Nicolas Cage Has A Mental Trick To Make His Superman Cameo In The Flash Watchable

While Hollywood is populated with many big stars who refuse to watch their own movies, Nicolas Cage is not among them. There are certain projects, though, that the Oscar-winning actor watches with more of a discriminating eye.

Cage's surprise turn as Superman is often named as one of the complaints fans had with "The Flash's use of CGI, and the actor has admitted in an interview that he also has issues with his brief appearance in the film. In an interview with Deadline, Cage said he uses a mind trick of sorts to make the cameo easier to watch. "I did get some satisfaction from seeing the character, but to me it didn't look [right]," Cage told Deadline. "But then, Superman is an alien. Kal-El is from another planet. So, in that way, the CGI kind of looked right, because it's alien. It doesn't look real. It doesn't look like it has a heartbeat. So, I can look at it that way and think that it worked."

Cage's version of Superman is just one of the many cameo appearances in "The Flash's" multidimensional Chronobowl sequence. Other nods to the Man of Steel in the film included cameos of George Reeves, Christopher Reeve, and Henry Cavill as their respective versions of the character, as well as Helen Slater as Supergirl.

Despite complaints about the CGI, Nicolas Cage's Man of Steel cameo was special to DC fans because it finally allowed them to see the venerable actor version of Superman on the big screen. Cage's "Superman Lives," which was to be directed by Tim Burton, was canceled early in its production in 1998.

But while the shuttered DC film marked a disappointing setback in Cage's prolific career, he told Deadline that he was still happy to see his version of the famed DC character in "The Flash." More than 20 years after the project was shelved, he was thrilled that director Andy Muschietti shined a light on all the work that he, Burton, and their collaborators put into the look of the character for "Superman Lives."

"I still wanted to see [costume designer] Colleen Atwood's suit, which I maintain is a beautiful suit, and 50% of that [character] was my design," Cage told Deadline. "I wanted Superman to have the long, kind of black Samurai hair and a vulnerable feeling — almost no blinking, a stillness in his eyes. And so, it was 50/50. It was Tim and myself, we had designed something, and it never came to light, so when I saw it moving, I was very happy that Andy Muschietti wanted me to do it."