A Quantitative Guide to Nicolas Cage
This week, statistical news site FiveThirtyEight published the most ambitious analysis of an actor’s career in the Hollywood Taxonomy series , which looks at five types of Nicolas Cage films . Until now, the site has broken down the creativity of each actor into three or four types. But Nicolas Cage’s work is so well known everywhere thatCollegeHumor sketched his disaffected agent . His performances vary so much that the Community has spent an entire Abed plot on it, culminating in the performance below. So FiveThirtyEight said to hell with it, we do five types .
The Hollywood Taxonomy formula works like this: The writer Walt Hickey charts the actor’s films by box office and critical rating. He then draws blobs around various groups of data points and substantiates them with qualitative analysis while discussing the actor’s career, often using the actor’s own terms from interviews.
The best parts of the series are devoted to actors with especially eclectic creativity or a career arc with clear “eras”: Adam Sandler , Dwayne Johnson , Scarlett Johansson . So Nicolas Cage, star of The Wicker Man and The Adaptation , is his finest hour . For example, Hickey explores the theory that Cage has made so many bad films intended for live video because he lost a lot of money due to the real estate market crash.
The series is a good place to learn about the acting “canon”, although so far the series only mentions names that are known to everyone. There’s also a special issue claiming John Goodman works best as a supporting actor , a combo set about Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, and M. Knight Shyamalan’s premature career reveal , written before The Visit got 65% ratings. on Rotten. Tomatoes. Hmm, obviously FiveThirtyEight can’t always predict the winner.
Five Types of Nicolas Cage Films | Five thirty eight