Here's the thing about Nic Cage: he is both a terrific actor and a very bad one. Often he is simultaneously both. He has repeatedly shown that he excels at comedy ("Raising Arizona", "Moonstruck", "Lord of War", "Adaptation") and some people think he's turned in great dramatic performances, although I remain somewhat skeptical. (I still haven't sat down to watch "Leaving Las Vegas" even though since I Caged my Queue it was sent to me a few weeks ago. I finally returned it unwatched.) He also excels at being entertaining, taking himself very seriously, and not taking himself seriously at all. And of course, he's the master of losing his shit.
I can't honestly say that I love Nic Cage, or even particularly like him as an actor, but I am fascinated. I am fascinated by his film choices, which I refuse to believe are motivated entirely by the need to fund his extravagant lifestyle and the back taxes he owes the IRS. I am fascinated why he can take a relatively staid role, such as that of the prudish policeman in "The Wicker Man" and crazy it up, and then take a role that seems to scream for some Cageian over-the-top antics, such as the role of the wizard Yensid in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" and dial it down to the point where Alfred Molina comes across as the hamming-it-up-for-fun guy in the movie. I am fascinated by his increasingly-bizarre choice of hairpieces, his predilection for inappropriate accents, and why he does half his acting with his mouth open. This is not distanced hipster irony - I really want to know why Nic Cage does what he does, and I find most of his performances to be genuinely entertaining if not baffling.
So imagine my squeals of sheer delight when I discovered the folks at the Metreon theater (we were there to see "Unstoppable" - see love of disaster films above) were nice enough to put the posters for both upcoming Nic Cage releases next to each other. Double the Cage, double my excitement! And both films look amazingly Cage-y in different ways.
The first one is the grammatically-confusingly titled "Drive Angry". Is it a command? A description of how Cage drives his fleet of Mazaratis? The poster let me know it was filmed in 3-D (which is an important distinction I guess when we think of the 3-D used in "Alice in Wonderland" or "Clash of the Titans"). I have never seen Cage in 3-D so I'm already happy that we as a culture are going to collectively experience the milestone of what his hairpieces will look like when they're popping out at us in all their confusing glory.
So it's a sort of "Gone in 60 Seconds" meets "Ghost Rider" meets whatever.
Hell factors in the tagline for the other upcoming Cage film as well, "Season of the Witch." "And a hero will raise hell!" Which is confusing because based on the trailer, Knight Cage is supposed to be avoiding hell being raised by transporting a suspected witch (under orders from the knight at the end of "The Last Crusade" even!) to some monks or something. Have we seen Cage as a knight before? His hair is way better in this than in "Drive Angry" - between that and his refusal to do an English-ish accent, he may be going full Costner on us in this one. But I'm kind of stoked about it anyway, because my inner child still loves the Ren Faire, and Ron Fucking Perlman, okay? OKAY.
Is anyone else as excited about these two movies as I am? "Witch" hits in January (after the release being held up for nearly a year - I know! And we can all "Drive Angry" in February. Thank god I'll have something to look forward to since we had such a boring Summer and Xmas movie season. I only wish Cage had a big enough cult following to guarantee midnight screenings.
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