Nicolas Cage wants to play the Joker or Doctor Doom and should absolutely do so

Nicolas Cage, the greatest actor in the whole world, a man who treats every sentence like a three course meal he’s fighting with, wants to return to the world of superheroes.

Cage, a huge comics fan, played Ghost Rider in two not-amazing films in 2007 and 2012, but wants to be a baddie. He has two particular wrong’ns in mind, one in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and one in the DC Extended Universe.

He told JoBlo he’s got his eye on Doctor Doom and the Joker. “I always thought I’d make a great Joker,” he said “And I always thought that I would’ve been a good villain in one of the Marvel [movies] like Doctor Doom. But, [with] Doctor Doom you have to wear that mask. I thought the story leading up to Doctor Doom could’ve been interesting. At this point if I was to go back into the format it would probably have to be as a villain.”

Cage’s trademark is, of course, going very over the top. Shouting, screaming, bugging his eyes out, just being magnificent and insane. Just making all these very unusual acting decisions, decisions few other performers would think of. There’s a bit in Mom & Dad, that came out recently, where he’s drinking a beer and just darts his tongue out to lick the can. It’s very, very odd, and it’s brilliant, and he’s brilliant. 

Watch this clip from Vampire’s Kiss and look at all the decisions he’s making:

There’s no way the script contained nine “yep”s, or that many anguished facial expressions, or the clapping, or the strange pauses, or the pointing, or the odd way of pronouncing the sound made by the letter O. His hair does more acting in this one scene than the whole of Bruce Willis does in some entire films. 

He’s Nicolas Cage. Look at this picture of him just casually passing through an airport last month.

He’s not in character there. He’s just passing through an airport in a powder-blue faux-leather sheepskin-collared jacket, wearing one hat while carrying another, looking genuinely surprised that people have spotted him and want to take pictures. What a dude.

He’d be incredible as the Joker. “It would be the perfect one for me to go even more off the rails than I’ve ever done before and, y’know, it’d be fun” he said.

Unfortunately for Cage, there are loads of projects in the offing featuring Jared Leto’s interpretation of the character from Suicide Squad, so he might not get a chance to play the Clown Prince of Crime. He’d be so, so good though - think about his performance as Castor Troy in Face/Off (pre-transplant) - when he’s dancing about dressed as a priest he’s not a million miles away from an extremely horny version of the Joker.

As for Doctor Doom, who knows? The Fantastic Four seems to be a properly that just can’t translate to a non-bad film. There were two goofy ones with Chris Evans and Jessica Alba that entirely, entirely sucked, and Josh Trank’s version with Michael B. Jordan and Kate Mara didn’t seem to know what it was meant to be. Neither of the Doctor Dooms (Doctors Doom? Neither of the Doom Doctors?) have set the world alight, despite both Julian McMahon and Toby Kebbell being fine actors - he might just be one of those characters that works better on the page than the screen. That third dimension can be very unforgiving, you know?

The rights to the Fantastic Four are currently part of the same deal as Deadpool and the X-Men - they’re owned by Fox but Disney are in talks to acquire them, potentially to eventually include them all in the MCU. Will we ever see Nicolas Cage’s interpretation of a pre-incident Victor Von Doom? Possibly not - Von Doom has to be the same age as Mr Fantastic (the two characters met at college), and it’s unlikely that Disney would spend years reacquiring the rights to the Fantastic Four and then make a movie starring actors in their fifties.

Nicolas Cage is not cursed to never inhabit a superhero universe again though - he’s set to voice Superman (a character Cage loves so much he named his son Kal-El after his Kryptonian name) in the upcoming Teen Titans Go! To The Movies.

Look at this guy. Hero.

(Images: Getty)