Outcast (2015) and Reputations Based on One Bad Performance

Sometimes there are strange coincidences when it comes to scheduling the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  There are certain movies that I plan ahead to make sure they come out at a certain week.  When I scheduled Warriors of Virtue, I wanted to make sure that it came out when the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie was being released since the concepts are fairly similar.  This week wasn’t a week where I had planned out what I was going to watch to time it with anything.  It was simply that a movie I was semi-interested in got suggested, so I threw it into the schedule.  The lining up of the movie with an event, in this case the first appearance of Nicolas Cage in the blog and his birthday, was not in my mind when I made the schedule.  It just happened.  It was complete coincidence.

The movie this week, by the way, is a movie called Outcast.  It is a 2014 movie that got pushed to a North American direct-to-video release in early 2015.  The main story is about a Chinese prince (I forget his name) who must escape his brother (whose name I also forget) or else he will be murdered.  With the help of his sister Lian (Yifei Liu), swordsman Jacob (Hayden Christensen), and warrior Gallain (Nicolas Cage), he tries to keep his land safe and the throne out of his brother’s clutches.

 I could take the easy route with this post and write a review for the movie.  I could mention all of the Dutch angles that made the movie seem like someone’s tripod was bent 45 degrees.  I might be able to discuss the one shot that goes to the point of view of a bucket of water emptying out on Hayden Christensen’s face.  I would also take some time out to write about Nicolas Cage’s performance and how it deserves to be included in the pantheon of insane Nicolas Cage performances.  All of this stuff could make for a fairly interesting review of a movie that not too many people have seen.  But that isn’t what I’m going to discuss because another idea came up, and it’s an idea that I don’t believe I have written about yet.

As has already been stated twice in this post, Hayden Christensen is one of the stars of Outcast.  He plays Jacob, a swordsman who was once a part of the crusades.  A while later, he is dealing with the atrocities he witnessed during his fighting time, and he gets brought into the voyage of the prince and princess.  Hayden Christensen is what inspired this week’s idea for me.  He is the reason that this movie is going to end up the way it ends up.

Hayden Christensen is an actor with a bad reputation in terms of the quality of his output.  You could say that Nicolas Cage is also one of these guys.  There is one major difference between the two actors and their reputations, however.  Nicolas Cage has built his career on the lunacy that he puts into his performances.  Whether it be his reciting of the alphabet in Vampire’s Kiss, his grabbing of a choir girl’s ass in Face/Off, or his screaming about bees in The Wicker Man, Nicolas Cage has made us know and love when he goes crazy in movies.  Hayden Christensen, however, has gained his reputation as a bad actor through one franchise and the bad performance he gives in it.

Star Wars.  You know Star Wars.  It’s that franchise that put out a new movie less than a month ago and is already breaking every box office record known.  Well, remember back in the early to mid-2000s when George Lucas was putting out the prequel trilogy?  I’m sure you do.  I’m sure you also know that Hayden Christensen was the star of two of them.  The performances that he gave in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith have overwhelmed everything else in his career.  Even when he turns out a decent performance, as he does in Outcast (or my favourite of his movies, Takers), people still only associate him with their negative feelings of his Star Wars performances.  He still gets called names like “Mannequin Skywalker” or “Blandakin Skywalker.”  One franchise has become his defining reputation.

Is he the only actor to have one bad role overwhelm their entire career?  Not at all.  There’s even another person who played Anakin Skywalker that gets the same sort of bad reputation due to that one role.  Jake Lloyd played Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace.  You know, the podracing kid who got into a fighter and shot down a bunch of bad guys.  The kid that was too old to train as a Jedi even though Luke would later do that while being quite a bit older.  Lloyd’s role as Anakin Skywalker was such a bad mark on his acting career that it caused him to quit acting altogether.  People at school would make fun of him with lightsaber noises and such nonsense.  Even being in one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time, Jingle All the Way, couldn’t rid Jake Lloyd of the reputation he got from playing the young Skywalker.

There are other non-Star Wars actors who also gained bad reputations through one movie.  The one that comes to mind first for me is Tommy Wiseau.  If you have any interest in bad movies at all, you should know who Tommy Wiseau is.  He is the legend behind the 2003 bad movie classic, The Room.  He wrote, directed, and starred in the movie that has made his name live on in infamy.  This case is slightly different than the other two, though.  For years, this was the only thing that Tommy Wiseau had done in terms of narrative film.  The stuff he has worked on since can all be attributed to him being the guy from The Room.  That’s the only reason people want to work with him.  The crazy story of that movie and the man himself has been written about in the book The Disaster Artist, and is being made into a movie starring James Franco as Tommy Wiseau.

Finally, there are all of the actors that end up in adaptations of young adult novels.  If the actors haven’t made a name for themselves beforehand, those movies can end up becoming their defining movies.  Daniel Radcliffe has been trying to find the right movies to be respected outside of the Harry Potter movies, but it seems difficult for him to escape that role.  In terms of the bad side of young adult adaptations, there is the Twilight series that has produced both Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner.  Kristen Stewart has recently gained some more respect with roles in movies like The Runaways, Snow White and the Huntsman (even if she’s not in the sequel), and Still Alice.  Taylor Lautner, on the other hand, hasn’t earned the respect that he deserves because people write off the movies he is in.  His work with Adam Sandler hasn’t helped people to consider his acting anything more than bad.  Tracers didn’t even get recognition at all outside of “Oh, Taylor Lautner is in some movie called Tracers.”  This leaves the Twilight movies (his worst performance, from what I’ve seen) as the highlight of his career.

Reputation can mean a lot for how potential audiences view an actor.  A bad reputation based on one movie can take a toll on an actor’s career, as seen with Jake Lloyd who quit acting, or Taylor Lautner and Hayden Christenson who have had a tough time overcoming that one bad role.  There is the odd time that an actor like Tommy Wiseau can just ride the wave and become a star of sorts because of it.  Reputations can change the course of an actor’s career and many times, one movie is the difference between respect and loathing.  If an actor gives a bad performance, it can stick with them forever.

These notes won’t stick with you forever, but they’re going to be here if you need them:

• Outcast was suggested by @TheChewDefense.  He previously suggested Howard the Duck and Tracers.
• Movies I mentioned in this post that I’ve already watched for the Sunday “Bad” Movies include Warriors of Virtue, Jingle All the Way, Tracers and The Room.  I mentioned the book The Disaster Artist, which I’ve written about.  And I mentioned Star Wars.  I haven’t watched any Star Wars for the blog, but I’ve watched Starcrash, a rip-off of it.
• Manel Soler was in Outcast.  He was also in a movie called Skin Trade, which I watched a while back.
• Have you seen Outcast?  What did you think of it?  What other actors get bad reputations for one bad role?  You can discuss this stuff in the comments below.
• The comments are also a good place to suggest movies for me to watch in future Sunday “Bad” Movie weeks.  I need to make up the next part of the schedule soon, so it wouldn’t hurt to suggest something.  You could also contact me on Twitter to suggest movies.
• Next week’s movie is going to be Date Movie.  I saw it once before.  I despised it once before.  I am worried about this.  I might be a different person next week.  We’ll see.
• Happy birthday Nicolas Cage.