In 2023, one man watched 52 Nicolas Cage films. in 2024, they face off. Read all about it here.
We’re on to the upper right hand-side of the first knockout round draw. It has taken a while to get here, but here we are. The outcome of four ties will be revealed today in this penultimate update on the first knockout round. Maybe things will start to move faster from this point forward. Who knows.
Adaptation VS Primal
A writer (well, a pair of screenwriters) VS a big game hunter. Spike Jonze’s comedy drama VS Nick Powell’s action thriller. A film about adapting a book about orchids VS a film about an escaped convict on a boat who releases a bunch of wild animals including an extremely rare and incredibly dangerous white jaguar. On premise alone, this should be an easy win for Primal. But Adaptation has two Nicolas Cages in it (actually, Nicolas Cage plays two brothers). Adaptation goes way beyond its premise and becomes something so much more, while Primal fails to live up to its ridiculous premise.
Adaptation is such a great watch. Cage plays the two brothers in different ways, with Charlie Kaufman awkward and wanting to eschew Hollywood cliché while his brother Donald is confident and desiring only to write a by-the-book hit. What’s great about the film is that as Charlie struggles more and gives way to Donald, the film becomes more ridiculous, leaning in to clichéd storytelling and action sequences. It really is handled so well and a joy to watch.
Primal, however, is not a joy to watch. It plods along with the typical twists and turns of this kind of moving without doing anything particularly special. When Cage leans into the ridiculousness of it all, sometimes these kind of films can work, but it all kind of drifts by in exactly the way you’d expect.
In the end, it’s an easy win for Adaptation and we’re left to wonder how Primal made it into the knock out rounds at all.
Snake Eyes VS Mom and Dad
Detective Rick Santoro vs frustrated father Brent Ryan. Brian De Palma’s mystery thriller VS Brian Taylor’s black comedy (that’s right: it’s a battle of the Brians). Snake Eyes comes at a time when Cage is doing big business at the box office, while Mom and Dad comes after a string of direct-to-video, easily forgotten titles (Inconceivable went out in the group stage). This might seem like a one-sided match-up, but Mom and Dad saw more of a shift towards horror in Cage’s films, and that was no bad thing.
The plots of both films are equally intriguing. Rick Santoro’s a cop at a boxing match where the assassination of the US Defense Secretery occurs. Brent Ryan, and all parents are driven by a sudden desire to kill their children. So, both films are tonally completely different. Pace-wise too, they’re at opposite ends of the spectrum. Performance-wise, Rick Santoro is a fantastic character for Cage to play. He’s flamboyant, slightly corrupt, but with a desire to protect the innocent and find justice. Brent Ryan is frustrated with life at first, but then becomes obsessed only with killing his kids.
In the end, Snake Eyes is the film I’d rather watch again. There’s more complexity to it, and Cage is brilliant in the role. While Mom and Dad is a lot of fun, it’s pretty one-dimensional – but it does do that one thing well. Against another film, perhaps it would have sneaked through, but it’s Snake Eyes that trots on to the next round.
The Rock VS Butcher’s Crossing
Butcher’s Crossing has a lot going for it. Cage plays Miller. He looks great in this role with a bald head and bushy beard. He’s also often dressed in buffalo hide. The plot’s interesting. A young man, Will, wants to escape academia and do something interesting, so he joins a party (led by Miller) on a buffalo hunt. It’s largely Will’s story as he adapts to this brutal lifestyle. There’s always a feeling with it that it could have been slightly more in the hands of a more experienced and confident director. Some of the scenery is breathtaking, but it doesn’t feel like the most is made from it. The run-time feels about 20 minutes too short. When the party are snowed in for the winter, the isolation and the relationships between the characters should have become that much more strained. I appreciated the actual history in the film and the reveal about the extent of the damage done to the buffalo population before the demand for hides dried up. Butcher’s Crossing is definitely worth a watch.
Unfortunately, it came up against The Rock, a film in which Nicolas Cage makes small talk with Tony Todd about Elton John’s Rocketman before firing him out of a lighthouse window on a rocket.
Army of One VS Trapped in Paradise
A film that surprisingly came second in its group vs a film that had to squeeze through as one of the best-placed third-placed teams. With a different draw, it would surprise no one if neither of these films made the knock outs. It would surprise no one if both failed to progress from this round. But here they are, facing each other, and one has to go through.
Army of One could perhaps have the most ridiculous premise of all of the films in the Cage-Off, which is really saying something. It tells the story of an American, Gary Faulkner, who takes it upon himself to hang-glide into Pakistan to capture Osama Bin Laden. Because God told him to.
Oh, and it’s based on a true story.
Army of One has a pretty poor rating on most sites. Looking at it now, years after the death of Osama Bin Laden, it seems even more ridiculous a film to exist. It’s completely farcical in many ways. But Cage is kind of charming in his role as Faulkner. I believed that he believed it was the right thing to do. This goofy charm made for an entertaining watch, even if I was sometimes watching through the gaps between my fingers as I tried to cover my face in disbelief.
Trapped in Paradise is a surprisingly charming Christmas comedy about a trio of brothers who decide to rob the bank in Paradise on Christmas Eve, but then, due to a serious of unfortunate circumstances, get stuck there. Eventually they see the error of their ways. It’s light-hearted, and it’s a lot of fun. It’s probably, just about, a better film than Army of One. I’d happily watch it again during the Christmas period.
But this is the Cage-Off, and the quality of the film alone is not enough to see it through. The trouble with Trapped in Paradise is that of the three brothers, Cage plays the sensible one. Bill Firpo is just a little bit too normal. Gary Faulkner is far from normal. And it’s his wackiness that takes Army of One into the second knockout stage.
