On the Internet, there are the jokes that you make about people. Seth Rogen smokes weed? Seems funny, let's do a joke about that. Michael Bay seems to like explosions and breasts? Let's run that joke into the ground. And apparently, Nicholas Cage likes acting in terrible movies.
Some people may fall into the first fallacy behind this: that acting in terrible movies is no fun. The truth is that even a Great Movie can be no fun at all to act in.
But that's not all! The other fallacy is that any movie Nicholas Cage is in is going to be terrible. Now, depending on your displacement you might think some Nic Cage movies are bad, but most are good and the reason for that is Cage. Look at some of his earlier works: Adaption, The Rock, Peggy Sue got Married. Nicholas Cage gives serious performances. People explain that Nicholas has gotten more insane as time went on. But wait! What about Kick-Ass, The Sorceror's Apprentice, and The Croods? Those are much more recent, yet he doesn't act very insane in those at all.
This is because Nicholas Cage is not crazy: he played a crazy guy in Face/Off and since then he's been typecast. Some typecastings reveal the person beneath the act (Liam Neeson really is badass) but this one doesn't, and Nicholas Cage's range is very large. He plays every role he is given convincingly. He may "overact", but this is because people underestimate how extremely some people express emotion. Some actors (like Kristen Stewart or Shaun LaBoeuf) can keep one facial expression for a whole film and people call it good acting, because these are protagonists we are supposed to empathize with and we don't like to imagine that we display huge ranges of emotion. But Nicholas Cage's characters are not there for empathy, they are there to entertain, and that they do. So next time you see Cage at #9 on a list like this, ask yourself: is it that he can't act, or that I can't just lean back and enjoy?
Some people may fall into the first fallacy behind this: that acting in terrible movies is no fun. The truth is that even a Great Movie can be no fun at all to act in.
But that's not all! The other fallacy is that any movie Nicholas Cage is in is going to be terrible. Now, depending on your displacement you might think some Nic Cage movies are bad, but most are good and the reason for that is Cage. Look at some of his earlier works: Adaption, The Rock, Peggy Sue got Married. Nicholas Cage gives serious performances. People explain that Nicholas has gotten more insane as time went on. But wait! What about Kick-Ass, The Sorceror's Apprentice, and The Croods? Those are much more recent, yet he doesn't act very insane in those at all.
This is because Nicholas Cage is not crazy: he played a crazy guy in Face/Off and since then he's been typecast. Some typecastings reveal the person beneath the act (Liam Neeson really is badass) but this one doesn't, and Nicholas Cage's range is very large. He plays every role he is given convincingly. He may "overact", but this is because people underestimate how extremely some people express emotion. Some actors (like Kristen Stewart or Shaun LaBoeuf) can keep one facial expression for a whole film and people call it good acting, because these are protagonists we are supposed to empathize with and we don't like to imagine that we display huge ranges of emotion. But Nicholas Cage's characters are not there for empathy, they are there to entertain, and that they do. So next time you see Cage at #9 on a list like this, ask yourself: is it that he can't act, or that I can't just lean back and enjoy?
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