According to certain scientific theories there are endless alternative universes out there. In one, everything is exactly the same as in this one, but your favourite rock star is David Bowie instead of Mick Jagger. In another, Liz Truss and Donald Trump are still the leaders of the free world. You’ve seen the bit in Everything, Everywhere All at Once where the entire human population of the planet has apparently been transformed into lumps of rock with googly eyes. And yet it is probably fair to say that there are not too many other realities where a famous film-maker actually thought Nicolas Cage would be a great fit as Superman.
Still, that’s the universe we live in and in many ways it’s rather a fabulous one. Even better, 25 years after Cage suited up for the abortive Superman Lives (as detailed in the excellent 2015 documentary The Death of “Superman Lives”: What Happened?) he is finally going to appear as the man of steel in the upcoming Flash movie.
How is this happening, you may ask? Has director Andy Muschietti been drinking too much comic book Kool-Aid? Not at all, for The Flash is a multiverse movie, Warner Bros-owned DC’s first, which means it’s perfectly acceptable for all kinds of alternate versions of superheroes to turn up. Hell, they are even letting Batfleck back in, so why not also visit a reality where Tim Burton got his wish and the last son of Krypton looks like … Nicolas Cage?
“Nic was absolutely wonderful,” Muschietti told Variety. “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.”
Last year, DC revealed via a comic book Easter egg that Burton’s Batman (1989) supposedly takes place in the same universe as 1978’s Superman (with Christopher Reeve as Kal-El). And yet it has always been the unmade Superman Lives that seemed the more likely sister-piece to those early films about the caped crusader. With Burton’s dark knight, Michael Keaton, set to return to the role in The Flash, the door has finally opened for Cage to get his long-awaited debut as a (possibly weirdly Gothic) big blue boy scout.
We don’t yet know if they will share screen time, or even if Keaton’s Gotham can be reached from Cage’s Metropolis without travelling through some kind of inter-universal portal. But it is comforting to know that we are about to find out.
Cage has had his fair share of comic book roles, for better and for worse. The pre-Marvel Cinematic Universe Ghost Rider flicks saw him phoning in the role of Johnny Blaze from somewhere a few light-years west of Alpha Centauri. But his turn as Big Daddy in 2010’s Kick-Ass saw him steal almost every scene as the Adam West-channelling masked vigilante – some going given Cage was co-starring alongside a foul-mouthed 12-year-old who spends much of the film slicing and dicing every bad guy in sight.
And that’s the thing with a Nicolas Cage movie. For every Leaving Las Vegas there’s a Wicker Man remake. For every Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans there’s a Season of the Witch or Deadfall. But if the Oscar-winner hadn’t been the kind of guy who’s willing to take on these terrible, terrible movies (alongside the fantastic ones), then he also wouldn’t have been the sort of actor to risk ridicule by pulling on the famous Kryptonian pants. And a quarter of a century on, we wouldn’t be getting what promises to be a splendid cameo.
Luckily, this doesn’t mean we ever have to sit through another minute of Trapped in Paradise or Bangkok Dangerous ever again. For despite the fact that we live in a reality in which Cage has had a curate’s egg of a career, there is still no alternate universe out there where these films are acceptable viewing.
• This article was amended on 26 May 2023. Nicolas Cage played Big Daddy in the film Kick-Ass, not Hit Girl, which is the name of a character in that film.
