Nic Cage Had To Steal A Role From Arnold Schwarzenegger To Become An Action Hero

Nicolas Cage was not always known as an action star, and Michael Bay turned him into one.

By Nathan Kamal
| Published 1 hour ago

Nicolas Cage has performed in every genre conceivable, from romantic comedies like Moonstruck and It Could Happen to You to bizarre thrillers like Zandalee and Bringing Out the Dead to family adventures like National Treasure and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that this scion of the Coppola family and Nouveau Shamanic thespian transformed himself into a Hollywood action star.

The movie that made Cage a full-blown action hero is 1996’s The Rock, and it’s a must-see for fans of things blowing up.

Out Actioning The Action King By Going Full Nerd

We now know Nicolas Cage as an actor who can do just about anything, including roles that maybe no one should ever do (we’re looking at you, G-Force). Prior to The Rock, Cage was known for his intense, borderline-unhinged acting in dramas and offbeat art films.

He starred in a Coen Brothers quirky baby-heist comedy, a romantic movie in which he competed with James Caan for the heart of Sarah Jessica Parker, and that movie where he actually ate a bug, even though nobody asked him to. But he was not an action star.

The role Nicolas Cage plays in The Rock was reportedly originally intended for Arnold Schwarzenegger. That shows what the film thought it was going to be. In its completed form, it is difficult to imagine anyone but Cage playing the role of Dr. Stanley Goodspeed, chemical weapons specialist and avowed Beatlemaniac.

Where it would have been impossible for Schwarzenegger to be anything other than an action star from the start of the film, we actually see Nicolas Cage start as a hapless nerd (albeit one with a gorgeous girlfriend and an improbably huge apartment filled with guitars). His character arc is that he ends the movie as an action hero. 

Welcome To The Rock

The Rock was director Michael Bay’s second feature film and the crystallization of the style that would make him the dominant action filmmaker of the decade. It begins with Brigadier General Francis Hummel (Ed Harris) asking forgiveness at the grave of his wife. Then it swiftly shifts to him and a group of rogue Marines (played by an unbelievable row of character actors, including David Morse, John C. McGinley, Tony Todd, and Bokeem Woodbine) stealing chemical-toxin armed rockets.

They make their way to the former prison island of Alcatraz (aka “The Rock”), taking a tourist group hostage and demanding the U.S. Government pay them $100 million to be distributed to the families of soldiers who died on a black ops mission and are thus not honored for their sacrifices. Nicolas Cage is recruited as the FBI’s top chemical weapons expert, and then Sean Connery is brought in as SAS Captain John Patrick Mason, the only man to ever escape from Alcatraz. 

Michael Bay moves the film along with breathtaking efficiency. It takes longer to sum up the movie’s premise and stakes than it does for the film to present them.

Characters are instantly and thoroughly established from the beginning. Nicolas Cage is quirky and unused to action (as evidenced by his panicking, but rising to the occasion in the FBI Headquarters chemical mishap early on).

Ed Harris is soulfully presented as a man of iron will and determination, who, nevertheless, is deeply pained by becoming a traitor to his nation, even for the best of reasons. Sean Connery is introduced courtesy of his legendary (and director-intimidating) status as an action icon, pulled into the light after 30 years of off-the-books imprisonment, with long white hair, and shortly thereafter breaking the chains with a bent quarter. 

By the end of The Rock, Nicolas Cage has transformed from someone who can barely remember his FBI firearms training and who throws up in front of William Forsythe to taking on black-ops Marines. It would be the beginning of his run of high-octane action films like Con Air, Gone in 60 Seconds, and Face/Off.

Michael Bay’s Best Movie Had Help From Sorkin And Tarantino

Until the recent release of Ambulance, The Rock was Michael Bay’s highest-scoring movie on Rotten Tomatoes and was included in the prestigious Criterion Collection as a representative of “cinema at its finest.” It is a deceptively nuanced film in which the “villains,” led by Ed Harris, are far more sympathetic than the FBI handlers controlling Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery.

Reportedly, both Aaron Sorkin and Quentin Tarantino contributed uncredited work to the script, and it shows in both its hyper-verbosity and surprising sense of humor.