After 30 years, the legendary Nicolas Cage finally got to play Superman. Back in the 1990s, Cage was all set to portray the Man of Steel for Tim Burton‘s “Batman” followup, “Superman Lives.” The project was scrapped, with only a few photos and some test footage of the would-be Kryptonian superhero surviving.
We never thought we’d see Cage don the suit again, until Warner Bros. Pictures released “The Flash.“
Since the Andy Muschietti-directed “The Flash” is all about the multiverse, it provided the opportunity for Cage to finally play the role, if only briefly. But the actor now contests what appeared on screen was not what he filmed.
“When I went to the picture, it was me fighting a giant spider. I did not do that. That was not what I did,” Cage said. “I don’t think it was [created by] AI. I know Tim [Burton] is upset about AI, as I am. It was CGI, OK, so that they could de-age me, and I’m fighting a spider. I didn’t do any of that, so I don’t know what happened there. … But I get where Tim’s coming from. I know what he means. I would be very unhappy if people were taking my art … and appropriating them. I get it. I mean, I’m with him in that regard. AI is a nightmare to me. It’s inhumane. You can’t get more inhumane than artificial intelligence.”
“But I don’t think it [was] AI [in The Flash],” he added. “I just think that they did something with it, and again, it’s out of my control. I literally went to shoot a scene for maybe an hour in the suit, looking at the destruction of a universe and trying to convey the feelings of loss and sadness and terror in my eyes. That’s all I did.”
Even though he doesn’t seem thrilled about fighting a giant spider as the Man of Steel, he did praise the film’s crew and director.
“They did put a lot of time into building the suit … and I think [Andy] is a terrific director, he is a great guy and a great director, and I loved his two It movies,” Cage said. “What I was supposed to do was literally just be standing in an alternate dimension, if you will, and witnessing the destruction of the universe. Kal-El was bearing witness [to] the end of a universe, and you can imagine with that short amount of time that I had, what that would mean in terms of what I can convey. I had no dialogue [so had to] convey with my eyes the emotion. So that’s what I did. I was on set for maybe three hours.”
Though Kevin Smith fans know how long Jon Peters had been gunning for Superman to fight a giant spider.
You can catch “The Flash” on MAX. And if you’ve never seen the “The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?” documentary by the late on Jon Schnepp, we highly suggest it.
