Nicolas Cage. Born Nicolas Kim Coppola (not the feared leader of the Korean people Kim Jong Un, although with his filmography, I wouldn't bat an eyelid if the guy was in and produced a biopic on and a movie-musicalized life of the latter from the same time period). This is the guy who, if life is a buffet, built his plate not only tall but on the verge of toppling over, the finest gourmet treats and gas station fast food nachos. He's not only an actor but also a testement to the world of the movie industry being crazy and superb in equal parts.
From Star Power to "Wait. Was That Nicolas Cage?" Moments
Born on January 7, 1964, Cage burst into the world of Tinseltown with a hysterical cannonball and not baby steps. Why? Because when you belong to the Francis Ford Coppola family, they don't enter the world of film-making gently; they take flight or crash and burn big time. But young Nic wasn't about to be content just basking in the glory of The Godfather. Good grief, no; he legally assumed his on-screen name from the Marvel comic strip character Luke Cage and experimental composer John Cage. Why? Because who wouldn't want the name that loudly signifies enigmatic jazz superhero?
Coppola Who Went It Alone
Cage literally shook the family branch of the Copoplas and chiseled his own Tinseltown path. Filmography is the cinephile's like finding gold in the racks of the second-hand shop: alongside Leaving Las Vegas (hey, Best Actor Oscar) on the shelf is a rhinestone-studded leather jacket previously worn to Ghost Rider and still inexplicably on the market. Nepotism perhaps earned the original door-opening privilege but didn't keep his, shall we say, beleaguered judgment in tact.
You got a glimpse of the career range of Cage with his cameo once as a baby-stealin' ex-con in the movie Raising Arizona and then costume-ing up as a burnin' skeleton ridin' a chopper screamin' “VEN-GE-AAAAAAAAANCE!” in Ghost Rider. Mood? Hard to define but let's just just tag it as the “chaotic energy.”
Order Ordered and Not Quite Needed The Action Hero
Peak Cage was the 1990s. In The Rock and Con Air and Face/Off, Cage became the absolute action hero who thought about just about all things farcically dumb. I'm talking about face-switching with John Travolta in Face/Off. Mad. And brilliant. And then there's the guy on the pitch who's all, “This makes no damn sense,” and then Cage's all, “Exactly,” then. Here we are.
You'd be wrong, of course, to assume all outrage and bluster. This guy's not a cartoon character. The fella's not blowing things up in the meantime while he's not spilling the beans to us his rom-com leads (Moonstruck), brooding Nicolas Sparks-like in City of Angels or meme-circutable crazy with the cry of the "NOT THE BEES!" in The Wicker Man.
"The Meta-Piece You've Been Unaware Of All This Time"
Before The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Cage acts his own personality in fictional mode. That is, 100% Nicolas Cage as the fractured mirror of his public self. It's the most Nicolas Cage film in Nicolas Cage film history. It makes the argument that Cage's best role is just. being Cage.
If Massive Talent was a plate of smoking truffle spaghetti from the depths of a night club and served at 3 a.m., then it shouldn't work and works perfectly.
The Philosophy-Bearing T
Off-screen, Cage's existence perhaps provides the greatest work on performance art ever to emerge from Tinseltown. The guy once spent a cool cool $276,000 on a dinosaur skull. The guy also happens to have a pyramid tomb in New Orleans because well, the guy is preparing the afterlife as a National Treasure. Ah yes, and the guy actually went on a treasure hunt for the Holy Grail because well, Cage lives life as it's a cut scene from his own movie life.
And politics? Good luck keeping Cage out holding out to be making declarative statement after declarative statement. His politics is so vagueness he's the main act on your homebrew improv night as the guy who literally cannot be bothered to be an absolute on the questions. But nice spin on that Cage ran Andrew Yang in 2020. Why? Nobody quite gets it but oddly it works.
Lessons from the Cage Multiverse
Cruising around on the burning cycle, fighting technicolor alpacas, or eulogizing a pilfered pig (Pig, 2021), Nicolas Cage is definite about just about anything: subtleties aren't his game. If life gave Cage the package bearing only the words "Normal," then Cage didn't think outside the package; well, Cage detonated the package owing to raw will and otherness.
And perhaps the point of the message is that. Cage's screen manic makes us all take-in acceptance of life in the same flip bravado. Purchase the legendary dinosaur's skull. Do the far-out project. Because that's who we be wear the snakeskin jacket. Because what Cage's taught us over and beyond all else is this uncomplicated truth: life's too damned short for boring choices.
Who else but Nicolas Cage is Nicolas Cage? Nobody whatsoever. Not even via witchcraft or face-transplant science. The solution is simple—we do not look at Cage; we feel him. Excuse me now so I shall take the liberty of re-watching National Treasure and recharge the internal conflict.
