The 'Renfield' actor insists he didn't 'know what happened' with his Man of Steel cameo, claiming he 'didn't do any' of the scenes shown in the Ezra Miller-fronted superhero movie
- Nov 3, 2023
AceShowbiz - Nicolas Cage claims his cameo as an alternate Superman in "The Flash" was nothing like what he filmed. The 59-year-old actor can see why Tim Burton was upset over his work being "misappropriated" after a lot of CGI was used in a multiverse sequence in the 2023 movie, which also saw Michael Keaton reprise his role as Batman.
In 1998 when the plug got pulled after two years of pre-production work, the iconic filmmaker was just weeks away from working on "Superman Lives". And Burton drew a negative comparison between seeing Cage and Keaton in "The Flash" - which stars Ezra Miller in the titular role - with the controversial use of artificial intelligence in filmmaking.
And although Cage doesn't believe AI was used in the Andres Muschietti-helmed film, he doesn't recognise the scene. Speaking to Yahoo! Entertainment, he said, "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 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."
He continued, "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."
The "Renfield" actor did, however, heap praise on the director and the costume department for the hours they spent on his Superman suit. Cage added, "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."
"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."
