The legendary actor who can act with his eyes is Angelica Nicholas Cage, and the sharp electric eyes and figure-eight eyebrows that force the two pairs of hair and fierce costumes can make you up for a second, but also hide irresistible melancholy. Meg Ryan, who co-starred with him in "City of Angels," has publicly admitted to being electrified by Uncle Cage: his eyes can see into the depths of my soul. Unfortunately, because this pair of eyes repeatedly "look away", once Nicolas Cage directly from the Oscar emperor to the king of bad films + box office poison.
It is said that Uncle Cage was exposed to scandals such as debt and bankruptcy and suspected domestic violence because of excessive profligacy and improper financial management, so Cage had to frequently pick up films in order to pay off his accounts, and even as long as he had money, he could not pick any role. Among the films he took over, there were only 12 Rotten Tomatoes freshness ratings above 60%, most of which struggled with freshness of about 20%, and at one point "how to save Nicolas Cage" became a problem that no one in Hollywood could solve. Since 2007, he has become the king of bad movies because of films such as "Witch Season", "Raging Chariot" and "Illegal Invasion", and the "Mysterious Code" with a Douban score of 6.6 is also one of them. However, radish cabbage has its own love, although this film is classified as a "bad film" by many Douban netizens, but it is not a conscience for Meowth, who is not a die-hard fan of Uncle Cage.
"Bad Film King" also loses superb acting skills
Director Alex Proyas' first feature film was the independent sci-fi film Soul of the Air, The Sprite of the Clouds, which was nominated for best costume design and best graphic design at the 1988 Australian Film Institute Awards. He then directed the sci-fi thriller "The Crow", starring Lee Kwok-ho, the son of martial arts superstar Bruce Lee, but unfortunately Lee was shot in an accident on the set just 8 days after the film was completed, but fortunately, the film received box office success after the director and producers decided to adapt part of the plot and completed it with the help of computer special effects. Since then, the self-written and self-directed black science fiction film "Soul Shifting City" has won praise from critics despite its dismal box office, and won many awards such as the best science fiction film of the American Science Fiction Film Academy to become a classic in the history of science fiction films, and later films such as "The Matrix" have been affected by it to a certain extent.
However, the director began to gradually change his style after 2002, first with the release of a comedy film "Garage Rock", which depicted the growth of a young Sydney rock band but had a mediocre response, and then launched a classic short story adapted from science fiction master Asimov and starred Hollywood actor Will Smith in the same name "I, Robot", which achieved huge box office success. Judging from the arrangement of this film, the director obviously wants to come out of the traditional American heroic ending, and has a spirit of innovation that combines multiple elements. However, due to the addition of religious overtones and the distribution of themes too evenly, many viewers who have questions about "what is this film" do not buy it. Compared with the intermittent plot, the special effects of the limited number of large and small disaster scenes in the movie are breathtaking in terms of details and the whole, which is a big highlight of the film.
The male protagonist who plays the astronomy professor at MIT is the nephew of the great director Francis Coppola and the cousin of Sophia Coppola, the most original and promising young female director in the United States, Nicolas Cage. His career can be roughly divided into three stages, from the 80s to the mid-90s, he fully demonstrated his outstanding acting skills and took over a bunch of art films that can be written into film history, culminating in the 68th Oscars in 1996 with a small production film that cost only 3.5 million US dollars, "Leaving Las Vegas".
Since then, he has relied on blockbusters such as "Face Change", "Prison in the Air", "Double Males" to highlight the charm of Hollywood industry, and began to transform into commercial films, and with the momentum of dominating the summer box office, he has become another action box office star in Hollywood, I believe most of us also know him from these films. Although the film was produced in the stage when he became the "king of bad films", the moving scene when he said goodbye to his beloved son also highlighted Cage's still exquisite acting skills.
The heroine is played by rose Byrne , a talented and 21-year-old irish and Scottish pedigree who starred in blockbuster blockbusters such as "Star Wars Prequel II: Attack of the Clones" and "Troy" as a supporting role, and attracted enough attention from the audience and critics in the TV series "Rift" because of a pair of lawyers played by veteran movie star Glenn Cross. However, in this film, due to the character's natural "eyes-blocking", it was stamped with the label of "not only did not use it as a vase but also helped everywhere".
A story caused by mysterious number symbols
It seems that since the first "National Treasure", Nicholas Cage has formed an indissoluble relationship with the cracking of the "mysterious symbol", and several sequels have been made in succession, not to mention, this film is another story caused by the mysterious number symbol. But the difference is that this film is no longer funny entertainment but takes a warm route, which even integrates many veins such as scientific philosophy, religious belief, and secular affection and love. The film opens in 1959 with a game of "traveling through time", in which a group of students paint imaginary worlds to commemorate the newly established elementary school in Massachusetts. But one of the mysterious girls did not draw like the others, but wrote down a long page of numbers.
In the blink of an eye, the picture goes back 50 years to 2009, when the son of astrophysics professor Nicholas Cage just got the note with the "mysterious code" written on it and secretly brought it home during the school celebration. Cage, who had no intention of wetting the note because he recalled his wife's drunkenness, found that the coded numbers predicted the date, number of deaths, and coordinates of every major disaster that had occurred over the past 50 years, but in the end there was a set of numbers that had not been deciphered. Just when Cage, who wanted to prevent the accident of the letter EE in the back, did not get the trust of his union friends, the note predicted that 81 people would be stuck in the goblin airship the next day and could not get on and off the goblin airship.
And the successive catastrophes were accurately predicted by the string of numbers to begin to re-examine his "opportunistic" worldview, and finally after learning that the elementary school girl of fifty years ago had died, he successfully contacted his equally prescient daughter Diana and granddaughter Abie Welland, and with their help deciphered the last set of numbers of the prophecy code: everyone will die in the disaster of the solar flare explosion.
The following story follows the usual path of Hollywood disaster movies, and the male protagonist who learns the truth begins to take the heroine and her daughter and her son to a race against time, trying to find a way to avoid disaster through the clues left by the mysterious little girl. In the process, the male protagonist's son has been whispering from an alien with an expressionless face in a black suit and an image shaped like Thunderbolt Babe. However, when everyone speculates that the monster has been run away or the resentment is lifted according to the usual tricks of the director in the traditional disaster film, and the male Cage plays the male protagonist's aura to save the world, the film "ruthlessly" unfolds another ending that has not been seen before.
The earth was finally destroyed in the mess of the "doomsday disaster", and the male protagonist who had always believed that the future of the universe was not determined by the current state and that this scientific theory existed because of the opportunity to exist, also reconciled with the priest father who completely subverted his faith, and hugged his family before the destruction of the earth. The male protagonist's son, who has been receiving mysterious signals from aliens, is not threatened with kidnapping, but is only a "lucky one" who has been selected by the aliens to follow them to rebuild a homeland. At the end of the film, when the earth returns to the original ecological society where modern civilization no longer exists after various flash floods and tsunamis, the male son and the female protagonist daughter released by the aliens run to a new tree of eternity in clothes like Adam and Eve.
The anti-convention in the routine is still hanging on
To tell the truth, in fact, the quality of the film depends on what the people watching the film want to see from it. For example, everyone liked to watch Stephen Chow's funny films more than a decade ago, and when they got the "King of Comedy", they naturally wanted to see the empty and senseless laughter in it, and once they found that there was none, they would inevitably be disappointed. Since the birth of the film, the major films have combined many forms of destruction of the earth, such as wars, viruses, floods, electromagnetic fields, solar storms, etc., but most of the earth's demise will eventually be due to the efforts of a heroic figure with individuals, or other bizarre reasons. Combined with the theme of this film, if the earth does not perish for some reason, it will really weaken its shock, fortunately, the earth is finally destroyed, and Meowth is also relieved in his heart.
It is undeniable that many plots in this film still follow the routine of the personal hero + emotional line of Hollywood disaster movies, that is, the male and female protagonists can always have a difficult task of "saving the world", and in the process of completion, they will also be resolved with their families who have previously had misunderstandings and conflicts in various disaster tests, so as to interpret the indisputable fact that "disasters can re-realize the warmth of their families".
In this film, the male protagonist, who is a proponent of materialism, has a bad relationship with his father, who is a priest, but after the accidental death of his wife and the string of numbers prove to be accurate prophecy, he also begins to re-examine his worldview and admit that there are some unexplained "accidents". At the same time, he began to struggle with his ability but finally failed to save his wife from the fate of death, and gradually repented of the act that led to the breakup of the father-son relationship, and finally gave up the idea of hiding and drove home with his family to meet the end of life, and the wounds in the father's and son's hearts healed at this moment.
Of course, in addition to these inherent disaster film routines, the additions and changes in the plot and some bridges of this film still make people feel satisfied. For example, the discordant complex setting of aliens who have always invaded the earthlings or invaded aliens like "Avatar" has been rewritten, and the man in black who acts as an alien in this film directly undertakes the mission of "saving mankind" cannot help but feel bright. And under the extremely strong religious color of this film and the theme of the collision of religion and science in it, the setting of regenerating the destroyed people with the help of aliens is not at all abrupt. The final remembrance of Professor Cage's son and daughter, and the ending of Adam and Eve in the new Garden of Eden, undoubtedly symbolizes the new hope of the concept of rebirth, and even if there is a disaster, the endless continuation of human life will not stop.
Anyway, this time the earth is not destroyed in vain, at least we have obtained an inherently self-evident truth in the collision of science and religion: what is the use of knowing the end of the world? It's all fate, and we have no right to change anything...