One of the great things—out of many—about the career/personality/decades-long public outsider art piece of Nicolas Cage is that he clearly has a certain self-awareness about who he is. Or to put it another way: Cage’s magnificent weirdness is clearly thoughtful and intentional; he frequently gives off the vibe of a man who acts like Nic Cage not because he has to, but because being Nic Cage is incredibly fun.
Take as evidence the above B-roll footage of the recording sessions for this month’s Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, in which Cage plays over-the-top vigilante Spider-Man: Noir. Actually, there’s a lot of great material on display in the footage—uploaded by Comicbook.com—from Jake Johnson griping his way through his role as an aging Peter Parker, to John Mulaney’s wide-eyed delight at playing a wise-cracking superhero pig. But it’s Cage who turns out to be the true Spider-Ham, throwing himself with totally predictable passion into goofy faux-serious lines like, “Wherever I go, the wind follows. And the wind? It smells like rain.”
Beautiful.