Nicolas Cage has revealed that his cameo in The Flash was changed without his knowledge.
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Speaking to Yahoo! Entertainment, the Oscar-winning actor weighed in on the debate over the use of AI in movies before sharing some critical words about his cameo.
“AI is a nightmare to me,” Cage said. “It’s inhumane. You can’t get more inhumane than artificial intelligence… I would be very unhappy if people were taking my art … and appropriating [it].”
However, AI wasn’t responsible for his cameo in The Flash. The short scene towards the end of the film saw the actor de-aged and envisioned as a multiverse version of Superman inspired by Superman Lives – Tim Burton‘s cancelled Man Of Steel project from 1998.
In the cameo, Cage’s Superman was seen fighting a giant spider while shooting lasers out of his eyes. However, the actor said he filmed something entirely different and was unaware of the change.
“When I went to the picture, it was me fighting a giant spider,” Cage said. “I did not do that. That was not what I did. I don’t think it was [created by] AI. I know Tim [Burton] 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.”
Cage said that what he actually filmed was far more sombre and performance-driven.
“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,” he said. “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 I had to] convey with my eyes the emotion. So that’s what I did. I was on set for maybe three hours.”
Cage added that he really liked director Andy Muschietti. “[Andy] is a terrific director, he is a great guy and a great director, and I loved his two It movies,” he said.
Back in September, Burton admitted that he was unhappy with Cage’s Superman cameo, saying he was in “quiet revolt” against studios like Warner Brother and Disney over their use of CGI and misappropriation of his work.