What is it about this guy that makes him look so goofy?
Love him or hate him, it’s safe to say that Nic Cage is a decidedly uneven actor, or at least that the movies he’s in are all over the map. The same filmography that has critically acclaimed character pieces like Adaptation and Leaving Las Vegas also has disposable mindless fare like Ghost Rider and National Treasure II: Book of Gratuitous Sequels.
Critics have been debating the relative merits of Cage for years, but the recent discovery of the “Nic Cage as Everyone” blog, which gleefully toes the line between tribute and mockery, has stirred the fires of Cage-troversy once again.
Words cannot describe how strange this is.
So are Nic Cage movies crap, or what? When we say his movies are all over the place, just how all over the place are they?
Thankfully, we have our friends IMDB, Excel, and Standard Deviation* to answer that question for us. That’s right, it’s time to analyze the Quanta of Cage.
First, our methodology: let’s take the movies of Nicolas Cage (everything that he’s starred in, excluding animated movies and anything released in 2009), analyze those movies’ IMDB ratings, and compare them to other leading men from his era.
It’s not perfect, but it’s what we’ve got. So let’s crunch some numbers, shall we?
*Standard disclaimer applies: I Am Not A Statistician (IANAS). If I made any mistakes, feel free to give me the “Well, actually” in the comments.
From 1983’s Valley Girl to 2008’s Bangkok Dangerous, Nic Cage has starred in 45 movies. Not surprisingly, there’s a mix of great and not-so-great movies in this bunch:
This raw data by itself doesn’t tell us much, but we do see some patterns of hits intermingled with misses (look at the roller coast from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin to Adaptation to Sonny).
Next step: let’s take a look at the distribution of movies by rating:
This is a handy way of seeing where most of Nic Cage’s movies’ IMDB scores reside (in the 6 to 6.5 range). But enough of this warmup; let’s get to the most important stats:
Average: 6.16
Median: 6.2
Standard Deviation of Cage: 0.99
So what do this fancy “Standard Deviation of Cage” tell us about the wild fluctuations of quality in Nic Cage’s movie career? Simply put, it means that the average distance between Nic Cage movie ratings from the average of 6.16 is 0.99 in either direction.
Is that a lot? Well, let’s think about it.
6.16 is average for Nic Cage. That’s It Could Happen to You/8MM territory. Respectable, but nothing to write home about.
At the lower end of the standard deviation: 6.16-0.99 = 5.17. Ghost Rider territory. At the upper end of the standard deviation: 6.16 + 0.99 = 7.15. The Rock territory. True stinkers like The Wicker Man and gems like Adaptation are both well outside of this range.
All fine and good, but all of these stats by themselves don’t tell us much. What we really need to do is compare them to Nic Cage’s contemporaries.
I chose Tom Cruise’s career to compare with Nic Cage for a couple of reasons: 1) he’s roughly the same age as Nic Cage and 2) the average person would probably guess that Tom Cruise’s movie output, though not without fault, is certainly more consistently higher quality than that of the erratic Cage.
Let’s put that assumption to the test. From 1983’s Risky Business to 2008’s Valkyrie, Tom Cruise starred in 26 movies…
…whose distribution seems at first glance to suggest a higher movie quality than Nic Cage:
And sure enough, the vital stats bear this out:
Average: 6.85
Median: 6.9
Standard Deviation of Cruise: 0.78
So not only do Tom Cruise’s movies have higher average and median ratings, the “Standard Deviation of Cruise” is slightly smaller than the “Standard Deviation of Cage.” The assumption, then, that Cruise makes better movies more consistently than Nic Cage, seems to have some quantitative evidence.
But clearly it can’t be this simple.
Recently, Tom Hanks may be the victim of a horrible Dan Brown conspiracy that’s lured him into crap like The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, but for the most part, his reputation in terms of his movie career is pretty solid.
But just like Cage and Cruise, Hanks, too, has had his fair share of peaks and valleys:
In fact, his career has an even larger share of stinkers than both Cage and Cruise. Look at the low end of this distribution and compare it to the other two actors:
Seven movies in the 5.5 to 6 range? Ouch.
And now, the vital stats:
Average: 6.58
Median: 6.45
Standard Deviation of Hanks: 1.03
In other words, Hanks is in between Cage and Cruise in terms of movie quality, but worse than both Cage and Cruise in terms of consistency as measured by standard deviation. Not by a lot, but just barely.
So what does this all mean?
4. Conclusion
The real conclusion I draw from this is that people don’t respect Nic Cage because he looks goofy.
Seriously. I mean, look at this guy:
Compare the reputations of Cruise, Hanks, and Cage. The first two are rarely subject to the same level of incredulity that Cage receives (at least in terms of movie career… Cruise’s personal life is another thing altogether). Yet all three actors, like virtually all major movie stars, have a wide collection of stinkers, gems, and just plain average movies under their belt.
The statistics suggest that although, the careers of Cruise and Hanks overall have fared a little bit better than that of Cage, from a consistency point of view, there’s not that much different between the three.
But Cruise and Hanks have more traditional leading man good looks. Nic Cage, on the other hand, looks goofy.
Let me put it this way: I don’t see any “Tom Cruise as Everyone” or “Tom Hanks as Everyone” blogs floating out there in around the internet.
So much for the Standard Deviation of Cage. I think for my next piece, I need to take a closer look at the correlation between eyebrow size and chances of being cast in Ghost Rider movies.