‘The China Syndrome’: The first movie that altered Nicolas Cage’s consciousness
In the nicest possible way, Nicolas Cage seems like a weird guy. The line between genius and madness can regularly be blurry, which neatly sums up the actor’s life, times, and legacy.
Growing up under the shadow of the ever-expanding Coppola family tree was both a blessing and a curse, compelling young Nicolas Coppola to change his stage name in order to distance himself from his illustrious relatives and strike out on his own.
He achieved just that and, in doing so, became one of the most fascinating performers in cinema history. His off-camera eccentricities are every bit as famous as the frequently insane choices he makes with his characters in front of them, placing him in the unusual position of being either the most transformative thespian this side of Marlon Brando or a scenery-chewing ham and walking meme, depending entirely on who gets asked.
The Academy Award winner has slathered hot yoghurt on his toes to get into the right frame of mind for a sex scene, taken hallucinogens with his cat, cartwheeled onto a talk show, bought multiple castles and a stolen dinosaur skull, and drawn his inspirations from hundreds of years of live and filmed performance, throwing it into a highly eccentric blender and developing a bespoke style that’s entirely his own.
With that in mind, Cage could easily be mistaken for a guy with his consciousness altered frequently, but the first time he saw “a movie that has the ability to change people’s minds,” it stuck with him forever. “I remember seeing The China Syndrome as a boy,” he explained to Emanuel Levy. “And it made me very aware that nuclear energy was to be respected.”
Cage would have been 15 years old when director James Bridges’ disaster thriller starring Michael Douglas and Jane Fonda was released, and he was hardly alone in having his eyes opened to the perils of nuclear power. Nobody involved in the movie could have guessed at the time they were making it, but The China Syndrome inadvertently became one of the most prescient pictures of its era.
The film hit cinemas just 12 days before the Three Mile Island incident of March 1979, when the titular nuclear power station suffered a partial meltdown. It cost billions to deal with the damage caused, leading to new regulations being imposed by the government. The marriage of fiction and fact was entirely accidental, but the two events unfolding so close together had a momentous impact on Cage.
At the beginning of the month, he wasn’t at all concerned with the potential dangers of nuclear energy, but the combination of the movie and the real-life incident changed Cage’s mindset forever.
