Nicolas Cage opens up about not becoming Superman
Throughout his four decades as a prominent force in Hollywood, Nicolas Cage has led a career of peaks and troughs. Having scooped an Academy Award, SAG Award and a Golden Globe, Cage has shown undeniable talent across various roles. As of last weekend, Cage added the Variety Legend & Groundbreaker Award to his collection during the Miami Film Festival.
While accepting his award on Sunday, March 7th, Cage discussed some of his past projects, including those that never came to fruition. Having dipped his toes into the superhero world in movies like Kick-Ass, Cage reflected that he never quite surrendered himself to the universe.
“I’ve gotta be nice about Marvel movies because I named myself after a Stan Lee character named Luke Cage,” he revealed. “What am I going to do, put Marvel movies down? Stan Lee is my surrealistic father. He named me. I understand what the frustration is. I get it. But I think there’s plenty of room for everybody. I’m seeing movies like Tár. I’m seeing all kinds of artistic and independently driven movies. I think there’s plenty of room for everybody.” Responding to the question of whether he felt needed in the Marvel universe, Cage said: “I don’t need to be in the MCU; I’m Nic Cage.”
In the 1990s, Cage was close to fully immersing himself in the comic book world as he took on the title role in Tim Burton’s Superman Lives. However, this project never came to fruition. Cage revealed that, to this day, he’s not entirely sure why.
“They wanted Renny Harlin to do the movie,” Cage continued. “I sat down with Renny. I was doing another picture, he came to the trailer, and we talked. I liked Renny… 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.”
“I love Mars Attacks. I thought Mars Attacks was just a fantastic, groundbreaking movie. He’s a groundbreaker! But they were scared at the studio because of Mars Attacks. Warner Brothers 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. They’d spent a lot of money already building the sets and the costume and what have you. But you never know. I don’t mean to be cryptic Cage, but you never know!”
“It was more of a 1980s Superman with like, the samurai black long hair,” Cage said of Burton’s gothic Superman. “I thought it was gonna be a really different, sort of emo Superman, but we never got there.”
Later in the speech, Cage revealed his favourite movie genres to act in. “My personal favourite is independently spirited family drama,” he revealed. “I like movies that take place at home and the struggles we have at home and how we’re trying to either succeed and become better people or succumb to the pressures of the human experience. My other favourite genre, I would say would be horror. Some of the most talented artistic people now are making horror films. I think you can do so much. The reason why science fiction and horror is so important to me is that it gave me a format where I could express some of my more surrealistic and abstract dreams with film performance.”
“Everybody is very sensitive right now,” Cage added. “If you look at the science fiction format, you put it on a different planet, you put it in the future, what have you, you can pretty much say what you want because it’s not right now. Oh, I didn’t I didn’t mean that — it was on a planet called Exeter or something. That’s where it happened. I didn’t mean that! You can get your freedom speech mojo on and do what you want.”
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