Nicolas Cage is not holding back his thoughts on the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The National Treasure actor recently compared the interconnected film franchise overseen by Kevin Feige to the bombastic theater of professional wrestling while answering questions at Fan Expo Dallas.
“It started out, in my view, terrific. Some of the early stories were marvelous,” Cage said (via The Hollywood Reporter). “The way that they wove all the threads together and told the different character stories and backstories.”
Nicolas Cage Calls The Marvel Cinematic Universe “Glorified WWE”
“Lately—I do say this with love—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,” he continued, “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.”
Cage, of course, did get to play in Sony’s secondary Marvel sandbox as Spider-Man Noir in the Oscar-winning animated feature Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and its live-action spinoff series, Spider-Noir.
“One of the things I liked about Spider-Noir was it wasn’t cut into the fight,” Cage said of the show, which was canceled by Amazon after a single season. “It was a detective story. There was a mystery there. And I would like to see it [MCU] get back to telling the stories and not just cutting to the wrestling match.”
Before his time slinging webs, Cage played another Marvel hero, Johnny Blaze, in two Ghost Rider movies. Ryan Gosling is set to take on the character next in an MCU reboot helmed by Shawn Levy.
High off Spider-Man: Brand New Day‘s $2.5 billion box office draw, Marvel Studios is now gearing up for the late-December release of Avengers: Doomsday, billed as the climax of the MCU’s Multiverse Saga. With fan interest steadily waning since Endgame, the studio moved in a familiar direction by bringing back the Russo brothers, Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans.
The biggest upset to the status quo rests with Downey Jr., who launched the grand Marvel movie experiment as Iron Man and is now coming back to play Big Bad Doctor Doom.
“We landed in a place that I think will more than suffice,” he told Comic Book Resources in June. “And it’s not even about how I executed it. It’s about the way it’s been structured, and the other characters. There’s something going on in Doomsday and forward that is literally the only antidote to, ‘How do you not have these films be let down after an Infinity War and an Endgame?’ And boy, have we labored long and hard to bring that down.”
Avengers: Doomsday is in theaters Friday, Dec. 18. Click here for tickets.
