Nicolas Cage Plays An Over The Top Version of Himself In The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent Trailer
Nicolas Cage plays a strange version of himself in this new trailer!
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It isn’t uncommon to hear someone trying to diss an actor by saying something along the lines of “Bruce Willis just plays Bruce Willis in every movie.” Well, what if an actor is supposed to play themselves? That’s the situation in which Nicolas Cage finds himself in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and judging by the first trailer, which just dropped today, Cage fans are in for a treat.
The trailer opens with Nicolas Cage talking to his agent (Neil Patrick Harris), and things don’t sound good. The actor is living in a hotel and owes the place $600,000. Cage refers to an unnamed role which he’s convinced is going to put him back on top. But judging by the reactions of the people casting the role, he isn’t the first choice. In the meantime, Cage accepts the huge sum of $1 million to attend the birthday party of the wealthy Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal). You can watch the trailer below.
Pascal’s Javi is a Nicolas Cage super-fan who owns a wax statue of the actor, based on his character from 1997’s Face/Off. According to Entertainment Weekly, things go sideways when CIA agent Vivian (Tiffany Haddish) recruits Cage for a mission. To survive the ordeal, the actor must take on some of the adventurous qualities of his most famous roles. He’ll be aided by Nicky — also played by Cage — a younger, imaginary version of the actor based on the Cage’s roles from the late ’80s and early ’90s like Wild at Heart.
The first teaser for the upcoming Nicolas Cage film comes a day after EW released their first look at The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, consisting mostly of photos of Cage and Pascal’s characters enjoying themselves. The trailer gives more context to the photos, particularly the image of the two sitting on stone steps, which seems to be swiftly followed by the both of them trying and failing to scale a wall.
If the trailer makes you want to see the film as soon as it hits theaters, you won’t have to fight Nicolas Cage for your seat. The actor made it clear he won’t be seeing The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Cage has nothing against the movie, mind you. In July he said he’d been told the reactions to the film had been positive so far. But the experience of watching himself playing an extreme, fictionalized version of himself would just be too weird. “It’s too much for me to go to the premiere and sit there with everybody,” Cage said. “Psychologically, that’s too bizarre and whacked out for me.” Hearing that something is “too bizarre and whacked out” for the same guy who starred in movies like 2018’s Mandy and 2019’s Color Out of Space may sound strange, but there you have it.
Nicolas Cage also doesn’t want audiences thinking the character he plays in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent truly reflects who he is. Cage told Collider that he isn’t “this neurotic, high-strung, anxiety-ridden guy” audiences will experience in the film. That makes sense. After all, unlike his fictional counterpart, the real Nicolas Cage is hardly having trouble getting cast in roles. He recently premiered in Shudder’s Prisoners of the Ghostland, he’s been cast as Dracula in the upcoming Renfield, and in October the first image of him emerged from the Western Butcher’s Crossing. The latter two movies don’t yet have release dates, butThe Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent hits theaters April 22, 2022.
