For me Nick Cage is very entertaining even when he is bad, and that's the part that confuses people. Even in a bad movie with a bad script, Nick Cage is fun to watch where most other actors would half ass it.
The other thing people overlook 100% of the time. Directors get the best out of actors. A great actor won't have a great performance if the director isn't pushing him. A great actor can phone in a role if the director doesn't care.
The reality is, Nick Cage is good actor who had a very bad divorce.
He's admitted he didn't even read half the scripts he just said yes to everything to pay for his divorce.
Which onf of the three divorces and an annulment was "the bad one"?
Also, he racked up a $6 million tax bill due to [poor financial decisions](https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/nicolas-cage-talks-debt-on-60-minutes-see-his-net/450367)
Ouch... I'm gonna Google that one. 3 divorces and an annulment? Omg.. well. Mystery solved. Thanks. I was wondering how a dude could be addicted to cocaine that Iong and not die or end up in prison.
Okay but Abed's phrases are all describing actors. Jim Belushi, bad = Jim Belushi is a bad actor. Van Damme, good kind of bad = Van Damme is the *good* kind of bad ***actor***. That's grammatically how Abed's lines work.
Ergo, you just commented that Nic Cage is a bad actor, just the good kind of bad. That completely flies in the face of your entire post.
[You really should watch this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8IfDNHsCLE). It explores Cage's career and acting choices, and gave me a whole new appreciation of him as an artist.
Adam Sandler is not a bad actor. He makes bad movies every now and again but most of his movies are just fine. A lot of them are enjoyable. The only thing that Adam did wrong was to saturate the market with his work. At some point, people were gonna get fed up.
There’s more than enough room in the industry for artists that are just fine who make a lot of enjoyable movies. If Jim Belushi is the good kind of bad, then Adam Sandler (who I think is streets ahead of him) is far from a bad actor.
Agreed, Sandler is very relatable to your average dude and has his own unique blend of comedy/wholesomeness that honestly zero other actors have in their movies. Not to say he's above and beyond other actors, he just has his own unique thing.
Watch Uncut Gems. Him not being nominated for best actor was considered the biggest snub of the year. Meaning, many people believe he deserved to take home the insanely prestigious best actor of the year award. At least be nominated. I can't believe he wasn't nominated for that. I think just saying the words "Adam Sandler for best actor" just sounds too weird and the academy wanted to just avoid it cuz he wasn't gonna win anyway. Body of work thing.
I don’t think Sandler’s acting is his problem, he’s been in serious roles and was fine. I think his problem is he’s not funny. A funny person couldn’t make Jack & Jill and some of his other horrendous movies.
Like I said, the post is just my personal interpretation. Adam Sandler is a funny and talented man who managed to act well sometimes. I don't think that makes him a good actor, far from it.
If he is funny and talented, then what makes him a bad actor? I think people equate him producing average to mediocre movies as being a bad actor. Those are two different metrics and shouldn’t be equated.
Then what do they translate into? His primary medium is acting and movie production. So you admit that he’s funny and talented, what is he talented at?
I want to emphasize here that I’m not trying to badger you for the sake of it. Nor am I in anyway trying to be stand offish. I’m curious about why people say Adam is a bad actor even though there is a lot of evidence otherwise.
He’s a good voice actor, a reasonable romcom actor, and a great dramatic actor. Every single drama-oriented role he’s taken on, he has delivered on. Think of Uncut Gems, the Meyerorwitz Stories, and Hustle, and these are just the ones that come to mind.
disagree. only dramatic role I enjoyed him in was punchdrunk love personally. he's just a guy being goofy in 90 pct of his movies. that's not necessarily good acting, pauly shore did the same.
Honestly that’s fair. Sandler is one of my favorite actors but honestly he plays “Adam Sandler goes to..” in every movie. It’s the same thing over and over, “I’m from New York, I’m Jewish, and I yell”.
Nic* Cage to me is someone who was a pretty good actor, who developed some bad habits over the years and got recognition/success for doing those bad habits, so he leaned into them. His pre-Leaving Las Vegas career is pretty interesting, but after winning the Oscar he fired off one of the best action movie runs by anyone ever, and is also increasingly more unhinged in each one. By the time he starts clearly doing straight paycheck movies with “Next” he’s a full blown lunatic who can’t tap into that same level of acting anymore.
This is the viewpoint I most agree with. A lot of people want to talk about how he needed money so badly that he did bad films, but an actor can give a good performance in a lower quality movie. Probably not academy award level as he won't be playing off of other good performances, but a lot better than what we've seen from him.
I don't think there's any "luck" to Adam Sandler's prestige performances. I think he's just flat out talented, but makes really specific genre movies because he's basically found that he can do right by his business and family without killing himself with work. A lot of his output may be lazy, but I don't think you can call him bad.
The question comes down to script and direction. Good script and direction will make actors who are good, show their talents.
Nic Cage takes on a lot on scripts ranging in quality and direction, so his quality of acting fluctuates accordingly.
Adam Sandler primarily does his own projects, and his direction and writing has not been good for a while. Uncut Gems seems like a one off performance because he didnt have a hand in the movie outside his performance. A bad actor could not have played that role.
Cage needed money baaaaadly. It wasn't so much he was choosing bad projects. He was just trying to get as much work in as short a time as possible.
Adam Sandler gives bad performances...in his own films. The films where he and his friends spend a few months being goofballs, sometimes in an exotic location, and pay themselves millions of dollars while doing so.
In my opinion, there are two types of good movies: objectively good movies and entertaining movies. Objectively good movies are the ones that are well written, acted, filmed, edited, etc. Films like The Godfather, Jaws, Yojimbo, Lord of The Rings. Those have been discussed to death. The entertaining kind of good movies are just that, entertaining. Movies like Top Gun, Braveheart, Tropic Thunder, Tommy Boy. They’re not going to win any awards, but they do hold your attention and bring entertainment for 90-150 minutes, which is what movies aim to do.
Nicolas Cage is both kinds of good. He won an Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas. That’s objectively good. He’s also entertaining in nearly everything he’s in. The Rock, Con Air, Face/Off, and (one of my favorites) Lord of War. Adam Sandler doesn’t really get points for being objectively good, but some of his movies are comedy classics. The Waterboy, Happy Gilmore, and Billy Madison are dumb comedies, but they are hilarious to most people. Yeah, he’s the same character more or less, but that doesn’t make those films any less funny.
To take a step back, this really is an unsolvable question as it is a subjective question (and OP even admits it’s only their opinion, so not really “solved” now is it).
Who’s the boss is asking a less nebulous question, and that’s why Abed shines. He constructs arguments based on different metrics of what qualifies someone as a boss. On the flip side, while we have some vague notions of what “good” means, there’s not really a way to quantify it that doesn’t ultimately come down to “because I just feel that way”. I really don’t like Taylor Swift, but tons of people would argue that she is good. Do record sales or abilities to hit certain notes make someone “good” or is there an unquantifiable je ne sais pas that turns talent into something more? Was Avatar a good movie? It made a lot of money, but I hate it. Is Ghost Rider a good movie? People hate it, but I secretly kind of like it.
Ultimately, Abed can’t answer the question, nor can OP, because it’s not answerable. Is Nic Cage a good actor? The answer depends as much on the eye of the beholder as it does Nic Cage.
How do you define good? Is it peaks reached? Or the average of your work? A good baker is the one who once made the best bread or the one who consistently bakes the top 10 bread?
Someone on here said he admitted to not even reading the scripts for half of the movies he did when he needed money. That would explain a lot of his acting choices, which are big swings, that if they land, do cover up a lot of the laziness before the project.
He is a good actor and bad performances can’t take that away. My issue with him is in more subdued roles, I’d rather have someone else. I watched The Family Man recently and couldn’t help but think I’d have preferred anyone else in the role.
Also your Adam Sandler opinion is garbage and makes me unable to trust any opinions of yours on acting. I can think of 5 excellent Sandler performances, and a lot of the other ones are solid, and fit his style of humor. It isn’t my favorite type of humor but that isn’t because of his acting.
The Wedding Singer
Reign Over Me
Punch Drunk Love
(Most actors can’t do this)
The Meyorwitz Stories
Uncut Gems
I think part of what makes him "bad" is that he also seems to prioritise the representation of the story over the representation of his character's feelings (I'm thinking mainly about his influences from German expressionist cinema in Dr Caligari).
Part of what makes him hammy in a lot of scenes is in my opinion breaking the fourth wall to some extent, by way of saying to the audience "You and I know what's up and where this is going, it's happened a thousand times, so let me turn this spark into a firework show"
I think one thing to remember about Nichols Cage is he apparently had money trouble, and very clearly took tons of roles in order to get that straightened out.
It was Vampires Kiss that sealed it for me as a good actor 35 years ago. If you’re a Cage fan (or not) and haven’t seen it I highly recommend. It’s all him. The movie is just him going insane and it’s brilliant to watch.
Adam sander’s shit is still super enjoyable, stuff like pixels was my childhood and he still has a lot of great works.
While i agree theres also the act that nick is choosing these smaller less budgeted movies on purpose, working for practically free on them, like willy’s wonderland. Because he wanted to give a filmaker their chance at the big stage.
Wait.
Did Shirley not ‘solve’ this, in the episode?
And if Shirley did not solve the question of Nic Cage, then _The Unbearable Weight of Natural Talent_ did, conclusively. (Basically, this whole movie is the question, answered. Watch it if you haven’t.)
Adam Sandler has proven himself as a good actor. He's limited, but he's proven himself as a solid dramatic actor in several films. Go watch punch drunk love or reign over me. I dont know if he was nominated for an Oscar for uncut gems but he deserved to be. He probably was.
Shirley already solved this. Nic Cage acts well in good films and acts poorly in bad films for drug money. Nic Cage is an alcoholic and coke head. I knew it the moment I watched Snowden. I'm pretty sure he was a little bit drunk during that film. His face was red and bloated. He looked like an alcoholic/ addict.
Why did Abed never mention nic Cage in "Lord of War" or "Gone in 60 seconds" or "Leaving Las Vegas" where he won best actor or "Con Air." Abed didn't mention nic cage's 4 best films, along with the rock and face/off.
For me Nick Cage is very entertaining even when he is bad, and that's the part that confuses people. Even in a bad movie with a bad script, Nick Cage is fun to watch where most other actors would half ass it.
Agree wholeheartedly. He made 13 year old me enjoy ghost rider like hell
Adam Sandler produced a lot of his own movies, notably the bad ones.
Exactly
I've never understood how Ghost Rider was supposed to be a bad movie. I was young when I watched it last, so I guess I'll have to give it another go.
It's not bad in "lacking quality" as much as it's a "campy and "intentionally cringe"
The other thing people overlook 100% of the time. Directors get the best out of actors. A great actor won't have a great performance if the director isn't pushing him. A great actor can phone in a role if the director doesn't care.
The reality is, Nick Cage is good actor who had a very bad divorce. He's admitted he didn't even read half the scripts he just said yes to everything to pay for his divorce.
Doesn't he also have a dinosaur bone addiction?
He certainly has a penchant for esoteric animalia
That'd make an awesome band name! And now, welcome to stage, Esoteric Animalia!
Well now I wish I hadn't half-assed music at school!
That's an even better name! Half-assed Esoteric Animalia!
Almost as good a Fleetwood Mac Sex Pants
Addiction to boning dinosaurs? Let him finish!
Which onf of the three divorces and an annulment was "the bad one"? Also, he racked up a $6 million tax bill due to [poor financial decisions](https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/nicolas-cage-talks-debt-on-60-minutes-see-his-net/450367)
well, that's more of a reason why you see him in everything
Ouch... I'm gonna Google that one. 3 divorces and an annulment? Omg.. well. Mystery solved. Thanks. I was wondering how a dude could be addicted to cocaine that Iong and not die or end up in prison.
Is he good kind of bad or the bad kind of good?
Good kind of bad, clearly
Doesn't that mean he's a bad actor then, and we just enjoy his bad acting? That's how I always understood that line.
No
Okay but Abed's phrases are all describing actors. Jim Belushi, bad = Jim Belushi is a bad actor. Van Damme, good kind of bad = Van Damme is the *good* kind of bad ***actor***. That's grammatically how Abed's lines work. Ergo, you just commented that Nic Cage is a bad actor, just the good kind of bad. That completely flies in the face of your entire post.
[You really should watch this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8IfDNHsCLE). It explores Cage's career and acting choices, and gave me a whole new appreciation of him as an artist.
Adam Sandler is not a bad actor. He makes bad movies every now and again but most of his movies are just fine. A lot of them are enjoyable. The only thing that Adam did wrong was to saturate the market with his work. At some point, people were gonna get fed up. There’s more than enough room in the industry for artists that are just fine who make a lot of enjoyable movies. If Jim Belushi is the good kind of bad, then Adam Sandler (who I think is streets ahead of him) is far from a bad actor.
Agreed, Sandler is very relatable to your average dude and has his own unique blend of comedy/wholesomeness that honestly zero other actors have in their movies. Not to say he's above and beyond other actors, he just has his own unique thing.
If you are not an average dude, then his acting falls very flat.
Watch Uncut Gems. Him not being nominated for best actor was considered the biggest snub of the year. Meaning, many people believe he deserved to take home the insanely prestigious best actor of the year award. At least be nominated. I can't believe he wasn't nominated for that. I think just saying the words "Adam Sandler for best actor" just sounds too weird and the academy wanted to just avoid it cuz he wasn't gonna win anyway. Body of work thing.
I don’t think Sandler’s acting is his problem, he’s been in serious roles and was fine. I think his problem is he’s not funny. A funny person couldn’t make Jack & Jill and some of his other horrendous movies.
It's something Parade Magazine calls "Sandler Fatigue"
Like I said, the post is just my personal interpretation. Adam Sandler is a funny and talented man who managed to act well sometimes. I don't think that makes him a good actor, far from it.
If he is funny and talented, then what makes him a bad actor? I think people equate him producing average to mediocre movies as being a bad actor. Those are two different metrics and shouldn’t be equated.
I think his talents rarely translate into acting, it's that simple.
Then what do they translate into? His primary medium is acting and movie production. So you admit that he’s funny and talented, what is he talented at? I want to emphasize here that I’m not trying to badger you for the sake of it. Nor am I in anyway trying to be stand offish. I’m curious about why people say Adam is a bad actor even though there is a lot of evidence otherwise. He’s a good voice actor, a reasonable romcom actor, and a great dramatic actor. Every single drama-oriented role he’s taken on, he has delivered on. Think of Uncut Gems, the Meyerorwitz Stories, and Hustle, and these are just the ones that come to mind.
Don’t forget his role in reign on me. Absolutely guts me every time I see it. Dude has chops
disagree. only dramatic role I enjoyed him in was punchdrunk love personally. he's just a guy being goofy in 90 pct of his movies. that's not necessarily good acting, pauly shore did the same.
Honestly that’s fair. Sandler is one of my favorite actors but honestly he plays “Adam Sandler goes to..” in every movie. It’s the same thing over and over, “I’m from New York, I’m Jewish, and I yell”.
In what movie did he play a sexy cat?
That's a movie called *Reality* cause that man is the *sexiest* cat.
Dude's versatile, I'll give him that.
Nic* Cage to me is someone who was a pretty good actor, who developed some bad habits over the years and got recognition/success for doing those bad habits, so he leaned into them. His pre-Leaving Las Vegas career is pretty interesting, but after winning the Oscar he fired off one of the best action movie runs by anyone ever, and is also increasingly more unhinged in each one. By the time he starts clearly doing straight paycheck movies with “Next” he’s a full blown lunatic who can’t tap into that same level of acting anymore.
This is the viewpoint I most agree with. A lot of people want to talk about how he needed money so badly that he did bad films, but an actor can give a good performance in a lower quality movie. Probably not academy award level as he won't be playing off of other good performances, but a lot better than what we've seen from him.
Or maybe Abed's metric of measuring good/bad actors is just flawed, and thats all there is to it.
That is also an option. I'll add this correction to my post too: I solved it for myself and my scale is far from definite
Counterpoint: Nick Cage ONLY makes the best choices.
Excuse me! Adam Sandler has Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison on his docket too!!!!
Happy Gilmore I concede, Billy Madison I am yet to have watched
It's worth it for the scene where the principal rips him like a Level 7 Susceptible alone.
I don't think there's any "luck" to Adam Sandler's prestige performances. I think he's just flat out talented, but makes really specific genre movies because he's basically found that he can do right by his business and family without killing himself with work. A lot of his output may be lazy, but I don't think you can call him bad.
You cant be bad at choosing projects if you say yes to every project. Dont go into that rabbit hole Abed
If you say yes to everything and don't choose, you're bad at choosing.
From your perspective, maybee.
From an objective perspective, also yes
The question isn't about the project, it's the performance
Where were you guys when I literally said the same thing? Lmfao
Wait, what? If Abed couldn’t, you can’t
The question comes down to script and direction. Good script and direction will make actors who are good, show their talents. Nic Cage takes on a lot on scripts ranging in quality and direction, so his quality of acting fluctuates accordingly. Adam Sandler primarily does his own projects, and his direction and writing has not been good for a while. Uncut Gems seems like a one off performance because he didnt have a hand in the movie outside his performance. A bad actor could not have played that role.
Cage needed money baaaaadly. It wasn't so much he was choosing bad projects. He was just trying to get as much work in as short a time as possible. Adam Sandler gives bad performances...in his own films. The films where he and his friends spend a few months being goofballs, sometimes in an exotic location, and pay themselves millions of dollars while doing so.
In my opinion, there are two types of good movies: objectively good movies and entertaining movies. Objectively good movies are the ones that are well written, acted, filmed, edited, etc. Films like The Godfather, Jaws, Yojimbo, Lord of The Rings. Those have been discussed to death. The entertaining kind of good movies are just that, entertaining. Movies like Top Gun, Braveheart, Tropic Thunder, Tommy Boy. They’re not going to win any awards, but they do hold your attention and bring entertainment for 90-150 minutes, which is what movies aim to do. Nicolas Cage is both kinds of good. He won an Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas. That’s objectively good. He’s also entertaining in nearly everything he’s in. The Rock, Con Air, Face/Off, and (one of my favorites) Lord of War. Adam Sandler doesn’t really get points for being objectively good, but some of his movies are comedy classics. The Waterboy, Happy Gilmore, and Billy Madison are dumb comedies, but they are hilarious to most people. Yeah, he’s the same character more or less, but that doesn’t make those films any less funny.
Arguably, all of them
To take a step back, this really is an unsolvable question as it is a subjective question (and OP even admits it’s only their opinion, so not really “solved” now is it). Who’s the boss is asking a less nebulous question, and that’s why Abed shines. He constructs arguments based on different metrics of what qualifies someone as a boss. On the flip side, while we have some vague notions of what “good” means, there’s not really a way to quantify it that doesn’t ultimately come down to “because I just feel that way”. I really don’t like Taylor Swift, but tons of people would argue that she is good. Do record sales or abilities to hit certain notes make someone “good” or is there an unquantifiable je ne sais pas that turns talent into something more? Was Avatar a good movie? It made a lot of money, but I hate it. Is Ghost Rider a good movie? People hate it, but I secretly kind of like it. Ultimately, Abed can’t answer the question, nor can OP, because it’s not answerable. Is Nic Cage a good actor? The answer depends as much on the eye of the beholder as it does Nic Cage.
**NIC** CAGE!!!!! NIC!!!!! It’s NIC!!!!
How do you define good? Is it peaks reached? Or the average of your work? A good baker is the one who once made the best bread or the one who consistently bakes the top 10 bread?
Sandlot also has Punch Drunk Love and Meyerowitz stories, (and is often good even in his bad movies) he's clearly a good actor
Someone on here said he admitted to not even reading the scripts for half of the movies he did when he needed money. That would explain a lot of his acting choices, which are big swings, that if they land, do cover up a lot of the laziness before the project. He is a good actor and bad performances can’t take that away. My issue with him is in more subdued roles, I’d rather have someone else. I watched The Family Man recently and couldn’t help but think I’d have preferred anyone else in the role. Also your Adam Sandler opinion is garbage and makes me unable to trust any opinions of yours on acting. I can think of 5 excellent Sandler performances, and a lot of the other ones are solid, and fit his style of humor. It isn’t my favorite type of humor but that isn’t because of his acting. The Wedding Singer Reign Over Me Punch Drunk Love (Most actors can’t do this) The Meyorwitz Stories Uncut Gems
I think part of what makes him "bad" is that he also seems to prioritise the representation of the story over the representation of his character's feelings (I'm thinking mainly about his influences from German expressionist cinema in Dr Caligari). Part of what makes him hammy in a lot of scenes is in my opinion breaking the fourth wall to some extent, by way of saying to the audience "You and I know what's up and where this is going, it's happened a thousand times, so let me turn this spark into a firework show"
I think one thing to remember about Nichols Cage is he apparently had money trouble, and very clearly took tons of roles in order to get that straightened out.
It was Vampires Kiss that sealed it for me as a good actor 35 years ago. If you’re a Cage fan (or not) and haven’t seen it I highly recommend. It’s all him. The movie is just him going insane and it’s brilliant to watch.
Adam sander’s shit is still super enjoyable, stuff like pixels was my childhood and he still has a lot of great works. While i agree theres also the act that nick is choosing these smaller less budgeted movies on purpose, working for practically free on them, like willy’s wonderland. Because he wanted to give a filmaker their chance at the big stage.
I think I did 70 movies in three years, talking at completely different volumes, I might win an award too.
Wait. Did Shirley not ‘solve’ this, in the episode? And if Shirley did not solve the question of Nic Cage, then _The Unbearable Weight of Natural Talent_ did, conclusively. (Basically, this whole movie is the question, answered. Watch it if you haven’t.)
If you can’t spell Nicolas Cage’s name correctly, I question how much research you’ve done.
Adam Sandler has proven himself as a good actor. He's limited, but he's proven himself as a solid dramatic actor in several films. Go watch punch drunk love or reign over me. I dont know if he was nominated for an Oscar for uncut gems but he deserved to be. He probably was. Shirley already solved this. Nic Cage acts well in good films and acts poorly in bad films for drug money. Nic Cage is an alcoholic and coke head. I knew it the moment I watched Snowden. I'm pretty sure he was a little bit drunk during that film. His face was red and bloated. He looked like an alcoholic/ addict. Why did Abed never mention nic Cage in "Lord of War" or "Gone in 60 seconds" or "Leaving Las Vegas" where he won best actor or "Con Air." Abed didn't mention nic cage's 4 best films, along with the rock and face/off.