Nicolas Cage as The Joker could be a masterstroke – or a major mistake

The very good, or very bad actor, depending on your tastes, has said that he would like to play Batman’s nemesis. Will the studios take the bait?

If there were ever a Marmite actor, dividing opinion equally between those who believe he is a maverick genius and those who see him as a giant ham, it is Nicolas Cage. When the part is right, as it was for Cage’s Oscar-winning role as a suicidal alcoholic in Mike Figgis’s Leaving Las Vegas, or as an unhinged cop in Werner Herzog’s mesmeric Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, he is one of the most watchable actors on the planet. When Cage goes too far out on a limb – one need hardly mention his infamous “The bees!” scene in Neil LaBute’s horrendous 2006 remake of The Wicker Man – it can feel as if he is not only appearing in a completely different movie from those around him, but perhaps inhabiting a parallel acting reality.

At least Cage tries things – his decision to channel Adam West as vigilante Big Daddy in the comic book flick Kick-Ass was inspired, and helped mark that movie out from the crowd. The problem is that the things Cage tries are as likely to go wrong as right, and once they have done so there seems to be no off switch. That should perhaps lead us to view with caution the actor’s suggestion this week that he might make a decent Joker in an upcoming Batman movie.

“I mean, I think my comic book days are kind of … I’m on to other things,” Cage, a noted comic-book fan whose son is named Kal-El after Superman’s birth name, told JoBlo. “But I always thought I’d make a great Joker and I always thought that I would’ve been a good villain in one of the Marvel [movies] like Doctor Doom ... At this point if I was to go back into the format it would probably have to be as a villain.”

With apologies to the Fantastic Four super villain, it’s Cage’s suggestion that he might enjoy getting under the clown prince of Gotham’s skin that has grabbed most of the attention online. There appears to be little in the way of an opening right now at DC, with Jared Leto still inhabiting Batman’s nemesis for the DC Extended Universe movies and Joaquin Phoenix reportedly lined up to take the role in Todd Phillips’s upcoming Martin Scorsese-inspired Joker origin movie. But if DC studio Warner Bros is prepared to undermine Leto by casting another actor in a completely different take on the cackling supervillain, it should hardly be a stretch for studio execs to greenlight a third production.

It’s not difficult to see why Cage is drawn to The Joker. For it ought, in theory, to be impossible to overact while playing the role. Not for a moment, we imagine, did Mark Hamill rein himself in while portraying the villain in the wonderful 90s TV show Batman: The Animated Series. Jack Nicholson hardly kept his powder dry for that pantomime turn in Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) and Heath Ledger put everything on the table in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008).

And yet there is a fear that a Cage Joker might sending the movie he appeared in into a ravine. The actor seems too risky a proposition to replace Leto in the DCEU movies, where an unwieldy performance might further derail a cinematic universe. His Doctor Doom would be intriguing, however, and there is space to try for a definitive take on the Fantastic Four’s nemesis. Fargo and Legion’s Noah Hawley is said to be working on an origins story for the supervillain – though it’s unclear whether that production is likely to survive the character’s imminent move from Fox to Disney.

It’s hard to imagine the big cheeses at Marvel casting Cage, given the actor’s propensity for eccentric decision-making and the MCU’s episodic nature. Cage as Doom might well become a highlight of the cinematic universe. But it’s just as likely that the star of the Ghost Rider movies would do something characteristically brave and daft at the same time, like deciding to play the part in unwieldy homage to Bela Lugosi (in tribute to Doom’s eastern European origins).

That’s something I’m sure we’d all pay good money to see – once. But the novelty might well wear off after another 13 episodes.

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