In a new interview with Yahoo! Entertainment, Nic Cage makes three things very clear. First, he was on set to film his cameo in The Flash. Second, he did not film the action sequence that showed him fighting a giant spider amid the collapse of a multiverse—that was all CGI. And third, he is very, very happy that suit finally made it to screen.
Oh, and he hates AI.
“When I went to the picture, it was me fighting a giant spider. I did not do that. That was not what I did. I don’t think it was [created by] AI. I know Tim [Burton] is upset about AI, as I am. It was CGI,” he explained during the interview, which was done to promote Cage’s newest film, Dream Sequence*. The CGI was used to de-age Cage to more accurately reflect the moment in the 90s when the Tim Burton-directed Superman film was being filmed before it’s fairly ignominous cancellation. There’s an independent documentary released in 2015—The Death of Superman Lives—that chronicles not only what happened behind the scenes of this film, but also speaks to the intense fan investment in this story.
He explains further; “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… 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.”
The spider itself is a reference to Superman Lives as well—Jon Peters, one of the producers of the film, had wanted the final sequence of the film to be Superman fighting this giant spider. While initially a rumour, Peters later owned up to it in the 2015 documentary.
But that suit is something we haven’t talked about, and Cage was so happy to see that suit finally appear in the picture. “I do feel that the movie gave that beautiful suit that Colleen Atwood designed a chance to be seen, and I was happy about that because she put a heck of a lot of thought into that series,” he said.
Tim Burton has also come out strongly against AI, which Cage agrees with. “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]. I just think that they did something with it, and again, it’s out of my control.”
*Dream Sequence is produced by A24, an independent studio that is not a part of the AMPTP. They have signed an interim agreement with SAG-AFTRA to allow actors like Cage to promote the movie.
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