The Wicker Man (2006)

Some actors have personas that are larger than life. Nicolas Cage is one such actor. He came from the Coppola family, one that you might recognize for all the movies they directed. However, he wanted to distance himself from his given last name. He decided that the perfect way to do so would be to change that last name before pursuing his acting career. The name he chose was the same last name as one of his favourite comic book characters, Luke Cage. His stage name was Nicolas Cage and it’s what he used to start his career. The strange thing was that his career began with family projects. Three of his earlier movies were Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club, and Peggy Sue Got Married, all of which were directed by his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola.

It wasn’t the early work that lifted Nicolas Cage to the larger-than-life status that he currently has. Many of the traits that he brings to his performances were present throughout those early movies and the others he was in, though. The early movies weren’t outliers. But it wasn’t until more recently that people began to hold him in a higher esteem. He was well known by the time he had his turn of the century action movie run. That’s how he became an action star. People knew Nicolas Cage. They enjoyed Nicolas Cage. It would take a few more years for that stereotypical Nicolas Cage persona to solidify.

I have a theory about when this persona really took hold for audiences, and this theory is tied into the release of The Wicker Man. Before I get into that, though, I should explain what The Wicker Man was. Edward Malus (Nicolas Cage) was a police officer who witnessed the violent deaths of a mother and child after a car accident. In the aftermath, he received a letter from Willow (Kate Beahan), his ex-fiancée. She informed him that they had a child and the child had disappeared on an island off Washington state. Edward travelled to the island to find his missing child and discovered a cult-like population. The more he dug into the island and how the people lived, the darker things got.

Within Nicolas Cage’s filmography, The Wicker Man might not seem like the most outlandish movie. For the most part, it was a straight-forward mystery that devolved into horror. It came after there had already been a movie where he played multiple characters. It came before his career turned to direct-to-video. It was a middle-of-the-road Nicolas Cage movie, at least at that time, that was only notable for the final fifteen or so minutes when things went off the rails. Yet it became the turning point for Nicolas Cage, or how people would see him.

You see, there was something else that happened in 2006 that helps to build my theory. This other thing elevated Nicolas Cage beyond what he was already known as and pushed him into a new echelon of the public consciousness. Or, really, two other things. They kind of go hand in hand, though. The internet was growing in popularity. It had already surged through the AOL messenger days of the late 1990s and through the dot com bubble of the early 2000s. Yet, it still had a lot of growth to go. Much of that came with the public releases of both Facebook and YouTube.

Facebook might have been created in 2004, but that wasn’t when the public was able to use it. For nearly two years, it was a social network for American colleges. You’ve probably seen The Social Network. You understand the basic idea. In 2006, however, it was opened to anyone over the age of 13, no matter where they were. YouTube launched in 2004, and by 2006 was big enough to be purchased by Google. So you have the rise of the biggest social networking site and one of the biggest video streaming sites around the same time as the release of The Wicker Man. How does this relate to Nicolas Cage?

Well, with the rise of social media and streaming video came the rise of viral videos and memes. Sure, those things existed before. People who went to Newgrounds could see things like Numa Numa Guy or Star Wars Kid and get a chuckle. YouTube became such a household name, though, because people could put almost anything up there. Did you want to see someone’s day at the zoo? Did you need a quick tutorial on how to use an iPod? Did you want to watch a music video? YouTube could help. YouTube was also filled with movie and television clips that people enjoyed.

The Wicker Man hit at the time when YouTube was about to be bought out by Google. Some clips were bound to be uploaded on the site as people discovered the movie. More clips would be uploaded as people discovered the “Not the bees!” part in the Unrated home video cut of the movie. There were some wacky, you-need-to-see-this moments in the movie, and YouTube users wanted to put them on the site for quick reference. Go on YouTube now and search “Nic Cage Bees” and you’re bound to find multiple videos of that particular clip from The Wicker Man.

Putting a clip on YouTube wasn’t enough to have it go viral, though. That wasn’t a guarantee. I could put a video up on YouTube right now and, thanks to the algorithm hiding me, I’d get a couple views but that’s it. Part of what you need to do is share the video. What better way to do that is there than to blast it on social media. It’s the quickest and easiest way to get something to the people you know. We all have a group chat. We’ve all shared videos in a group chat. Some of them have probably been the same videos, even. The rise of Facebook allowed this.

It was this connectivity that bridged borders which propelled the clips from The Wicker Man into popularity. “Why is it burned?” became a thing. The bees became a thing. Nicolas Cage dressed as a bear became a thing. People who hadn’t seen the movie saw these clips, out of context, and concluded that the movie was ridiculous. They concluded that Nicolas Cage’s performance was ridiculous. It gave some people the idea to go back and look at previous Nicolas Cage movies to see if there was a pattern. There was. He always made strange choices in his performances, and they always made his movies a little more ridiculous than they needed to be. Movies like Vampire’s Kiss, Deadfall, and Never on Tuesday had more eyes on them because people sought out other wacky Nicolas Cage bits. It was all because The Wicker Man dropped at the perfect crossroads of streaming and social media.

Now, this is just a theory. It might be wrong. It most likely is. There are absolutely other factors that led to this idea that Nicolas Cage has become known for his crazy acting choices. Even in the height of his theatrical popularity, through the late 1990s and early 2000s, he was doing some odd things. People who saw Face/Off and Gone in 60 Seconds probably recognized a few of them. However, it had never been so easy to access the movies he was in. Blockbuster was as strong as ever. Redbox and Netflix were on the horizon. And YouTube would only grow. The access to Nicolas Cage output was only going to get easier.

That’s not the end of Nicolas Cage’s growth into a larger-than-life figure. It was only a turning point. It was a moment in time that opened people’s eyes to the fact that he was a special kind of actor. He had a unique quality to him. That unique quality would cross over to his real-life persona. He married Lisa Marie Presley in 2002 and divorced her later that year. He named his son Kal-El. He bought and sold multiple castles and the most haunted house in America. Nicolas Cage also ended up in debt that would cause him to take on whatever direct-to-video roles he could for most of the 2010s.

In more recent years, he paid off his debt and focused on making the types of movies he truly wants to. These newer roles have gained him critical acclaim once again, even allowing him to participate in an acting roundtable last year. That roundtable really brought out his larger-than-life personality as he told the story of filming a western and having his actor horse, Rain Man, try to kill him during most shots. It was a crazy moment in that roundtable that will live on in infamy the same way as screaming “How did it burn?” has been seared in people’s minds. And the reason we know so much about Nicolas Cage and his crazy performances is because The Wicker Man came out at exactly the right time.

I don’t have much more to say other than it’s nice to see people have turned around on Nicolas Cage. There was a time there, from around when The Wicker Man came out until, maybe, Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse, where people wrote him off. They appreciated his commitment but didn’t necessarily like his movies. He’s always been entertaining to watch, though. Even in the worst of movies, his choices and his presence would provide something good. I hope that continues for a long time.

Now let’s toss some notes in here:

• The Wicker Man marked the sixth Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance for Nicolas Cage. His other appearances were Outcast (week 163), Ghost Rider (week 260), Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (week 260), Never on Tuesday (week 387), and Vampire’s Kiss (week 517).
• Next up, we’ve got Matthew Walker. He has been in Blackwoods (week 115), Alone in the Dark (week 152), Futuresport (week 491), and The Wicker Man.
• Kendall Cross returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies in The Wicker Man, after popping up in Space Buddies (week 270) and The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story (week 337).
• Joyce and Jacqueline Robbins were in both The Wicker Man and Jingle All the Way 2 (week 160).
• Two actors from In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (week 220) were in The Wicker Man. They were Leelee Sobieski and Tania Saulnier.
• Diane Delano was in Surf School (week 42) and The Wicker Man.
• You might have noticed Frances Conroy in The Wicker Man. She was also in Catwoman (week 174).
• Aaron Eckhart had a small role in The Wicker Man. He was the star of I, Frankenstein (week 217).
• Do you recognize the name Anna Van Hooft? She was in The Marine 5: Battleground (week 237) and The Wicker Man.
• Monique Ganderton made a second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in The Wicker Man after previously showing up in American Ultra (week 261).
• In the theatrical version of The Wicker Man, James Franco was in the final scene. James Franco was also one of the stars of King Cobra (week 331).
• Michael Wiseman was in both The Wicker Man and Atlas Shrugged: Part III (week 490).
• Finally, The Wicker Man featured Simon Longmore, who was in Freddy Got Fingered (week 521).
• Have you seen The Wicker Man? What did you think? How do you feel about Nicolas Cage? Let me know in the comments.
• You can also leave a comment if you want to suggest a movie for me to watch for a future Sunday “Bad” Movies installment. I like suggestions.
• Check out Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram to keep up with the Sunday “Bad” Movies mayhem.
• Next week is a big week. It’s the tenth anniversary. I don’t have anything all that special planned for it. I wish I did, but I’ve been kind of short on time and, as I’m writing this, focus. I don’t know what it is. Anyway, I’ve got a rewatch of Clownado planned. So you’ll get that. I’ll see you then!