Nicolas Cage Finally Gets His Weird Superhero Role—Just Not That One
The actor who almost played Green Goblin in 2002 has landed his strangest comic book gig yet with Spider-Noir on Amazon Prime. Sometimes the best "what-ifs" become better realities.
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Nicolas Cage's relationship with superhero movies has always been a sliding door situation. Back in 2002, there was a legitimate possibility he'd don the goblin mask in Spider-Man—a choice that, according to The Guardian, could have dragged Sam Raimi's film into "operatically deranged" territory. Cage as a pumpkin-bomb-throwing maniac might have been either brilliantly unhinged or catastrophically weird. We'll never know. But the universe apparently wasn't done casting Cage in tights and prosthetics.
Enter Spider-Noir, Amazon Prime's mash-up of superhero spectacle and film noir atmosphere, where Cage finally gets his full-throttle weird comic book moment. The New York Times describes him as "an often unbridled actor" getting to play a mutant in a deliciously genre-bending project. This isn't your typical Marvel fastball—it's the kind of oddball IP adaptation that either becomes a cult classic or a glorious disaster. Given Cage's entire filmography, it's almost certainly one or the other.
The beautiful irony? Missing Green Goblin might have been the best thing that ever happened to Cage's superhero legacy. Rather than being saddled with a supporting villain role in a 2002 blockbuster, he gets to be the weirdo center of attention in his own strange little pocket universe. Sometimes Hollywood's rejected pitches are just destiny taking the scenic route.