AI is one of the sticking points in the ongoing SAG-AFTRA fight against the movie studios, with performers trying to prevent their images from being used without consent.
While he contends AI wasn’t used in his case, Nicolas Cage tells Yahoo! Entertainment that visual effects wizards working on The Flash managed to make him, as Superman, do something onscreen that was totally different than the climactic cameo he actually shot.
And he didn’t know it until he saw the movie.
“When I went to the picture, it was me fighting a giant spider. I did not do that. That was not what I did,” the Oscar winner explained.
His comments come after Tim Burton, who was supposed to direct Cage as the Man of Steel in a scuttled movie called Superman Lives, rallied against AI in movies. “I know Tim is upset about AI, as I am,” Cage expressed.
“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 said.
He continued, “But I get where Tim’s coming from. . . I would be very unhappy if people were taking my art . . . and appropriating [it]. I get it. . . AI is a nightmare to me. It’s inhumane. You can’t get more inhumane than artificial intelligence.”
Cage explained the finished product was “out of my control,” contending, “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.”
The actor apparently harbors no hard feelings for The Flash’s director, Andy Muschietti, who he called, “a terrific director” and a “great guy.”
Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
