Michael C. here just back from an encounter with the Spirit of Vengeance.
There is something about movies not screening for critics that makes me want to see titles I would otherwise self-deport to avoid. I think it’s the idea that they’re trying to get away with something. I want to go to prove that they're as awful as I suspect. Not rational behavior, I admit, but I feel I have to produce some explanation as to why, when my friends suggested we go see Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, I went, instead of doing something sensible like jumping in front of a bus.
Of course, my friends didn’t think the movie would be good either. These days one sees a Nicolas Cage movie for the same reason one Googles “epic fail” or watches the GOP debates: the promise of spectacular, instantly classic moments of insanity. Cage’s recent films have been so consistently bonkers that they are now a genre unto themselves. A genre wherein a drug-fueled communion with imaginary iguanas is classified as “same old, same old”.
It’s reach a point where I don’t think it’s unfair to ask, Will Nicolas Cage ever give another great performance?
I’m aware that reflex response of a lot of people is “When has he ever?” The cool thing to do when an actor delivers a string of bombs of this magnitude is to label them as eternally terrible and dismiss their whole body of work. For the record I think Cage has delivered at least two unambiguously great performances – Leaving Las Vegas and Adaptation – and has been varying degrees of very good in everything from Bringing Out the Dead to Matchstick Men to the under-appreciated Lord of War.
Of course Cage has always been a bit strange, but up until recently that’s been part of his appeal. Moonstruck wouldn’t have had the same goofy romantic charm if Cher had fallen for a straightforward leading man instead of Cage’s off-kilter baker. The problem is that now the eccentricities that used to be the icing on top of a Cage performance have become the whole cake. The whole crazy, crazy cake. He risks crossing that line after which one can start assembling the career highlights reel because there ain’t any new clips coming. For lack of a better term let’s call this “Going Full Brando”.
Now Cage has yet to appear on screen wearing an ice bucket on his head, but many of his recent choices on and off screen don’t suggest much better judgment. Like his seemingly serious statement he signed onto Drive Angry because he wanted to be in a movie where he got his eye shot out (mission accomplished!). Or the rumors he left Green Hornet because Gondry refused to let him play the villain with an inexplicable Jamaican accent.
Beyond off-screen kookiness there is the simple problem that it’s been so long since Cage played anything resembling a normal human being one wonders if he still can. It used to be well within his range in stuff like Honeymoon in Vegas but it’s going on six years since he last attempted it in Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center.
Even if I’m not yet willing to write Cage off as having gone full Brando, he’s definitely entered the Walken Zone. Like Skynet, he has become self-aware. Right around the time the greatest hits from his performance in Neil LaBute's blighted Wicker Man remake became an Internet sensation (“Not the bees!”) he stopped being Nicolas Cage and started playing “Nicolas Cage” There are moments in the Spirit of Vengeance where he clearly made a conscious decision to “Cage it up”.
So if he can turn the bug-eyed mannerisms up it stands to reason that he can turn them down. Even Walken was able to bust out a solid, Oscar-nominated performance in Catch Me If You Can long after he became a walking punchline synonymous with cowbells. In any case we’ll have an answer when Cage reunites with Charlie Kaufman for his new project Frank or Francis. If anyone can keep Cage from moving permanently to the Island of Dr. Moreau one would hope it’s Kaufman.
"I'm not afraid of you" ... "You should be."
Am I wrong to hold out hope for Cage's return to self-control? Do you want to defend the mad genius of Cage's recent output? Let me know in the comments
You can follow Michael C. on Twitter at @SeriousFilm or read his blog Serious Film.
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