Nicolas Cage has always wanted to play Captain Nemo “because of the character’s love of the ocean”
Nicolas Cage isn’t the guy you call when you’re looking for transformation. If you want a chameleon, check in with Christian Bale or Meryl Streep. But if you want the element of uncertainty and a very particular kind of mesmerising, theatrical mania, Cage is your man. Whether he’s playing a man who falls in love with a vampire, a high school a capella singer, or himself, he brings a volatility to the screen that no other actor can match.
He got his start where several other future stars did, playing a high school student in Amy Heckerling’s cult comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High. From there, he moved from strength to strength, demonstrating that he could play a version of a heartthrob, a version of a historian, and the campiest version of Dracula known to Hollywood (and yes, that includes Gary Oldman’s).
Though technically a nepo baby (Francis Ford Coppola is his uncle), the actor has moved far beyond that gilded cage by showing time and again that he is, if nothing else, a complete original. He might make a few poor choices of films here and there or singlehandedly commandeer a movie with a single gyration in a priest outfit, but no one can accuse him of being derivative.
What role could he possibly wish to play that he hasn’t done already? The thing about Cage is that he will bring whatever the hell he wants to a performance, no matter what is written on the page. His Nouveau Shamanic style of acting permeates everything he does, whether he’s playing Spider-Man or a college professor obsessed with the organisational structure of ants. If he wants to play a certain role, he can easily slot it into the characterisation of whatever character he is ostensibly portraying at any given time. The man is freer than free.
When asked in a Reddit ‘Ask Me Anything’ thread whether there was a character he would like to portray, however, he had a very specific (and surprising answer). “I would like to play Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo because of the character’s love of the ocean,” he responded. “I share that with him.”
Captain Nemo appears in two of the French author’s science fiction novels, 1870’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas and 1875’s The Mysterious Island. In the first and most famous of the two books, he explores the ocean in a craft that is similar to a modern-day submarine. He is a creature of the ocean through and through, avoiding land wherever possible and despising civilisation.
The character has been portrayed many times on screen, including by James Mason and Michael Caine. However, only one major film, 2003’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, acknowledged the character’s Indian heritage by casting an Indian actor (Naseeruddin Shah).
Fans of Verne’s novel might shudder at the thought of what Cage might bring to the character, but an individualistic sea captain centuries ahead of his time who patrols the depths of the ocean in an as-yet non-existent vessel could be just the role for the avant-garde actor. It might be a match made in heaven.
