If you haven’t used a Nicolas Cage reaction meme at some point in your life, have you even logged onto the internet? The Oscar-winning actor is indisputably one of the most memefied names in Hollywood, and he has some understandably conflicting thoughts about the whole thing. But hey, at least he’s not “Crying Jordan.”
Nicolas Cage recently reflected on perhaps being the “first actor who went through a kind of meme-ification,” and his reaction to the oddity of being internet famous for it. In his words:
I didn’t understand how to process what was happening. I got into acting because I was moved by film performance more than any other art form. I didn’t get into movies to become a meme. That was new. I made friends with it but it was an adjustment.
In the conversation with The Guardian, the actor got honest about what he thinks about being such a prevalent meme. As he said, he’s accepted it over the years, but when it first became a popular thing people were doing, he simply didn’t get how to “process” being one. But I’d argue that Cage’s memes are all in good fun of his work and there’s diversity in them, whereas something like the “Crying Jordan” has been so oversaturated and photoshopped, that Michael Jordan probably never goes on the internet.
Cage recalled the time when someone put a montage of his movie meltdown moments online and it went “viral overnight.” He remembers it “exponentially compounding on itself and getting bigger” whilst he stood on the sidelines feeling powerless to stop it. As he continued:
I thought maybe they would compel someone to go back and look at the movies. But I had no control over it. The same thing happens with Paul in Dream Scenario: he has no control over this inexplicable phenomenon.
Release Date: November 10, 2023
Directed By: Kristoffer Borgli
Written By: Kristoffer Borgli
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Julianne Nicholson, Michael Cera, Tim Meadows, Dylan Gelula, Dylan Bake
Rating: R for language, violence and some sexual content
Runtime: 100 minutes
Cage’s latest film, Dream Scenario, which CinemaBlend’s own Sean O’Connell hailed as one of the actor’s best performances, has him playing a college professor who becomes famous in his own right for spontaneously popping up in everyone’s dreams as a bystander who doesn’t answer their cries for help as their minds conjure up zombies, monsters and what not to attack them. The movie on the 2023 film schedule premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival to an uproar of excitement. And, Cage himself called the movie a “masterpiece.”
Nicolas Cage has a lot of experience being a meme, but as he said, ”everyone has the ability to become famous now” with the prevalence of the internet. This is especially true with mediums like TikTok putting the power in the hands of anyone who can produce a viral moment, whether it be purposefully or on accident. Over the years, Cage has become a meme countless times, whether it’s the “You Don’t Say” moment from Vampire’s Kiss, his flowing hair moment in Con-Air or that time people were photoshopping his face into everything.
The actor has leaned in a bit, especially when he decided to play himself in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and reference the most Nic Cage movies of all time, but he clearly finds the whole thing strange. Of course, he can take solace in not being the only celebrity with memes of himself going around nowadays, everyone is susceptible to it.
