Waxing Prediculous

Nicolas Cage’s career is reminiscent of his hair: fading. The history of the man’s work can be seen in his hairline.

Exhibit A

I think that it’s safe to say that we’ve all seen Nicolas Cage movie trailers at one time or another and asked ourselves “how does this man keep getting work?” Not only getting work, but the sheer volume of work that he does. Cage has 7 films coming out in the next two years, and I think we can safely say that the man is going for quantity over quality in a big way. Perhaps it was the IRS, to whom Cage owes over $13 million who lit a fire under the actor or maybe its the $276,000 he spent on a dinosaur skull.

Exhibit B

Nicolas Cage started out strong. Check out his early Rotten Tomatoes scores; Cage started out with the 1982 classic with Fast Times At Ridgemont High scoring an 80%. Surprisingly, the critics thought his follow up films were even stronger that Fast Times (Valley Girl, Birdy, Peggy Sue Got Married, and Moonstruck all score more than 80%). The cherry on top of his early career was Raising Arizona, where his performance earned the film a 90% review.

Mediocre choices soon followed. Next up were Vampire’s Kiss, Wild at Heart, and Honeymoon in Vegas, all of which ranked in the 60%’s. Cage peaked in 1995 with his Oscar for performance in Leaving Las Vegas. Interesting aside, US Weekly reports when working on Leaving Las Vegas he hired an “on set drinking-consultant-poet.”

The curse of the Oscar soon followed with the likes of The Rock, Con Air, City of Angels, and the always family-friendly and uplifting 8 MM.

An act of god (or maybe his uncle, Francis Ford Coppla), saved his career. He had two final strong movies (Adaptation - 91%, Matchstick Men - 82%) before the most impressive decline in the history of acting. From 2003 until 2010, his reviews steadily decline on average 4.6% per year. During that period Cage made such gems as National Treasure, The Weather Man, The Wicker Man, Ghost Rider, Bangkok Dangerous, G-Force and his most recent film, Season of the Witch (4% rating).

If Nicolas Cage continues his downward trajectory, then his upcoming film, Drive Angry, should be ranked somewhere between 0% and -1%. Given that the title sounds like an awful translation of something that might sound cool in another language, and the plot is…

“Cage stars as Milton, a hardened felon who has broken out of hell for one last chance at redemption. Intent on stopping a vicious cult who murdered his daughter, he has three days to stop them before they sacrifice her baby beneath a full moon. He’s joined by Piper (Heard) – a young, sexy waitress who liberates her ex-boyfriend’s cherry-red muscle car in order to help Milton. Now, the two of them are hot on the trail of the deadly leader of the cult, Jonah King (Burke), who believes it is his destiny to use the baby to unleash hell on earth. But the bloodthirsty cult is the least of Milton’s problems. The police are after him too. And worse, an enigmatic killer known only as “The Accountant” (Fichtner) – who has been sent by the Devil to retrieve Milton and deliver him back to hell.”

…we at Prediculous suspect that Rotten Tomatoes might even refuse to review such an awful film, though in all fairness they did review Gigli, and at 7% it scored better than Season of the Witch. Here is the movie trailer:

Do you think Cage will continue with his decline or will he pull it together and knock Drive Angry out of the park? Predict here!