DC Comics fans are sure to be surprised, when seeing The Flash in theaters, to behold its zaniest cameo: Nicolas Cage as Clark Kent, aka Superman, battling a massive alien creature.
Late in the Ezra Miller-led film, an extended sequence takes audiences on a whirlwind journey through the multiverse. When Barry Allen, aka the Flash, enters the extradimensional Speed Force, we catch glimpses of alternate realities — and of alternate versions of superheroes played by actors from past DC films.
The original Superman of the big screen, Christopher Reeve, appears along with Helen Slater as Supergirl, Adam West as Batman and George Reeves also as Superman.
But the reason behind Cage’s cameo amid these blasts from cinematic past may not be clear. After all, the Oscar winner’s turn as the Man of Steel — in director Tim Burton’s follow-up to Batman and Batman Returns — never made it beyond pre-production.
Superman Lives, as the 1998 unproduced film would have been called, sought to reboot Superman onscreen much as Burton and Michael Keaton did with Batman.
Written by Kevin Smith and produced by Jon Peters, its plot featured Superman squaring off against foes Lex Luthor, Brainiac and the killing machine Doomsday. After distributor Warner Bros. decided to axe the idea, Clark Kent didn’t return to theaters until 2006’s Superman Returns. And it would take 25 years in total for Cage’s portrayal of Superman to come full circle.
The Flash director Andy Muschietti told Esquire Middle East that Cage was “absolutely wonderful” to work with. “He is a massive Superman fan. A comic book fanatic… Although the role was a cameo, he dove into it.”
Cage’s enthusiasm for comic books has never been in doubt; the Face/Off actor named one of his sons Kal-El after Superman’s birth name from his home planet Krypton.
His de-aged spot in The Flash is technically his second time playing Superman after voicing a version of the character in 2018’s Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (in which Kal-El Cage also voices a young Bruce Wayne).
Of the ill-fated Superman Lives, Cage told Variety in March that “it was more of a 1980s Superman with, like, the samurai black long hair. I thought it was gonna be a really different, sort of emo Superman, but we never got there.
“They wanted [director] Renny Harlin to do the movie,” he continued. “But I thought if I’m going to do this, it’s such a bullseye to hit … I said, this has to be Tim Burton. I called Tim and said, ‘Would you do this?’ Tim didn’t cast me, I cast Tim, and Tim said yes. I loved what he did with Michael [Keaton] and Batman, and I was a big fan.”
Cage added that his Superman never came to fruition ultimately because Burton’s 1996 flick Mars Attacks wasn’t enough of a box office hit.
“They were scared at the studio because of Mars Attacks. Warner Bros. had lost a lot of money on the movie. These movies that are really weird, that challenge and break ground, they piss a lot of people off. I think they got cold feet.”
It didn’t help that a leaked photo of Cage in an unfinished version of Superman’s iconic red and blue costume further convinced fans that the actor, fresh off his Academy Award win for 1995’s Leaving Las Vegas, didn’t fit the role.
“They couldn’t give a shape to it in their minds,” Holly Payne, producer of the 2015 tell-all documentary The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?, told Fast Company’s Co.CREATE. “And no one had seen the art, except for one horrible Polaroid of Nicolas Cage, exhausted, taken during a costume test.”
Burton has also lamented the cancellation of Superman Lives, telling Howard Stern in a 2019 interview “that was the one character that was never really portrayed with any depth… I thought for the first time, with Nic, you could see a guy who you could see the change [from Clark Kent to Superman].”
Smith, who in addition to scripting the unproduced film has directed episodes of The Flash TV series, recently approved of the new film’s inclusion of Cage as Superman battling an extraterrestrial spider — a scene planned for Superman Lives.
“For the earliest part of my career, I made lots of nods to pop culture,” he told ComicBook.com. “I can’t tell you how happy it makes me at the point in my life whenever pop culture nods back at me. For all the times I ever told that Superman Lives story, it delighted me no end to hear it was echoed in The Flash.”
As for the other cinematic superhero universe, Cage made his feelings clear in the same Variety interview: “I don’t need to be in the MCU, I’m Nic Cage.”
Although another Marvel role outside of Spider-Verse is unlikely, especially after a DC Comics appearance 25 years in the making, Cage added he has an affinity for that franchise too.
“I’ve gotta be nice about Marvel movies because I named myself after a Stan Lee character named Luke Cage,” he said. “What am I going to do, put Marvel movies down? Stan Lee is my surrealistic father. He named me.”
The Flash is in theaters now.
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