Tim Burton's Superman film that almost was, SUPERMAN LIVES, was the subject of the recently released documentary by Jon Schnepp by the name of THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN LIVES: WHAT HAPPENED?. Sadly one of the few people who Schnepp was unable to talk to was the man who would have played the Man of Steel himself, Nicolas Cage.
During an interview with Yahoo Movies, Nicolas Cage was asked about his involvement in SUPERMAN LIVES:
The only thing I’ll say about that — because that is such a lighting rod hot topic and if I say anything at all it just seems to snowball — but I will say that I had great belief in that movie and in what Tim Burton’s vision was going to be for that movie. I would’ve loved to have seen it, but I feel that in many ways, it was sort of a win/win because of the power of the imagination. I think people can actually see the movie in their minds now and imagine it and in many ways that might resonate more deeply than the finished project.
I've got to say that I agree with Cage on this point, our imaginations are typically more powerful than anything we see on screen; but whether our imaginations paint SUPERMAN LIVES as something laughably bad or unbelievably amazing is up to us. Nicolas Cage added that SUPERMAN LIVES would have given us something magical and beautiful:
Tim is the total artist, a pure artist with a real vision, and I’ve often said that he can create worlds and that’s exactly what he does. I saw some of the tests of different characters and costumes for Krypton and they were just so surreal and so magical and beautiful. He’s definitely one of my favorite filmmakers because of his originality, because of his vision.
You can check out our own Chris Bumbray's review of THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN LIVES: WHAT HAPPENED? right here!