How Nic Cage Reinvented Overacting: His Best Scenery-Chewing Performances
Nicolas Cage is an Oscar-winning household name having built a career on movies like Leaving Las Vegas, Face/Off, Con Air, and Adaptation. Courting controversy for outlandish purchases like a dinosaur skull and two castles, Cage certainly doesn't do things by halves – and his acting choices are no exception.
There's no end to Cage's depth and nuance where overacting is involved. While this may seem like a contradiction, it's one of the only ways to describe his career. The mixture of talent and energy on display in nearly every Cage movie is impressive and unique. His style isn't for everyone, and it doesn't save every movie he's in. However, Cage is a true maverick in a Hollywood full of similarly-typed leading men.
Related: Nicolas Cage's Most Exciting 2022 Movie Risks Ignoring His Best Ever Role
He'll be back playing himself in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which is out on April 22, 2022. So, from Vampire's Kiss to Mandy, here are the defining scenery-chewing Nic Cage performances.
This gangster-themed B-movie is one of Cage's most amateurish projects – at one point, the director doesn't even bother hiding the ceiling of the sound stage. However, Cage's brief but profoundly committed performance makes this piece a document of cinematic history as well as a terrible movie. Cage's crime lord Eddie King is a barely intelligible sketch of a bad guy who has his face pulverized on a gas stove and dies, yet somehow returns for the sequel, Arsenal. Pointless, brash, loud, and extremely physical, this is peak Cage howl-at-the-moon nonsense. The movie rapidly nosedives after the end of his bonkers performance. It shows Cage learning how to nail his late-stage cult renaissance style and single-handedly elevate a dire
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