To Ground His ‘Arcadian’ Role, the High-Flying Nicolas Cage Channeled His Late Father
Director Benjamin Brewer, Jaeden Martell, Maxwell Jenkins, and Sadie Soverall also share fun stories about what it was like working with Cage.
THE BIG PICTURE
Nicolas Cage discusses his interest in blending family drama & sci-fi genres, influenced by his own family dynamics – a tribute to his upbringing.Arcadian’s plot focuses on a family’s survival in a dystopian world, led by Paul (Cage), as they fight alien beings targeting humanity.
The cast discusses working with Cage, VFX processes, and favorite TV shows, highlighting the challenges and creative processes behind the movie.
From big studio blockbusters to independent films worthy of praise in the festival circuits, one thing is certain, Nicolas Cage has found his niche and acts on what truly moves him.
He is an actor who is boundless when it comes to genres, and at this year’s South by Southwest, his latest is a dystopian horror titled Arcadian. The movie reunites Cage with The Trust (2016) director Benjamin Brewer and co-stars It’s (2017) Jaeden Martell and Maxwell Jenkins (Lost in Space).
This sci-fi feature takes place in the near future, when an alien species is determined to cleanse the earth of humans. It’s suspected that this eradication is the consequence of the damage we’ve caused to the planet, and it’s made every nightfall a fight for survival.
In the end days, Paul (Cage) is raising his two sons, Thomas (Jenkins) and Joseph (Martell), to live vigilantly and resourcefully, cautious by day and ready to fight when the sun goes down. When Thomas is late from a visit with his crush (Sadie Soverall) at a nearby farm, Paul must venture out to track his son down, leaving his other son home alone to defend himself and the home.
After the world premiere at SXSW 2024, the Arcadian cast, director, and screenwriter Mike Nilon stopped by Collider’s media studio. Brewer, Cage, Martell, Soverall, and Jenkins sat down with Collider’s Steve Weintraub.
During the interview, they talked about the challenges of making the film, what it was like for the cast to work with Cage, what they were excited to shoot, the democratization of VFX, and their favorite TV shows.
Nicolas Cage Speaks on Favorite Genres and His Interest in Making Arcadian
During the interview, Cage explained his keen interest in making the film since it would combine two of his favorite genres and also reflect the dynamics of his family during his formative years.
It’s very simple really. Two of my favorite genres, independently spirited family drama, you know, grew up watching East of Eden, Kazan, Ordinary People, Redford, and then science fiction horror in that category, in this case particularly specifically science fiction.
If you mash those two and the…the dynamic of the family, which is a father and two boys, which is largely what my family dynamic was, because sadly my mother couldn’t be around as much as we would have liked her to have been around. So my father did all the heavy lifting, so I wanted to tell a story about that family dynamic and then mash it up with science fiction and see what we could come up with, and I’m happy with these results.
Check out what they had to say in the video above, or you can read the conversation below.
COLLIDER: Hey everyone, this is Steve Weintraub with Collider, and I’m here in our South by Southwest studio with the awesome folks behind Arcadian. How are you guys doing?
NICOLAS CAGE: Great. Good to be back with you, Steve.
Listen, sir, and I’ve said this to you off camera, and I’ll say it on camera, any time I’m sitting across from you is a great day.
NICOLAS CAGE: I appreciate that. I always think we have a good conversation.
No one watching this interview will have seen the movie yet, so how have you been describing the film to friends and family?
BENJAMIN BREWER: It is a movie about a family trying to survive after the end of the world in a remote farmhouse. Nic plays Paul, a man who’s raising two sons and trying to teach them about the world in a way that they could maybe rebuild it, but at night they are threatened by an evil that is trying to eradicate the rest of the people that have survived. So it’s a coming-of-age story, using that kind of as the metaphor for what it means to grow up.
