SPENDING: Nicolas Cage said didn’t know about the giant spider scene despite the fact he was on set for THE FLASH for 3 hours

Nicolas Cage says he was on set for ‘THE FLASH’ for “maybe 3 hours” but he didn’t know about the giant spider scene.

“It was CGI so they could de-age me & I’m fighting a spider. I didn’t do any of that, so I don’t know what happened there.”

That the 59-year-old actor was actually on set is a bit unexpected as many watching the film just assumed the entire performance was created by CG. Cage said what was actually filmed, and what he was told the scene would be, was something more solemn.

“What I was supposed to do was literally just be standing in an alternate dimension, if you will, and witnessing the destruction of the universe,” he said. “Kal-El was bearing witness [to] the end of a universe, and you can imagine with that short amount of time that I had, what that would mean in terms of what I can convey. I had no dialogue [so I had to] convey with my eyes the emotion. So that’s what I did. I was on set for maybe three hours.”

In The Flash, Cage’s Superman was fighting a large creature with red lasers coming out of his eyes. But the actor says this was very different from what he actually shot for The Flash.

“When I went to the picture, it was me fighting a giant spider,” Cage said. “I did not do that. That was not what I did. I don’t think it was [created by] AI. I know Tim [Burton] is upset about AI, as I am. 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.”

Yet it wasn’t AI, Cage said, that was responsible for his cameo in last summer’s The Flash. The film envisioned a younger Cage as a multiverse version of Superman that inspired by Superman Lives — Tim Burton’s Man of Steel project that was famously canceled before it could get off the ground in 1998.

In the film, a number of DC heroes from previous films, including Michael Keaton from Tim Burton’s Batman movies and Cage from the axed Superman Lives.

As the world considers the role AI will play in the future, the subject has proven to be a major stalling point in negotiations around the ongoing actors’ strike.

While the scene was created using CGI rather than AI, the Ghost Rider star admitted that he still found it baffling. “It was CGI, OK, so that they could de-age me, and I’m fighting a spider,” he said. “I didn’t do any of that, so I don’t know what happened there… I just think that they did something with it, and again, it’s out of my control.

“It goes into another AI thing, and this is why I think I’m over it with the studio. They can take what you did, Batman or whatever, and culturally misappropriate it, or whatever you want to call it,” he said. “Yhey can do whatever they want… I’m in quiet revolt against all this.

Referencing Burton’s comments, Cage continued: “I know Tim is upset about AI, as I am… I would be very unhappy if people were taking my art… and appropriating them. I get it. I mean, I’m with him in that regard. AI is a nightmare to me. It’s inhumane. You can’t get more inhumane than artificial intelligence.”