The decision to cram The Flash with a litany of poorly-rendered cameos – several of which questionably came from beyond the grave – was just one of the many issues to doom a massively-hyped comic book adaptation that ended up as one of the biggest box office bombs of all-time.
Fan service is one thing, but the entire Chronobowl sequence was a garish mess that didn’t really serve any purpose other than stirring up warm and fuzzy feelings of nostalgia, which didn’t even apply to Nicolas Cage’s Superman when he never even played the role to begin with.
The biggest bugbear with the actor’s deep cut guest appearance is that it makes absolutely no sense unless you’re aware he almost played the title role in Tim Burton’s abandoned Superman Lives over a quarter of a century ago, but Cage shared with USA Today that he found it to be a “satisfying” experience regardless of his fleeting screentime, even though he was one of the few who showed up in-person on set.
“Well, I was glad I didn’t blink. For me, it was the feeling of being actualized. Even that look for that particular character, finally seeing it on screen, was satisfying. But as I said, it’s quick. If you really wanted to know what I was going do with that character, look at my performance in City of Angels.
I was supposed (to play) Clark Kent after that, and I was already developing this alien otherness playing this angel. That is a perfect example of the tonality you would’ve gotten for Kal-El and for Clark Kent: Clark would’ve been a little more amusing but Kal-El (had) the sensitivity and the goodness and the vulnerability and all those feelings that were kind of angelic and also terrifying.”
As a lifelong and devoted fan of the Big Blue Boy Scout, Cage can at least check playing Superman off his lifelong bucket list, even if it came in one of the heftiest financial disasters in the history of cinema.
