Nicolas Cage has always been one of the most unpredictable actors in the business, and he made two romance movies in the same year that showed off his unparalleled range. Cage’s best movies encompᴀss a broad range of genres, from action thrillers like Face/Off to horror movies like Longlegs and animated gems like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It’s hard to know what the actor is going to do next, but it’s usually a safe bet that whatever it is, no other actor in Hollywood would approach it quite like Cage.
Cage has always had a proclivity for playing outlandish roles, but he still manages to make them feel human and relatable. Take his masterful dual role in Adaptation, for example, which sees Cage playing two twins based on two sides of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s psyche. Cage’s compelling on-screen presence helps ground this cerebral concept, and he even manages to get plenty of laughs. This has always been the secret ingredient to Cage’s success, starting with an early-career double-header that produced two very different romance movies, both of which are undeniable classics.
Nicolas Cage Starred In Both Raising Arizona And Moonstruck In 1987
Cage Appeared In The Crime Caper And The Witty Rom-Com Within A Few Months
After a few minor successes in the fledgling years of his career, Cage truly broke out in 1987 after starring in both Raising Arizona and Moonstruck. Although these could both broadly be described as romance movies, they could hardly be more different. These two movies offer a succinct demonstration of Cage’s range as a performer. Although he’s a romantic lead of sorts in both movies, his two characters are polar opposites, and the tone of each movie is also unique. With these two successes under his belt, Cage proved that he was a young actor worth paying attention to.
Raising Arizona is one of the best Coen brothers movies, and a perfect example of the directorial duo’s talent for crafting chaotic crime comedies. Cage stars as a listless crook who finds purpose in life when he falls in love with a police officer. Their wedded bliss doesn’t last for long until he is convinced to kidnap a baby from a wealthy family. All hell breaks loose in the deserts of Arizona, almost literally in some ways, since the Coen brothers weave elements of surreal mysticism into their skewed vision of the desert landscape. It’s an uproarious madcap comedy with a cerebral touch.
On the other hand, Moonstruck is a much more subdued and more traditional romantic comedy. Cher delivers an outstanding performance as a woman who accepts a proposal from a man she isn’t exactly in love with, only to fall head over heels for his intense, tormented brother, played by Cage. Moonstruck is beautifully written, with plenty of heart-melting quotes about the very nature of love, coupled with allusions to the opera, with its great tragedies and orchestral swells of pᴀssion. Cher and Cage make a surprisingly likable duo, partly because there are moments when their two characters seem to have nothing in common.
Cage’s Early Hits Helped Establish His Reputation As An Actor
Cage Hit The Ground Running
With Raising Arizona and Moonstruck back-to-back, Cage immediately announced the kind of actor he was going to be. With both performances, he takes some pretty big swings, but they connect in style. It would be wrong to suggest that Cage’s bold acting choices always resonate with audiences, but more often than not, he provides something unusual and unexpected. In Moonstruck, he plays a vengeful loner with a kind of volcanic fervor that suggests he has retreated into a realm of tortured fantasy. Such a big, splashy performance could sink the whole movie, especially opposite Cher’s grounded charms, but Cage makes it work.
With Raising Arizona and Moonstruck back-to-back, Cage immediately announced the kind of actor he was going to be.
1987 also proved that Cage was always going to be an actor who was drawn to offbeat projects. Raising Arizona is sheer comedic mayhem, seemingly set in the same expansive desert that Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote inhabit, where the laws of real life don’t apply. Even Moonstruck, which initially seems more ordinary, has a vein of quasi-religious supersтιтion running through it, with each character drawn to the moon and obsessed with luck. Cage continues to find interesting projects, and movies which don’t quite resemble anything else. To his credit, he succeeds more often than he fails.
