Nicolas Cage is clarifying some of the mechanics behind his cameo as Superman in “The Flash.”
Cage, who was infamously set to star in Tim Burton‘s scrapped “Superman Lives” in 1998, finally portrays the superhero in Warner Bros.’ multiverse movie “The Flash.” However, Cage is calling out the scene for not being what he said he spent three hours on set filming and instead being a mostly CGI sequence.
“First and foremost, I was on set,” Cage told Yahoo! Entertainment. “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.”
He continued, “I had no dialogue [so I had to] convey with my eyes the emotion. So that’s what I did. I was on set for maybe three hours.”
Cage added, “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, 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.”
Cage noted that “The Flash” helmer Andy Muschietti was “a terrific director, he is a great guy and a great director, and I loved his two ‘It’ movies.”
“But I get where Tim’s coming from,” Cage said, citing Burton’s comments against AI. “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.”
He added, “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. 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.”
