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HOLLYWOOD (Zap2it.com) - - One interesting aspect of The WB's Wednesday-night hit "Smallville" is that everyone who's ever read or seen a version of Superman knows how the story comes out. Clark Kent becomes a red-and-blue-suited hero who battles the forces of evil and the megalomaniac Lex Luthor.
So when The WB chose to revisit Clark's (Tom Welling) teen years in Kansas in "Smallville," the idea was to fill in the details of a story whose end is legend. But in the process of turning this into a TV show, a few characters were tossed into the mix, whose fates are not spelled out in the pages of DC Comics.
One of those is Lionel Luthor (John Glover), the father of Lex (Michael Rosenbaum). Lionel is an established and ruthless tycoon, while twentysomething Lex is struggling to make his mark in business and step out of his father's shadow.
"I have no idea how it's going to turn out, because they don't tell us anything," Glover says.
Looking in the comic books won't help. "That's one of the things that makes it so exciting," Glover says. "There are no restrictions about where he can go or what he can do."
With his haughty demeanor and leonine mane of hair, Lionel lords over his business enterprises and his son with an iron fist. Glover sees some parallels on the big screen.
"I just saw the ad for 'Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King' today," he says, "and it had Viggo Mortenson in a crown. I was thinking, Lionel should have a crown. He should also have a screening room and close himself in to watch 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy -- maybe have Lex come to talk to him once, kind of disturb him in the middle. There he'd be, sitting with a cape and a crown, just watching."
Asked which character in J.R.R. Tolkien's story Lionel most resembles, Glover says, "Anybody he wants. He could be all of them. Even the good ones because in his mind, that's what he's doing. Nobody who comes off as a villain thinks they're a villain. They always think they've got a point of view and it's not bad. I try to remember that all the time. He's just breaking a few rules, that's all."
Also added to the Superman mythos in "Smallville" is Clark's high-school friend, budding reporter Chloe Sullivan (Allison Mack). Of late, Chloe has been drawn into Lionel's circle, lured by his career promises, and disillusioned by her failure to find romance with Clark.
"She's so much fun to play with," Glover says of Mack. "We're getting in bed, so to speak, together. If it ends -- and I think it will at a certain point because there's a fear of certain characters getting too embroiled with Lionel. It scares the creators -- but there is a relationship left, and it can't just go to nothing."
Most of Lionel's energy has gone into his ongoing love-hate relationship with Lex, which has left little time for a personal life. There was a hint of a relationship developing with Clark's adoptive mother, Martha Kent (Annette O'Toole), who briefly worked for Lionel.
"We kept hoping Martha was going to relent," Glover says. "That would have been a very good relationship for the two of them. Lionel hasn't given up on it, but the writers have.
"But see, Martha's a lot stronger than we see. There's an amazing woman in there, in Martha Kent. She can do more than bake those cookies and muffins, and someday we'll get to see that. We're all waiting for Martha to emerge. I hope so. Annette is an amazing actress, and there's a lot of stuff they could do there."
As for other possible romance, Glover can only speculate. "Let's see. She's got to have a mind, of course, but not too much of a mind." He pauses to chuckle at the thought. "That would be exciting, though, if he really found somebody like that, because that competition would be good. It would be very exciting to play with that."
Although he's done a lot of theater, Glover doesn't quite see Lionel as a character out of Greek or Shakespearean tragedy.
"No, but he could be," he says. "That's why I try to keep him as human as possible, so he's got choices to make, and he's not thinking of himself as a bad man. I'm trying with all my soul to keep him as human as possible and not just as hateful as people like to think of him as being.
"Wouldn't that be a drudgery, just to be tragic about it all?" Glover actually sees Lionel more as a character out of mythology. "Lionel is so much the shape-shifter character," he says, "because he can become so many different things for different people. He's successful and a winner. You look at the people who do that and they're charismatic, charming, wonderful people -- exciting, intelligent, that people want to be around. So he be anything he wants, really. He's as sharp as a pistol."
Because Lionel's life wasn't explored in the original Superman story, it's up to the writers to decide his eventual end. Perhaps after the Luthors' struggles, the one thing that will send Lex to the dark side is killing his own father.
"That would be a good way to go out," Glover says. "I've heard that from other people. It would be a great thing for us to play -- for Michael, too. One does have questions, and maybe they'll be answered one day -- or maybe not, especially on 'Smallville.'"
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