Martin Luther is the primary protagonist of the 2003 film Luther. He is played by Joseph Fiennes. Luther is the young German man who eventually leads a new religious movement that sweeps across what would later become Germany. During his younger years Martin was an excessively self-critical man who felt that he could never do well enough to please the God he saw as an angry deity. His superior Johann von Staupitz decided to send Martin to the University at Wittenburg to learn about the Gospels in an age when even most priests had not read them.