What is the first image that comes to mind when you hear the name of actor Nicolas Cage?
Do you imagine Cage grinning manically while his eyes are bulging from his skull? Or is he yelling about cheesy CGI bees swarming his eyes even though they are nowhere near his eyes?
What about a mustached, crazed-hair Cage in a sleeveless white t-shirt and unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt, holding a baby that is not his? How about Cage sitting in front of a typewriter suffering from writer’s block?
Cage is an enigma wrapped inside a riddle. He can play characters with incredible depth and pathos and win an Oscar; this is good Cage.
But he can also act like the worst B-movie actor who decides to exaggerate every line of dialogue in the script; this is Ugly Cage.
However, this Cage can be entertaining. In “Vampire’s Kiss,” Cage screams, “I’m a vampire!” in the middle of New York City. This is hysterical. Or, there’s when he insanally yells the ABC’s to his secretary. The meme of Cage saying “You don’t say,” also originated from this movie.
With some movies, Cage is only there for the money. He says his lines with no emotion, all the while reciting them like he is reading them for the first time: This is Bad Cage.
Since 2009, Cage has been in at least two movies a year. Many of those movies can be categorized in the Bad to Ugly Cage movies, but he has been Good Cage in a few of them.
There are two reasons for Cage’s performances to be incredibly awful in the past eight years. One, he acts in low budget movies with new directors and writers and they do not know how to cage (sorry for the pun) him.
Two, Cage does not take the time to prepare for roles as much as he used to. Cage was in five movies in 2016, which means he is moving script to script. In comparison, Leonardo Dicaprio spent one year making “The Revenant” and he won an Oscar for the role.
Instead, Cage reads the script and when his character is supposed to be angry he decides to take that anger to a 10 and shouts as loud as he can.
There are movies where Cage can fall in two or all the categories. In “Con Air,” Cage goes in between good, bad and ugly throughout the movie.
From the start of the film, Cage’s “southern” accent is questionable. Though overall, his character is likable and he is an easy protagonist to root for.
Now there are three quintessential movies that each fall in the three Cages.
The Good: “Raising Arizona” (1987)
Cage plays, “Hi” McDunnough, a petty criminal, who marries a police officer, “Ed.” They meet because Ed is the police officer who takes Hi’s mugshot after he has been arrested multiple times.
After finding out Ed is infertile, Hi steals a baby from a famous businessman in Arizona. Comedy ensues after Hi’s past life as a criminal haunts him and Ed, while a bounty hunter tries to track down the baby.
Cage as Hi has to be one of this best roles; he plays Hi with a sweetness that he has yet to replicate. Even though he is criminal, he loves Ed to the point that he would steal a baby for her.
If that’s not sweetness, then what is sweetness?
The Bad: “Left Behind” (2014)
Based on the popular Christian book series, the movie depicts the people who were not raptured. Cage plays a pilot, Rayford Steele, who is flying a commercial airplane when the Rapture happens.
Cage is going through the motions in this movie while he plays the part without emotion. His character never seems to react that his wife and son are gone. Even when he finds out his daughter was not raptured, his reaction comes across as, ‘Oh, my daughter’s alive, okay.’
Cage does not even ham it up a little bit. He quickly recited his lines and moved on to the next movie.
The Ugly: “The Wicker Man” (2006)
This was the beginning of the end for Cage as a credible Hollywood actor. Bees, bear costumes and pulling his gun out in a school room, what is there not to love?
Cage screams so much in this movie. In almost every scene, Cage goes 0 to 60 at the drop of a hat.
In one bizarre scene – in a movie filled with bizarre scenes – Cage disguises himself as a bear. He then follows the townspeople as they are supposedly about to sacrifice Cage’s “daughter.”
Although the film get progressively strange, Cage is still entertaining. Instead of a competent thriller, “The Wicker Man” is an accidental comedy. And of course, “Not the bees, not the bees!”
