Nicolas Cage on the “potentially divine” qualities of science fiction
Looking back at Nicolas Cage‘s career, there is pretty much no film genre that he hasn’t tried. In recent years, Cage has proven his ability to star in a number of horror movies, with his performances in the likes of Mom and Dad, Mandy, and Longlegs cemented his most terrifying credentials.
The action thriller has also done well by Cage considering his many brilliant turns in movies such as Con Air, Face/Off, The Rock and Gone in 60 Seconds. Cage also has detailed versatility in his more dramatic roles, and he won an Academy Award for his role in Leaving Las Vegas, as well as a nomination for Adaption.
As if all that wasn’t enough, even science fiction cinema has received the Nicolas Cage treatment on a number of occasions. Although it is fair to say that with the likes of Knowing, Next, and The Humanity Bureau comprising his sci-fi catalogue, Cage’s best moments definitely have not come within the genre.
Still, it appears Cage himself is a big fan of sci-fi and understands what kind of things out there are to go into a movie to make it worth watching. The actor had once spoken with Pop Entertainment while promoting 2009’s Knowing, the Alex Proyas movie that tells of a strange piece of paper that reveals the details of the disasters that will lead to the apocalypse.
That in itself feels pretty far-fetched, but Cage’s comments show that he knows good sci-fi when he sees it (even if he’s not always present in the movie himself). “Well, good science fiction is intelligent. It asks big questions that are on people’s minds,” Cage noted. “It’s not impossible. It has some sort of root in the abstract.”
Cage went on to discuss the nature of the “abstract” in sci-fi and how it allows an actor to get away with things they might not normally be able to in more reality-grounded movies. He said, “Automatically, you’re getting closer to potentially divine sources of interest because it is abstract. It’s one of the only ways that a film actor can express himself in the abstract and have audiences still go along for the ride. They don’t contend it.”
Indeed, there’s something about science fiction that has us momentarily abandon our preconceived and learned notions about the world in which we live. Science fiction posits things that could theoretically happen (otherwise, it would be fantasy) and explores the human reaction to such events.
According to Cage, the audience takes these newfound suggestions of the future and “They accept it, that they’re going to go places that are a bit more of the imagination, a bit more out there, and that’s more and more where I like to dance.” When Cage had taken on Knowing, he’d been on a run of several action movies and admitted that he had become tired of “shooting people”.
As the 2000s drew to a close, Cage had become more interested in making movies that make people think, and he knew that science fiction likely would. Sure, Knowing might not have been the best movie that Cage ever made, but the reality was that he was exploring new avenues of cinema that he felt were important. There’s a deep power to science fiction in how it asks the big questions, and Cage undoubtedly wants to be part of the big debate.
