A Real Pain writer/director/star Jesse Eisenberg has been famous for so long now that it’s possible that many people don’t even remember a time when he wasn’t lending his trademark understated humor to a number of films and TV shows. The 2025 movie schedule is expected to play host to the long-awaited sequel to one of his hit franchises, with Now You See Me 3 set to astound audiences all over again. However, there was a time when his work for a big budget movie didn’t go quite so well, and Eisenberg just got real about his appearance in Batman v Superman.
What Did Jesse Eisenberg Say About Batman V Superman Hurting His Career?
The superhero films which got the DC comics movie universe off the ground didn’t do as well as Warner Bros. likely hoped. Man of Steel made some decent money, but got a relatively lukewarm/negative reception after it was viewed by many, and the 2016 Snyderverse follow-up, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice…well, it made less money than its predecessor and didn’t really help matters when it came to critical or fan reviews.
One thing that people weren’t pleased with in BVS was Jesse Eisenberg’s turn as Lex Luthor, and it was during an interview with the Armchair Expert podcast that he revealed he believes doing that movie hurt his career:
I was in this Batman movie and the Batman movie was so poorly received, and I was so poorly received. I've never said this before and it's kind of embarrassing to admit, but I genuinely think it actually hurt my career in a real way, because I was poorly received in something so public. I've been in poorly received things that just don't see the light of day, and for the most part no one knows, but this was so public and I don't read notices or reviews or movie press or anything so I was unaware of how poorly it was received.
It might seem odd that the Zombieland star didn’t have any idea how his time as a big screen supervillain was received, along with not knowing that the film itself got less than optimal reviews, but Eisenberg was in a pretty unique situation at the time. He explained that he was already “two feet out the door” when it came to Hollywood because he felt that the business was going to “spit me out tomorrow,” and was going to try to focus more of his energy on his work as a playwright.
Then, his mother-in-law got sick, so he and his wife spent most of their time in her hometown of Bloomington, Indiana to help her out and he was “around none of it” (meaning the movie business) for long enough that the news of the BVS reception just didn’t touch him for quite some time.
Once he figured it out, however, he came to feel that the negativity hurt his career, mostly because of how giant the platform was, as opposed to the much smaller (or simply less anticipated and expensive to make) films he had been known for previously. He continued, explaining how he blamed himself for the movie's failings:
I loved my role and I loved the movie, doing it and everything, so I feel just, myself to blame. I'm not like ‘They did me wrong.’ I'm like ‘Oh, I guess I did something wrong there’… It was depressing but I'm depressed all the time in some ways, [I] just like ‘Oh, yeah of course I had this great opportunity, of course it didn't go well,’ just pessimism.
I’m sure that everyone who worked on BVS saw it as a huge opportunity, and while it didn’t work out as hoped, we all know that to blame any one individual is folly. The idea of the actor putting the blame on himself makes some sense, especially now that we know he and his The Social Network co-star, Andrew Garfield, both thought their performances had “screwed it up” and that the movie was going to fail. But, more importantly, whatever Eisenberg’s original feelings on how the outcome impacted his career, at least he came through it and is on the upswing again.
