What's the deal with The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent?
And when I say The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent I'm not talking about the burden I face every day.
This one's a bit different, the previous "what's the deal with...?" have been about comic book movies like Morbius, Moon Knight and The Batman or fantasy properties like Lord of the Rings , but there's no way I could go without doing one for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. I am genuinely convinced that this could be one of the comedy movies of the year and I can't wait to see it.
But what is The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent? The movie follows Nicolas Cage (yes he is playing himself) as he accepts one million dollars to attend a superfan drug kingpin's birthday party, he then gets recruited by the CIA to get information on and eventually take down his number one fan. If that doesn't sound great to you then I don't know what will.
The movie has an extremely likeable cast with Nicolas Cage as himself and Pedro Pascal, it also stars Tiffany Haddish, Neil Patrick Harris, and Ike Barinholtz in what is probably one of the best casts in any recent action comedy movie. Pedro Pascal will be playing a Nick Cage superfan called Javi Gutierrez and "one of the most ruthless men on the face of this planet", he's become a fan favourite in recent years but often in slightly more serious roles so it will be nice to see him tackle something as whacky as this ahead of his role as Joel in The Last of Us and Din Djarin in season three of The Mandalorian. Neil Patrick Harris seems to be playing Nick Cage's agent (his Nick Cagent if you will) in what is likely to be a slightly more limited role which is a shame because Neil Patrick Harris is excellent in everything. Finally Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz will be playing the Central Intelligence agents that recruit and work with bringing down the target.
The big draw of this movie is how meta it is, in the movie Nicolas Cage not only plays himself but also uses several props (such as the golden guns from Face/Off), costumes, and quotes from fan favourite characters (I'm personally hoping the Big Daddy costume from Kick-Ass makes an appearance). There was even a scene cut from the movie in which he fights his younger self in various roles in a black and white action sequence, so they're clearly comitting to the meta bit even if this scene was cut. A clearly satirised version of himself is the best version of himself that Nicolas Cage could possibly play, especially because he's so well known and loved specifically for his crazy antics like buying a dinosaur skeleton and putting in ridiculously over the top performances in films like The Wicker Man.
Normally at this point I recommend some comic books or regular books to check out before watching the movie but this time round I'm going to recommend what I think are some of the best Nick Cage movies for you to watch before this one. As always if you do decide to pick any of these up via the links provided Cloven Hoof will get a little kick back from it that would help us a lot to bring more content like this.
We're at the end of the article today, you'll be able to catch a review for the Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent here in the next week or two but in the meantime why don't you check out some of the suggested articles below? Or you could even download the Cloven Hoof Podcast, episode two is coming this Friday so now's the perfect time.