate that I'm part of it. I think it's going to be tough to top this version of Superman, even by any other medium. I don’t think you'll get a live action version that could be as good as this world."
Here's three more new images:
SUPERMAN/BATMAN: PUBLIC ENEMEIS comes to DVD on September 29, 2009. Visit the official site at www.SupermanBatmanDVD.com.
