Nicolas Cage Used City Of Angels As Practice For Playing Superman
Brad Silberling's 1998 romance "City of Angels," a remake of Wim Wenders' indispensable 1987 film "Wings of Desire," stars Nicolas Cage as an immortal angel named Seth who gently breezes around Los Angeles, unseen by the people who live there. He appears to people only when they die, accompanying them to the afterworld. Observing humans as if they are an ineffable alien species, Seth becomes particularly enamored of an ambitious and compassionate young doctor named Maggie Rice. Seth finds that he might be experiencing love for the first time, and becomes visible to Dr. Rice, courting her and asking her deep questions about what it means to be human. Seth eventually chooses to transform into a human, sacrificing his immortality in order to be with his beloved.
What both Wenders and Silberling communicate with aplomb is how inhuman angels are. They live among humans but only interact when the humans die. Because angels are immortal and have no physical senses beyond sight and hearing, they don't quite understand the human experience. As such, they don't behave or talk like humans, moving in an ethereal way, projecting a weirdly Olympian presence. When Seth looks at Dr. Rice, one might observe that he doesn't blink. Seth looks like a human but doesn't have a human body.
In a recent interview with Variety, Cage noted that his inhuman performance in "City of Angels" was unique for him. It was the first time he played a non-human character in a film ("Vampire's Kiss" doesn't count) and he hoped it wouldn't be the last. One might recall that Cage was going to play Superman in "Superman Lives," a Tim Burton-directed film that infamously fell through at the last minute.
The Inhuman Superman
The saga of "Superman Lives" is a storied and infamous one, and has been well-related in Jon Schnepp's 2015 documentary film "The Death of 'Superman Lives': What Happened?" In brief, after the success of the "Batman" films directed by Tim Burton, the director was tapped to give the same treatment to the Man of Steel. He cast Cage as Kal-El, and various scripts were workshopped over several years of pre-production. Director Kevin Smith has famously related his experiences writing a script for ultra-producer Jon Peters, and how Peters had some very weird demands (he famously disliked Superman's flying scenes, wanted Superman to have a gay robot sidekick, and demanded a scene wherein Superman fights a giant spider).
The production went as far as costume tests, and one can find images online of Cage in the Superman outfit. Cage's look was equally infamously recreated in CGI for a parallel universe sequence in Andy Muschietti's 2023 bomb "The Flash." In the Variety interview, Cage only recalled that Warner Bros. became skittish and shut down the production. "The studio wanted Renny Harlin," Cage said, "and were frightened it would cost too much money so they shut it down." Harlin had directed actioners like "Cliffhanger," and "The Long Kiss Goodnight."
While on the set of "City of Angels," Cage decided to make a conscious decision to stop blinking when he was on camera. He wanted his character to seem less-than-human, and not blinking was a subtle way to communicate that. Cage also admitted that he was going to take a similar approach when playing Kal-El, a Kryptonian alien. His Superman, he felt, should feel a little outside of the human experience, a little alien. He was to be inhuman, similar to an angel.
The Spider from Mars
Because "Superman Lives" was never made, fans will have to content themselves with Cage's performance in "City of Angels." Not incidentally, "City of Angels" is a perfectly decent, wonderfully weepy Hollywood melodrama. Cage and Ryan's performances are appealing and romantic, and the magical conceits are presented tactfully and tastefully. It doesn't have the natural grit of the Wenders original, but it does have the temerity to feature an over-the-op tragic ending that the original didn't possess. It's not the Superman flick that the world's adolescent action junkies may have longed for, but it's still fine. Superman would return in eight years in Bryan Singer's 2006 film "Superman Returns" starring Brandon Routh. The Last Son of Krypton also starred in the long-running TV series "Smallville," which lasted from 2001 to 2011. Two years later, in 2013, Zack Snyder's "Man of Steel" would hit theaters and start a decade-long wave of superhero supremacy that only just recently ended.
Disappointingly, Cage revealed in the Variety interview that not only was he going to play Superman in a Tim Burton-directed film, but that he had contacted David Bowie about the possibility of composing a Superman theme song. The writer of "Starman," "Ziggy Stardust," and "Space Oddity" would likely (at least in his '90s period) have composed something weird and electric to match the sensibilities of the day.
It's a pity, as it seems the world has been robbed of what might have been its weirdest Superman story to date. As of this writing, filmmaker James Gunn is hard at work on another Superman flick to be called "Superman: Legacy." Whether or not that film actually makes it to the big screen in the post-superhero age remains to be seen. Normally it would be assumed as a guarantee, but we all saw what happened with "Batgirl."