At Fan Expo Dallas, Nicolas Cage had some pointed words for Marvel. Speaking to fans at the convention, the actor argued that the studio’s movies have drifted toward spectacle at the expense of character and story, comparing their recent action to professional wrestling.
Cage didn’t dismiss the MCU wholesale. He praised its early films for the way they wove together different characters and their histories, giving audiences people to care about before the fighting started. His complaint is with where the franchise has landed since — a run of films he feels leans on choreographed combat where it used to lean on storytelling.
Cage knows Marvel from the inside, which gives the critique some weight. He played Ghost Rider in the 2007 film and its 2012 sequel, and more recently starred as private investigator Ben Reilly in Spider-Noir, a Marvel series set in 1930s New York. For Cage, that show pointed toward what he wants more of from the MCU.
“There was a mystery there,” he said of Spider-Noir. “And I would like to see it [MCU] get back to telling the stories and not just cutting to the wrestling match.”
Spider-Noir was canceled after a single season. Cage, for his part, said that was enough time to tell the story he wanted to tell — a note of satisfaction that doubles as a quiet contrast to the open-ended franchises he’s critiquing.
