The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Flash.
The Flash is a movie that seems designed from the ground up to be a huge nostalgia trip for any and all big fans of DC’s pantheon of comic book heroes or at least anybody who has seen all the movies based on those characters. Not only is Michael Keaton’s Batman a big part of the movie, but the film’s big multiverse finale gives us numerous cameos (both authentic and digital) from some of the greatest heroes of comic book movies’ past. And also…Nicolas Cage.
Nicholas Cage has never played a live-action Superman, though he did appear as the voice of Superman in Teen Titans Go to the Movies a few years back, and yet standing there in all his glory standing alongside TV's Superman George Reeves and the standard bearer of Superman Christopher Reeve is a version of Superman clearly played by Cage, who is fighting a giant spider? Just what in the world is going on here? While The Flash director had already spilled the Cage cameo before the movie's release, we still didn't know what it meant. Even after seeing it, though, many may still be confused. There actually is an explanation, and the truth of it all is absolutely as wild as the moment itself.
The Flash References A Superman Movie That Never Happened, But Almost Did
While it sometimes seems like there was never a time when comic book movies weren't the biggest thing at the box office, the subgenre isn't all that old. Movies based on comic book characters certainly existed following Richard Donner’s Superman and its eventual three sequels, but did not re-enter the sphere of the blockbuster until 1989’s Batman. A decade later, after Batman & Robin put an end to that particular franchise, it only made sense for DC execs to look to its previous box office success for a new franchise around Superman.
Perhaps surprisingly, the WB tapped raunch-comedy king Kevin Smith to pen the script for the new Superman movie. While Smith’s comic book bona fides were certainly well known, he’d never written a movie at that level before. But as a comic fan and creator, he of course took on the challenge. Tim Burton was even suggested to direct the project, and, as the man who had successfully launched Batman, he was an obvious choice.
The project, tentatively titled Superman Lives, would have been a variation on the Death and Return of Superman story arc as it was portrayed in the comics, with Superman battling Doomsday, though with this version of Doomsday being sent by another classic Superman villain, Brainiac. However, many of the key decisions regarding the movie's plot and action sequences weren’t actually handled by the screenwriter.
Kevin Smith And The Giant Spider
In the 2002 DVD An Evening with Kevin Smith, the writer/director talked at length about his time working on the project, then called Superman Reborn. He’d been brought in by WB, and was asked to look at an existing script that by his own admission was terrible. Eventually, the studio gave him a shot at writing his own Superman movie.
However, a producer (whom Smith did not name at the time) reportedly gave the Clerks director three edicts that needed to be included in the film. First, Superman could not wear his traditional red and blue costume. Second, he could not fly. And lastly, the third act required that the Kryptonian hero fight a giant spider.
Smith himself admitted he found the requests bizarre, but the producer was apparently quite insistent. It was eventually confirmed that the producer in question was Jon Peters, with that discovery coming in part due to another '90s project he'd supervised: Will Smith’s Wild Wild West, which did indeed include a third-act action sequence involving a giant spider.
Of course, making a Superman movie requires finding somebody to play Superman. While most of the actors who played the role haven’t been household names when they got it, the plan for Superman Lives was to fly in the opposite direction by casting a major star.
How Nicolas Cage Almost Became Superman
If you’re even a little bit of a Nicolas Cage fan, then you likely know that Cage is a big comic book superhero fan. His stage name was inspired by Marvel’s Luke Cage to give one example of how comic books have influenced him, but like many, he is a fan of Superman above and beyond all other characters. One of Cage’s three children is named Kal-El, in case there was any doubt about what a Superman super fan this guy is.
Nicolas Cage, being at the height of his fame following action movies like The Rock and his 1996 Best Oscar win for Leaving Las Vegas, was seen as a massive get for the studio. Cage, being the massive fan that he was, obviously wanted nothing more than to play the Man of Steel. The project even got as far as costuming and there are images of Cage's screen test wearing a Superman costume, which were almost certainly used as a reference when putting the sequence in The Flash together.
Why Superman Lives Never Happened
As with so many movie projects, Superman Lives never delivered Nicolas Cage fighting a giant spider. Burton apparently didn’t like Kevin’s Smith initial script, so he brought in Wesley Strick for a rewrite. Warner Bros. was afraid Strick’s script was too expensive, though, and tasked Dan Gilroy will rewriting the script as something more budget-friendly. In the end, the studio execs never laid eyes on a script that anyone truly loved. The project lost its biggest creative when Burton moved on to other things, and Superman Lives simply died on the vine.
Superman eventually returned to the big screen in the form of Superman Returns, an homage to the Richard Donner original that, for better or worse, failed to launch a franchise of its own, even if it did manage to follow in Superman Lives' footsteps by casting Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor. The DCEU was later born with Henry Cavill's Superman in Man of Steel and now Sasha Calle's Supergirl, and here we are.
In the end, we will never know if Nicolas Cage's Superman (and/or Clark Kent) would have worked. Maybe it’s a lost masterpiece. Maybe it would have been downright awful. But somewhere in the multiverse is one in which Superman Lives happened, and The Flash gives us the briefest glimpse into that world.
