Hollywood: You're Doing it Wrong

I am confident enough in myself to admit that one of my favorite movies is The Rock. The combination of nonsensical action, Sean Connery, and a bombastic musical score made me giddy as a kid. This 90′s f***-fest was pure escapism, and at the center of all the noise was Nicholas Cage, complete with crazy eyes and mumbly mouth. His melodramatic sarcasm actually brought light gravitas to a story so utterly silly that it made chemical warfare look like child’s play. What I enjoyed the most was the interplay between Cage and Connery, who make a terrible team, but truly fantastic conversationalists:

Stanley Goodspeed (Cage): I’ll do my best.
John Mason (Connery): Your best!? Losers always whine about their best! Winners go home and f*** the prom queen.
Goodspeed: Carla was the prom queen.
Mason: Really?
[Goodspeed cocks his gun.]
Goodspeed: Yeah.

See? Perfect banter.

However, in the years since Cage’s weird action roles of the Nineties, he has become progressively stranger. Even his kitschy roles are not as kitsch as they used to be. He relies on terrible, terrible movies to make a buck (Next, Knowing, Bangkok Dangerous), and has become quite adept at using questionable wigs to “transform” into character. Historically, Cage has only gotten mileage out of two distinct hairpieces (in Raising Arizona and Adaptation.), yet he seems convinced that his receding hairline (though in full bloom in The Rock) is a detriment not only to his bankability, but his characters.

The trailers for Cage’s two newest films show him sporting the same coif he donned for Con Air, another 90′s action movie which pales in comparison to The Rock. Besides his long tresses being entirely ill-fitting, it looks as though Cage isn’t even having fun in these movies.

Season of the Witch:

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice:

The less said about Season of the Witch, the better. I see absolutely no redeeming quality in the film. It appears to be a combination of Kingdom of Heaven and Van Helsing, which is a conceptually unstable idea considering how poorly both were received by critics and the box office. And at least those had Orlando Bloom and Hugh Jackman for viewers to silently fondle. Here, all audiences have is Nicholas Cage in a wig, doing things that any B-actor could do with ease. Just because Cage is in the film does not elevate it above the realm of schlock.

With The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, it looks as if Jay Baruchel will have the opportunity to make what seems a terrible idea into (at the very least) something palatable through his natural, nervous comedic edge. Cage does him no favors by looking gloomy and not the least bit whimsical. A quick glimpse of a laugh is a promising notion, but even the laugh looked more crooked than maniacal. At the very end of the trailer, just as I was trying to figure out if the lady wig Cage wears was attached to that “awesome” hat, Cage shows just how uncommitted he is to this role. When asked if he is insane by Baruchel’s character, Cage retorts with a finger measurement of his insanity. But his face is blank … there are no crazy eyes, no knowing wink, no smirk … just an aging man’s face framed by a bad hairpiece.

A quick word on the prospect that the fourth and final book in the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn, will be split into two movies: Stop. The Harry Potter franchise held out on doubling their money until the final book, when there was a lot of content to put on screen. From what I have read (and I have not read the books, FYI), nothing of real epic consequence occurs in the book. Here is a short summary written by obvious Potter fan Moony Padfoot Prongs:

Edward and Bella get it on. Bella gets pregnant. Baby’s killing Bella. Edward hates the baby. Baby loves Bella. Edward loves baby. Bella gives birth. Bella turns into vampire. Jacob falls in love with baby, completely losing all of his feelings for Bella. Baby is the only one of it’s kind. Alice and Jasper leave. Alice and Jasper come back. Baby is not the only one of it’s kind. Volturi and vampire covens get ready for big fight. Big fight doesn’t happen.
The end.

Riveting stuff. Plus, I understand that the copulation and birth scenes are incredibly graphic and ill-conceived, which should make for great entertainment. Now, I know that I have no right to criticize something that I have neither seen nor read, but just looking at the plot details of these stories makes me lose interest. Forgetting that these movies were once books, if any of these were released as original screenplays, the details would simply be too unbelievable and too unmarketable. An adult character falling in love with a baby? A big fight that doesn’t happen? So many opportunities to make a good Hollywood movie are completely avoided in Breaking Dawn, and they want to make it twice as long? For all those clambering for double the Edward and Jacob, I say, “Enjoy your dull story of a pedophile werewolf and his love for an infant vampire, and please stop ruining my cinematic life.”

Twilight is actually a stop-motion animated picture.