A new Nicolas Cage movie is dropping this week, and it’s the broadest theatrical release for a Cage movie since the long-ago, pre-Covid era. In The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, the actor plays…Nicolas Cage in a bit of meta-style shenaniganery. The early reviews have been pretty good, which is good, because it looks like a signature Cage performance. Which is to say, fucking wild.

Over the past few years, Cage has experienced something of a career and reputation resurgence. It’s not that he ever disappeared as an in-demand actor, but movies like Color Out of Space, Mandy, and Prisoners of the Ghostland (alongside a more retrained performance in Pig) positioned him as the elder statesman of over-the-top acting. We’ve seen Cage running wild onscreen for decades, to greater and lesser effect, but it’s become increasingly clear that, in the right movie, his unconventional, fearless, and utterly shameless acting choices can approach transcendence.

Where other performers value restraint or concern themselves with looking cool (or simply not unhinged), Cage isn’t afraid to go big, favoring a style that borders on the operatic. Or the completely coked-out. When that’s called for, there’s no living actor who can do it better, and he’s given several groundbreaking (and award-winning) performances. When it’s not called for, or when the film he’s in can’t support that level of theatricality? Well…he’s still wildly entertaining, often serving as the only watchable part of a bad movie. Whether the films surrounding them are great, bad, or mediocre, these are some of Cage’s wildest performances, as judged on the Nicholas Cage Intensity Scale.