Quiz any random person on the street about Nicolas Cage’s impressive body of work and they’ll be able to give you their favorite Cageist moment from his repertoire. Is it Wicker Man Cage, his head enveloped in a metal cage, screaming about the bees, oh god the bees? Or National Treasure Cage, plotting to steal the Declaration of Independence just because it makes so much sense? Or perhaps it’s Ghost Rider Cage, the one who is literally on fire for most of the movie?
Whatever the preferred flavor of Cage Rage, there’s a guaranteed new addition to be added to the list of stellar performances. Enter Left Behind, the adaptation of the Christian apocalypse-themed books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. If you haven’t heard of these books, then it’s already too late for you; the enormously popular series boasts over 19 books detailing the End of Days for those wicked booze-swillin,’ sex-havin,’ not church-attendin’ sons of guns who dare not take God seriously. The real Christians and the pure and innocent are ascended into Heaven while the heathens are – wait for it – left behind on Earth to suffer as much as possible. The books follow the survivors of the rapture as they battle environmental catastrophe, political and economic crisis and worldwide epidemics the likes of which have never been seen.
Ours is a vengeful and unforgiving God.
The books were already adapted into a film trilogy starring the one and only True Christian Actor of our hearts and minds, Kirk Cameron, but somehow that project seemed to slip under Hollywood’s radar. Cameron could not quite bring in the publicity or star power needed to take Left Behind to its true potential, a movie where an abortion clinic worker complains because all the unborn children have been raptured to Heaven and now she’s out of a job. Rats!
Now, the task has fallen on Nicolas Cage’s shoulders to readapt the adaptation, alongside Ashley Tisdale and Chad Michael Murray, apparently. One might question why Cage would sign up for this project, but at this point, two things are clear: he owes the IRS a lot of money and was presumably offered a paycheck, and he’s keen for any type of movie that involves screaming while dodging things that are on fire. The man knows what he likes, and we know that we like Nicolas Cage.
At this point, there’s no official release date for the Vic Armstrong-directed (he’s a stuntman) film, but the good Lord has blessed us with a brief but wondrous clip that puts the Cage front and center. It should be a simple, throwaway clip, but the amount of facial work that the man is doing in just this sitdown with his wife(?) is a certified national treasure in itself. It’s also worth a watch just for the beautiful, outrageous line “But hey, if she’s gonna run off with another man, why not Jesus?”
Check it out below, and catch the full movie sometime in the future when it’s being Rocky Horror-ed.