ENTERING THE CAGE-IVERSE

Nic Cage Lets Out the Longest F-Bomb Ever in ‘Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent’ Trailer

The meta action-comedy movie stars Pedro Pascal, Tiffany Haddish, Neil Patrick Harris, and Nicolas Cage as Nicolas Cage.

Nicolas Cage is taking on his most ambitious role to date in his next film, in which he plays... Nicolas Cage. The National Treasure actor was cast as himself in Lionsgate’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, a meta action-comedy that sees Cage strapped for cash and desperately agreeing to attend a rich fan’s birthday party for an appearance fee of $1 million.  

The red band trailer for this probably unnecessary but nonetheless deeply amusing film dropped on Wednesday, and it shows Cage jumping off a cliff in a bathrobe, toting his gold guns from Face/Off, and dropping $20,000 on a bad wax figure of himself.

He arrives by speedboat at the oceanside compound of his millionaire groupie, Javi (Pedro Pascal), and the two become fast friends, despite the actor’s initial resistance to the unconventional gig. At first, it seems like The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent might turn into the world’s weirdest buddy comedy, as Cage and Pascal gallivant around Mallorca bonding over their shared love of, well, Nicolas Cage.

But things take a turn when Tiffany Haddish arrives on the scene as a CIA agent investigating Javi, who’s apparently “one of the most ruthless men on the face of this planet.” She enlists Cage to help with their mission, but first, she goes full-on fangirl and snaps a selfie. “Have you seen Croods 2?” she asks her colleague, played by her The Afterparty co-star Ike Barinholtz. “I’m 44 years old, why the fuck would I see Croods 2?” Barinholtz replies in exasperation. “I’ve seen Face/Off and Con Air.”

The pairing of songs that serve as a soundtrack for the trailer properly encompasses the chaos and general WTFness of the film, transitioning from The Turtles’ “Happy Together” to “Kill This Love” by the K-pop girl group BLACKPINK.

As the nearly three-minute clip crescendos into car chases and machine gun fire, a seemingly younger version of Cage screams, “I’m Nic fuuuuuucking Cage!” emphasis on the prolonged “fucking,” which is essentially the logline for the movie.

From director Tom Gormican, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent also stars Neil Patrick Harris, Jacob Scipio, Sharon Horgan, and Alessandra Mastronardi. It lands in theaters on April 22.

Jordan Julian

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