Nicholas Cage

There’s a new film coming out. You can take a look at it here. And I know, just from looking at the details of the film, that it will be shit. I’ve not seen the film, I’ve not seen the trailer, I’ve not even seen a poster. Yet I know it will be a big old bag of crap. How? Well, you just have to look at who is starring in the film.

Nicolas Cage.

Cage is the Harriet Harman of the movie world – someone who has climbed to the top for no other reason than naked, garish self-belief and continual, unjustifiable self-promotion. It certainly isn’t anything to with talent, since Cage is cinematic bromide. He can make the most promising of movies instantly flat and unappealing. No, the only reason why Nicholas Cage is allowed to headline major pictures if because Cage himself thinks he should be headlining major movies.

Cage looks ridiculous, with his receding hairline, his strange mouth and odd eyes. And his desire to act like he is 20 years younger than he actually is. He doesn’t look like a leading man; yet he still manages to get himself treated by some as some sort of heartthrob. Fuck knows why; if you took a couple of inches off his height, doubled them and then planted those inches around his waste, he would look similar to Danny DeVito.

And – in what must he a fundamental problem for anyone in his profession – the fucker can’t act. Really, he can’t. All he can play is himself. He plays Nicholas Cage. Nicholas Cage trying (and, generally, failing) to be cool. In every role, regardless of what he is supposed to be playing, he acts in exactly the same way. Hell, even if Nicolas Cage was playing Nicholas Cage in a film about Nicholas Cage’s life, he still wouldn’t be convincing. He just can’t act.

Look at some of the OK films he’s been in - 8mm was undermined by Cage’s attempts to look haunted and dramatic. Rather than coming across as a family man facing a world he doesn’t understand and that frightens him, Cage came across as a retarded puppy dog having a sulk. Likewise, his idiosyncratically awful performance in Wild at Heart showed that the quirky, surreal world of David Lynch can be rendered irritating and silly if you have an awful central performance. Honest to God, in that film, Cage didn’t need a female lead. It really wouldn’t have made much of a difference had he been shown tossing himself off repeatedly over how gorgeous and irresistible he believes himself to be.

Now, he’s stopped even being in vaguely good films. Instead, he starts in the movie world’s answer to rancid eggs. Ghost Rider anyone? You probably didn’t see it, unless you have a great desire to watch terrible fucking superhero movies. The remake of The Wicker Man? Watch the original. Because the remake is awful in every single way. It isn’t just a slur on the original; it is a slur on everyone who has ever made a film that is worth watching. It is a bitch slap to actors and directors with any talent whatsoever. It is an awful, awful movie that makes you wish film had never been invented.

Of course, this rambling rant will have no affect on the inexplicable popularity of Mr Cage. He’ll still get millions of dollars for starring in films, and some people will – for reasons that defy understanding – go and watch those pictures. For me, Nicholas Cage joins that roster of *stars* that includes Mackenzie Crook, Adam Sandler, Lindsey Lohan and (increasingly and sadly) John Hurt – stars whose name in the cast list means the film is going to be just plain bad.