The Flash is packed with cameos. People who have seen the film know it, and those who haven’t, still know it due to the significant controversy around some of the cameos attracted. Indeed, there were some appearances from actors who were no longer alive, or from actors we thought were in the film but actually weren’t (more on that debacle here), but the one we want to talk about is Nicolas Cage.
Cage, an actor who took his stage name from Marvel’s Luke Cage, indeed makes an appearance as Superman late in the film. It’s brief, but it’s definitely his likeness, and he’s definitely fighting a giant mechanical spider in some alternate version of Metropolis. The reference to the abandoned 1996 film Superman Lives is clever, but it’s also a little unclear. Are we actually seeing Cage? Did the actor step foot on the Flash set or was he a CGI creation?
It turns out he did! Andy Muschietti shed light on the whole interaction during an interview with The Playlist. He said that Cage was present on the set, and was excited by the opportunity to play a character that meant so much to him. “We talked with Nicolas, and we decided to shoot him in his suit,” the director noted. “And so, we built the suit with the same costume designer that built the suit for the unproduced Superman Lives, which is a movie that would have been great, but nobody will see because it wasn’t made.”
Muschietti went on to say that working with Cage was a lifelong dream, and the Oscar winner lived up to the hype. “Nicolas is such a kind guy, and I think he shared the enthusiasm for bringing back that movie that was never done – even for a couple minutes in our movie,” the director added. “And yeah, the magic of the multiverse is expressing that this universe exists, even though it’s a movie that nobody saw. So, we’re kind of saying that there is a Superman Lives.”
It all sounds great in theory. What hasn’t been addressed by Muschietti or Cage, however, is the bad CGI that was used to make the actor look younger. We understand that Cage is almost 60, and requires a bit of help to look like his long-haired, 1996 self, but the final product falls into the uncanny valley. Along with the rest of the film.
The Flash has been panned across the board for its bad CGI, and the more that’s come out about the production, the more it seems that the visual effects artists have admitted to being overworked. Zach Mulligan, an artist who left the film after three months, told Cinemablend that the working conditions were difficult from the start. “When you’re putting out this many projects with shorter turnarounds, the VFX will always look worse,” he explained. “So if it looks like a VFX shot in The Flash was made in a week, that’s probably because it was.”
The Flash may not entirely work as a film, but we as a pop culture community support Cage, so we’re happy the actor and meme machine got a chance to close the loop on one of the great unmade superhero films.