Who is the Spectre? Nicolas Cage’s dream DCU role, explained

When it comes to actors who have almost played a superhero, none may be more infamous than Nicolas Cage and Superman. While this project did not come to be for the comic fan who even named one of his sons after the character, the 59-year-old still has DC Comics dreams, and in a perfect reality, he would get to be the one who brings Spectre to life on the big and small screens.

For those unfamiliar with the character or Cage’s passion for him, he brought it up on a Reddit AMA to promote his turn as Dracula in the Renfield movie. The Spectre has been around for over 80 years and first popped up in DC Comics’ first published line called More Fun Comics. In the initial continuity, Jim Corrigan is a policeman who is murdered, refused entry into the afterlife, and is then returned to Earth to eliminate evil people. He comes to enjoy the work so much, he refuses an offer to give up his mission and eventually joins the Justice Society of America before disappearing from comic stories until later in the 1960s.

Upon being brought back by those writing the stories, Corrigan’s powers were increased to the point he became borderline omnipotent, and Cage says this is one of the things which would make playing him hard to pull off. He can kill people just by looking at them, can appear in multiple places at once, and is generally only vulnerable to extremely powerful magic. Subsequent continuity adjustments revealed Corrigan was possessed by a fallen angel trying to atone for his rebellion by serving as an instrument of God’s wrath, and, in contrast to many DC characters, Spectre is not above killing people whenever he feels like it.

Before others like Crispus Allen, Hal Jordan, and even Martian Manhunter J’onn J’onzz became avatars for the angel, Corrigan wiped out an entire country due to the population’s continuous cycle of violence and threatened to kill everyone in New York if the state executed a wrongfully-convicted man. He has barely appeared in live-action media but has been in lots of animation and some video games, so there is potential for Cage to put the first stamp on this. That is, if James Gunn and Peter Safran are listening. For now, all audiences and fans can do is hope — though, given his history, he would fit in well in the planned “Gods and Monsters” arc.