There was a pretty interesting article today in the Washington Post about what happened to the Nicolas Cage of Moonstruck, Raising Arizona and Leaving Las Vegas.
Other than Adaptation I can’t think of anything else he’s made in the past 10 years that I would pay money to see.
He’s gone from delightful, quirky, complex roles to, as the article put it, “glowering, he hunches, he looks meaningfully into the distance without it meaning anything at all.”
When he made “The Rock” back in 1996 I thought, well now that’s he a big star he probably wants to cash in on his fame, there’s nothing wrong with that. And even though it was a big dumb action movie, it worked for it was, and Cage was pretty good in it, even poking fun at the idea of himself as an action figure. By the time Con Air came around though, he had just sunken into self-serious, sullen, unironic action hero mode, from which there was no return.
What does everyone else here think of the turn Cage’s career has taken.
Dunno, my impression is simply that he’s a good actor with poor taste. I realize that lots of high-brow people like Coen Brothers movies, but it should be noted that these movies are largely based on cheesiness. that it happened to actually work out as being something (some) people liked (worshipped), is probably more a chance of fate than anything.
The real question is what made him decide to appear in Leaving Las Vegas. That’s probably the only movie he’s ever done without any cheesiness in it.
He made a good business decision. He’s getting buckets of money to make those vapid action flicks and doesn’t care what those with more refined tastes think.
The Coppolas are known for directing some great movies (although only in a narrow career span), but not much for acting. At least Martin Scorsese knows enough to limit the screen time of his nepotistic inpulses to brief cameos…though clearly not enough to avoid having Nicolas Cage star in his movie.
All I can say is that I agree with the basic idea that Cage has become irrelevant. I was a big fan of Raising Arizona, Valley Girl, Moonstruck, Leaving Las Vegas and wasn’t even pissed off with Amos and Andrew and The Rock. But I’m to the point of not wishing to spend any money (beyond cable bills) on a Nick Cage movie these days. Not even Netflix. I didn’t puke over Next (2007) but it was less Cage’s fault than Julianne Moore’s and Jessica Biel’s. Hell, I’d watch Pauly Shore in a movie with those ladies.
I was just saying to a friend that Cage has accomplished something new, as far as we could tell. You know all those has been macho stars whose presence ensures that a straight-to-video exploitation flick will at least be entertaining? You know, the guys who USED to be big stars, but now they’re just B-grade action stars?
For example. We get a lot–A LOT–of straight to video dreck in at my video rental store. We have some kind of arrangement with a revenue sharing outfit: they buy the videos, we supply the shelf space, we split the revenue. We use them for the big titles we need 60 copies of. Part of the agreement is they send us a lot of shelf-filler we probably wouldn’t otherwise buy. Most of it’s garbage, but some of it is, frinstance, SciFi Originals.
We will usually automatically watch any of these filler titles if it includes a star turn by someone like Rutger Hauer, Eric Roberts, David Carradine, David Hasselhoff, Michael Biehn, Dolph Lundgren–you get the picture. You KNOW scenery will be chewed.
Well, Nicholas Cage has managed to follow that usual path–highly respected artiste to has-been action star, but he’s done it while increasing his income and his star power, rather than during the post-peak, downhill phase of his career. Best of both worlds! Who else has done that? Who else has managed to get paid more and more as his work has gotten worse and worse?
It’s sad. He’s one of the few actors in Hollywood who can actually, you know, ACT, and he’s wasting it, totally wasting it. I have no desire to go see this new one, because I know it will be a waste of effort.
He was the ONLY reason Peggy Sue Got Married was worth watching. He did all sorts of other movies that showed that, whatever his role, he got you to buy into it, even if the role was a bit dumb. Now, he’s just a waste of good money.
Absolutely! It didn’t do much at the box office, but that had more to do with the studio not knowing how to sell a film like this than the script, direction or acting. Cage did a great job playing this amoral character and still getting you to understand him.
*
Back then, I didn’t sell to Osama Bin Laden. Not because of moral reasons, but because he was always bouncing checks. *
I never felt like he had much talent-- or looks for that matter. I figured he was yet another example of mediocre talent getting big because of relatives in the industry (also see: Tori Spelling, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ben Stiller, etc etc etc).
Lord of War was excellent but absolutely unmarketable. To parahrase the words of Sick Boy, “All I’m trying to do is help you understand that Lord of War is merely a blip on an otherwise uninterrupted downward trajectory.”
I’m not understanding this opinion that Nick Cage has ever been anything but terrible. The guy sucks, he has always sucked, but he occasionally gets penciled into a role that capitalizes on that fact or offers enough support to hide him. Much like Keanu Reeves, he’s not a good actor by any stretch but when he is allowed to play Keanu his movies can be very entertaining, especially when the director reels in his scene chewing a touch.
I love Raising Arizona but nothing about Hi was great acting. It was just befuddled slap stick that either of the Wilson brothers could have mumbled through. Leaving Las Vegas was a fine movie, but let’s face it, playing drunk and depressed is essentially an acting layup. Look at Dudley Moore for cripes sake.
Cage has never been a good actor, but sometimes being a good actor isn’t a requirement for being in a good role or making a good movie.
Nope, Vin Diesel is actually beginning to come into his own as an actor. See Find Me Guilty and then back to me. And he’s hardly at the top of the action-star pyramid.
Harrison Ford, maybe, but he’s bland and boring, so doesn’t fit into my scenery chewing pantheon. The biggest star in that genre has always been Mickey Rourke, so I’m almost sad to see him graduate out of it. Let’s hope he has more bottoms to hit, and starts playing the heavy in Extreme Fighting movies made in Malaysia.
Jackson, kinda, although* Lakeview Terrace *is the best work he’s ever done.
Bruce? Hmm. He’s become such a self-parody, it’s hard to say. Kinda. Although his salary is on the wane.
Nick Cage used to be my favorite actor of all time when I was a teenage girl. I loved his weird, quirky characters. It was really starting to look like he was on the way up with Adaptation and Matchstick Men. But he has made so many poor career decisions since that time, I’m embarrassed to say how highly I once regarded him. It’s really sad.
Yesterday I saw the weirdest Nic Cage movie ever - Vampire’s Kiss. I’d like to think that even Cage would cringe watching this today. Take his wildest OTT performance, shoot it full of steroids, make it snort PCP and chug a fifth of Everclear, and it still doesn’t measure up to the level of lunacy achieved in this horrible film. I couldn’t stop watching!