Nic Cage calls AI "inhumane," but thinks The Flash was okay
"AI is a nightmare to me," Cage said. "It’s inhumane. You can’t get more inhumane than artificial intelligence. But I don’t think it [was] AI [in The Flash].
Nic Cage is, of course, no stranger to having his image used, often stripped almost completely of context, to promote a film. There are many movies, indeed, that exist solely because Cage agreed to appear in them, and thus allowed the creators to put his beautifully brooding mug on their box art so it could glare at you from a streaming service’s big list of action-thrillers. In that light, it’s interesting to hear Cage talk about his recent sojourn in the world of blockbuster superhero cinema, when he appeared for a few moments in Andy Muschietti’s The Flash, in a late-movie reference to to his and Tim Burton’s abortive Superman Lives adaptation from the 1990s.
Cage has talked about the cameo before—joking a few months back that he was glad he “didn’t blink” and miss the appearance—but he’s talking about the movie again lately as he promotes his latest film, Dream Scenario. And also in light of comments that his old pal Burton made back in September, when the director notably did not drag Muschietti’s film—but still expressed some pretty clear unhappiness at seeing his old ideas and work be dropped into the industrial movie-making thresher. (“They can take what you did, Batman or whatever, and culturally misappropriate it, or whatever you want to call it,” Burton said in a recent interview, saying he was in “quiet revolt” against the studios.)
Cage is a bit more equanimous about the whole thing, noting that he doesn’t consider the work Muschietti did on the movie—de-aging him, and showing him fighting a giant spider when all Cage actually did on the set was basically stand there in the suit, “bearing witness [to] the end of a universe”—as AI, but just “CGI.” “I know Tim is upset about AI, as I am,” Cage told Yahoo! Entertainment. “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 is also quick to praise Muschietti, calling him a “terrific director,” while also noting his own dismay at the idea of AI being used on actors’ performances:
AI is a nightmare to me. It’s inhumane. You can’t get more inhumane than artificial intelligence. But I don’t think it [was] AI [in The Flash]. I just think that they did something with it, and again, it’s out of my control. I literally went to shoot a scene for maybe an hour in the suit, looking at the destruction of a universe and trying to convey the feelings of loss and sadness and terror in my eyes. That’s all I did.