In an animated movie as densely-packed as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, it’s easy to forget that Nicolas Cage lent his voice to one of the film’s supporting characters. A new clip released ahead of the film’s 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD release on March 19, is a reminder of just how Cage managed to “bring the Cage” to the Oscar-winning Marvel movie.
On Monday, Sony Pictures released a clip featuring Cage in his recording sessions as Spider-Man Noir, a version of Peter Parker who inhabits a parallel dimension. Stepping in from the 1930s, Spider-Man Noir is a gumshoe vigilante detective who likes fightin’ Nazis, drinking milkshakes, and lighting matches “just to feel something, anything.”
In the clip, writer and co-director Rodney Rothman described working with Nicolas Cage as something “amazing” and surreal. “He had a take on the character, he was funny. If you made adjustments in his performance, he would make them and do them way better than you thought,” Rothman says.
Paul Watling, the film’s Head of Story, recalls a moment when Cage realized what the directors wanted out of his performance.
"He brought the Cage."
“I’d heard that after his first recording session, he did a few of the lines, the director kept taking notes. Nicolas just turned like, ‘Oh, you want me to go full Cage?’ He brought the Cage.”
“Spider-Man Noir is probably the edgiest of the Spider-Men,” Cage says in the clip. “I imagine he’s probably a fan of one of the old Bogey movies and Cagney movies, because that’s all part of that dimension. At least that’s how I like to portray the character.”
Introduced in 2009’s Spider-Man Noir, a mini-series set in the “Marvel Noir” universe — a creative experiment that reimagined some of Marvel’s characters in a gritty, black and white 1930s setting — was created by David Hine, Fabrice Sapolsky, and Carmine Di Giandomenico. Although issues of the comic are available for download on Comixology, Marvel will release Spider-Man Noir in a physical trade paperback collection this June.
And there was perhaps no one better than Cage to voice Spider-Man Noir. While a known actor in his own right, starring in films like The Rock (1996), Con Air (1997), City of Angels (1998), and Adaptation (2002) which earned him an Oscar nomination, Cage is also known for having a devotion for all things Marvel and DC. His stage name is an homage to Marvel’s Luke Cage, and he named his son Kal-El, the Kryptonian birth name of Superman. He also starred in two movies based on the Marvel superhero Ghost Rider, and “Big Daddy” in 2010’s Kick-Ass, an adaptation of Mark Millar’s original superhero series.
There was also the matter of Cage almost playing Superman in Tim Burton’s Superman Lives, a failed project that became the subject of a 2015 documentary, The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?. He later finally played Superman in 2018’s Teen Titans Go! to the Movies. Cage also sold his near-mint copy of Action Comics #1 for a reported $2.1 million.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is available now on Digital HD. It will be released on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD on March 19.
