Nicolas Cage gave his honest thoughts on finally playing Superman in his surprise cameo in The Flash.
How did Nicolas Cage feel about playing Superman in The Flash?
In an interview with USA Today to promote his new movie Sympathy for the Devil, Cage opened up about becoming Tim Burton‘s unrealized vision for the Man of Steel just for a few moments in the most recent DC Universe release. “Well, I was glad I didn’t blink,” Cage said. “For me, it was the feeling of being actualized. Even that look for that particular character, finally seeing it on screen, was satisfying. But as I said, it’s quick.”
During his action hero period in the late ’90s, Cage was set to headline Burton’s deconstructionist take on the Man of Steel in the unproduced Superman Lives. The movie was very close to production until a series of rewrites and budgetary issues with Warner Bros. derailed the project altogether. Leaked photos of Cage in the Superman costume drew controversy across the internet following the project’s cancellation.
While Superman Lives never made the light of day, the late Jon Schnepp’s 2015 documentary The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened? detailed the scrapped Burton production and its potential for a new vision of the Superman mythology. Cage may have only given a small hint of his Man of Steel battling an infamous giant alien spider in The Flash, but the actor says another hit movie of his from the ’90s revealed the performance he could have brought to the screen if Superman Lives had been made.
“If you really wanted to know what I was going do with that character, look at my performance in ‘City of Angels,'” Cage continued. “I was supposed (to play) Clark Kent after that (in “Superman Lives”), and I was already developing this alien otherness playing this angel. That is a perfect example of the tonality you would’ve gotten for Kal-El and for Clark Kent: Clark would’ve been a little more amusing but Kal-El (had) the sensitivity and the goodness and the vulnerability and all those feelings that were kind of angelic and also terrifying.”
The Flash is now available for digital download. It is scheduled for release on Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD on August 29.
