The Case: Nicolas Cage

At some point in life, everybody does something brave. Whether it’s as big as rescuing somebody from a burning building or just standing up to the bullies who have taken their lunch money, it’s these moments of courage that continue to define them as a person. In every single movie he’s in, Nicolas Cage has a moment of courage that elevates whatever straight-to-DVD mess he’s in from something mediocre into something slightly less mediocre.

In my opinion, this definitively makes him one of the greatest actors of our time; it may be Benedict Cumberbatch getting all the critical acclaim, but let’s face it, you wouldn’t want to spend two hours of your life watching him get attacked by bees and punching women in the face would you? Nicolas Cage is the only actor who can turn the most unwatchable films of recent years into spectacles that you cannot turn away from, as much as you want to. But does this make Nicolas Cage a good actor, let alone the greatest actor of our time? As an unprofessional expert on all things Cage, I think it’s time to answer this question once and for all.

Can you even call it acting?

Cage’s entire acting style is defined by one moment of sheer insanity in every movie. His best movies either channel that insanity for the majority of the running time (most recently Kick-Ass and Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant remake) or have him downplay it into a quiet intensity, such as his Oscar-nominated turn as Charlie and Donald Kaufman in Adaptation. Sadly, most of his films aren’t of that quality – which means that watching his films often makes you feel like a prisoner of war being forced to listen to the theme tune from Barney the Dinosaur for hours on end until you finally give yourself into it.

Vampire’s Kiss is a fantastic movie when viewed as part of the seminal “Nicolas Cage loses his shit” montage on YouTube (still the greatest video on the internet); when watching the entire film it gives you the sensation of waiting for your name to be called whilst in a doctor’s waiting room, going through endless moments of boredom before you get to the reason you went there in the first place.

But can this style of nonsensical freak-outs be called acting? You only need to look at Cage’s personal life to question it. Although no one’s work should be judged on the basis of their personal life, all you need to do is glance at any news story or anecdote about Cage to gather that he is only slightly less unhinged than the characters he plays. According to a recent Reddit AMA with Sean Bean, Cage’s co-star in the surprisingly successful National Treasure, one day after filming he “went back to his house to play pool and he accidentally knocked over his prehistoric cave bear skull and smashed it. He was really upset about it and the next day went and buried it in a field.”

Yet this oddness means he often has a close personal connection to the characters he plays. Famously, he was going to play Superman in Tim Burton’s cancelled Superman Lives – he was perfect for the role due to a long-gestating obsession with the character (he now has a young son named Kal-El) and comic books in general (to avoid accusations of nepotism he changed from his birth name Coppola to Cage after the Marvel hero Luke Cage). The only other celebrity who has the same off screen persona is Bill Murray, who frequently pulls good-natured practical jokes on people in public, only to end them by informing the person that “no-one will ever believe you.”

But if he is a good actor, why does he make so many bad movies?

A recent episode of cult US sitcom Community, Season 5’s “Introduction to teaching” perfectly tapped into the ongoing dilemma with Nicolas Cage. In the episode, Film/TV obsessive Abed takes a class on Nicolas Cage and whether or not he could be called a good or bad actor – all it takes is a few lectures and DVD’s of some of his movies for him to have a full-scale mental breakdown, of the kind Cage himself would be proud. The episode perfectly concludes that nobody will ever know whether he’s a good or bad actor; he’s had good roles, sure, but he’s had more than his fair share of bad ones too.

Also, like many episodes of the sitcom, it references the fact that Cage himself has become something of an online meme along with the rise of the internet. Years ago a film like The Wicker Man would be ignored – now it’s immortalized on YouTube, with everything from Supercuts to dubstep remixes of him screaming, “Not the bees!” Could this be why he stars in bad films? He’s been immortalized by his worst roles, meaning that casting directors are more likely to think of his current mediocre output rather than his past glories. There’s a reason he’s now starring in movies like Left Behind (3.1 on IMDB and counting) instead of Oscar-winners like Leaving Las Vegas.

Although the likely reason he accepts the roles are for tax purposes (because why else would you agree to star in The Wicker Man?), you can’t deny that he gives it his all in every single performance. This is probably why it is easiest to call him a bad actor; the trick of acting is to make the audience believe that you are a real person and not just somebody acting- Nicolas Cage is Nicolas Cage in every single movie he’s in. The hair and the quality of the movie may change, but everything else stays the same. Even if he’s knowingly channeling Elvis (in Wild at Heart) or Adam West’s Batman (in the still-fantastic Kick-Ass) he is still quintessentially playing an extended version of himself.

Yet, for me at least, no matter how bad the movie is, it is still ten times more watchable because of his on-screen presence. The point I’m trying to make is that, although we have seen him give great performances, this doesn’t necessarily make him a good actor – but it does make him one of the more endlessly watchable ones that we have. We’ll never know if he’s good or bad, because he is a pure anomaly; someone who gives a performance as bad as say, Deadfall (widely known as the movie where he screams, “Vive le f*cking France, Man!”) should technically be incapable of a performance as genuinely terrific as Adaptation. Maybe it’s a case of some directors knowing how to use his skills, where others are overwhelmed by his sheer weirdness and can’t figure out how to channel it. But even if he is with a director like David Lynch, or a director as poor as Michael Bay, he is never anything less than watchable, even if the film around him isn’t.

What do you think of Nicolas Cage – one of the greatest actors of all time or a cultural laughing stock? What are his best and worst performances?

(top image source: empireonline.com)