Key Takeaways
- Nicolas Cage says the modern MCU has become a “well-funded and glorified WWE” that prioritizes fights over storytelling.
- Cage praised Marvel’s early character arcs and pointed to Spider-Noir’s detective mystery as the kind of story-first approach he wants the franchise to revive.
- The actor has never joined the MCU, but he played Ghost Rider twice, voiced Spider-Noir in Into the Spider-Verse, and starred in Sony’s canceled Spider-Noir series.
Nicolas Cage has a unique opinion about what he thinks of Marvel movies: it’s all about the brawl.
Speaking during a conversation at Fan Expo Dallas, Cage compared the current state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to professional wrestling.
"I do say this with love," Cage said. "When I see these 50-plus and otherwise intelligent and remarkably gifted thespians putting on these ridiculous outfits and getting ready for the fight, let's face it, it's all cutting to the fight, it's hard for me not to be reminded that the MCU is becoming a well-funded and glorified WWE."
Next, Cage was careful to make it clear that he only thinks the current movies are like that. From his perspective, the MCU was once in a much better place.
"It started out, in my view, terrific," he said. "Some of the early stories were marvelous, the way that they wove all the threads together and told the different character stories and backstories."
Cage named no specific titles, pointing instead at a shift in approach.
His own most recent Marvel-adjacent work gave him a contrast to reach for. Cage starred as Ben Reilly, a down-on-his-luck private investigator in 1930s New York, in Sony's Spider-Noir, which ran one eight-episode season on Prime Video before it was canceled.
"One of the things I liked about Spider-Noir, was it wasn't cutting to the fight," he said. "It was a detective story. There was a mystery there. I would like to see [the MCU] get back to telling the stories and not just cutting to the wrestling match."
Cage hasn’t appeared in an MCU film yet, though he has played multiple Marvel superheroes before. The legendary actor suited up to play Ghost Rider in 2007 and again in 2012 for the movie’s follow-up, and he also voiced an alternate-universe Spider-Noir in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
The complaint puts him in company with Martin Scorsese, who in 2019 said Marvel movies were "not cinema," and Denis Villeneuve, who has described too many of them as "cut and paste" of one another.
