This article contains spoilers for The Flash. So if you haven’t seen it yet, please come back in 144 minutes.
Who hasn’t always wanted to see Nicolas Cage fight a giant metal spider? Add to that that he’d be playing Superman in the battle and you’ve got a truly wild showdown – one that was once assumed forever unachievable. Now, close to 30 years after Kevin Smith first developed the idea of Superman Lives, in which Superman superfan Cage would have played the character,The Flash has brought that scene to life with the help of Cage and some digital de-aging.
Cage was famously supposed to star in Superman Lives – the disastrous production of which was the subject of the 2015 doc The Death of “Superman Lives”: What Happened? and numerous Smith speaking engagements – but once the project fell apart, fans were left with minimal test footage and behind-the-scenes clips. Now that Cage has been able to don the cape for The Flash, even Kevin Smith is happy at least a fraction of his – well, producer Jon Peters’ – vision has made it to the big screen, telling ComicBook.com, “For the earliest part of my career, I made lots of nods to pop culture…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.” That’s a pretty humble statement considering Smith strongly contested writing the giant spider sequence, even though he ended up doing so to please Peters.
While Nicolas Cage’s Superman cameo is one of the most fun surprises of The Flash – if you could avoid spoilers weeks ahead of its wide release – director Andy Muschietti did open up about it in May. “Nic was absolutely wonderful…Although the role was a cameo, he dove into it… I dreamt all my life to work with him. I hope I can work with him again soon.”
And while Superman Lives never came to fruition, Cage would play the character long before entering the multiverse for The Flash – sort of, voicing him in Teen Titans Go! To the Movies.
Do you think the Nicolas Cage cameo in The Flash was effective? Do you think he could reprise Superman again? Let us know your thoughts!