Nicholas Hoult Finds Common Ground Between His Vigilante and Lex Luthor

Nicholas Hoult has built a career on characters who operate at the edge of moral legibility — from the brittle romanticism of About a Boy's Marcus to the powder-keg ambition of J.D. Salinger in Rebel in the Rye. His two most immediately pressing roles continue that tradition, and, as it turns out, the actor sees more connective tissue between them than audiences might expect.

A Shared Fixation on the End Goal

Speaking to GamesRadar+, Hoult drew a surprisingly coherent line between Ryan, the charismatic masked vigilante he plays in the heist-comedy How to Rob a Bank, and Lex Luthor, the cerebral antagonist he inhabits in James Gunn's DC universe. The throughline, in his view, is obsession. "For both of them, I think there's this element of, like, the end goal," Hoult explained, noting that both characters become so fixated on their respective objectives that the journey itself becomes almost secondary to the destination. It's the kind of performance logic that distinguishes compelling screen villains — or antiheroes — from merely functional ones: a character who knows precisely what they want tends to generate their own dramatic momentum.

Hoult was careful not to over-reveal what Gunn's script does with Luthor in Man of Tomorrow, but he suggested the character carries genuine psychological complexity. "There's a lot for Lex to try and understand about himself and the world," he said. For anyone following his DC work closely, that aligns with the layered portrait Nicholas Hoult's Lex Luthor delivered during the production of Man of Tomorrow, where early impressions pointed to a character grounded in intellect and grievance rather than pantomime menace.

How to Rob a Bank and the Vigilante Who Means Well

In How to Rob a Bank, Hoult leads a crew of social-media-famous masked vigilantes — rounded out by Pete Davidson, Anna Sawai, and Rhenzy Feliz — who document their elaborate heists in real time, offering YouTube tutorials on everything from cracking security systems to evading law enforcement. It's a premise that sits comfortably in the lineage of genre-aware crime comedies, somewhere between The Italian Job and the self-referential anarchism of Sorry to Bother You.

The crucial distinction Hoult draws between Ryan and Luthor is one of intent. Ryan, whatever the legality of his methods, operates in service of something larger than himself — a kind of populist redistribution fantasy dressed in a balaclava. Lex Luthor, as audiences witnessed in Gunn's Superman, is a fundamentally more self-serving creature. The morality may differ, but the psychological architecture — that single-minded, almost pathological pursuit of a fixed objective — keeps the two characters in conversation with each other.

"It's fun to play characters that have got this set goal and obsession," Hoult continued, "because then it gives you a very clear path through the story and the scenes." It's a working actor's insight as much as a dramatic one: clarity of want is the engine of scene-work, and Hoult seems to have found that engine humming in both projects.

What Comes Next in the DC Sequel

Man of Tomorrow expands the stakes considerably from Superman, pairing the Man of Steel with an unlikely collaborator in Lex Luthor as the two face Brainiac — a threat apparently beyond even Kryptonian capability alone. Nathan Fillion, who appears in the film, has previously indicated that audiences will come away with a much fuller understanding of who Luthor is beneath the surface, which dovetails with Hoult's own framing of the role as a character still reckoning with himself.

For viewers interested in how Hoult navigates projects across wildly different tonal registers — a breezy heist-comedy and a DC tentpole within the same release window — it's worth noting that this isn't the first time he's managed competing franchise demands. Fans will recall the recent news surrounding his exit from HBO's Harry Potter series, a reminder of just how much the actor had on his plate simultaneously.

How to Rob a Bank opens in theaters on November 13. Man of Tomorrow is scheduled for July 9, 2027.

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