13 Films That Really Needed Nicolas Cage

By Jack Pooley /

5. Batman Forever

The Role: Harvey Dent aka Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones) Why Nic Cage Would Have Improved It: Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever is no classic, though it is for the most part a criminally underrated Batman movie. It's rough around the edges, sure, and one of the elements that often catches a lot of flack is Tommy Lee Jones' absurd performance as Two-Face. While Jim Carrey is memorably manic as The Riddler, Jones' performance is a mostly forgettable collision of ridiculous mugging and bad make-up. What was supposed to be a serious character was essentially made into a cartoonish joke. While Cage wouldn't be able to do much about the crappy make-up, we suspect that given his self-confessed comic book fandom, he'd probably have shown the character a little more respect and delivered a more reigned-in, less hammy performance. Sure, there's only so much one can do against the script and Schumacher's campy style, but there was still room to emphasise the terror of Two-Face rather than turn him into a flat-out comedy act as Jones did. If Cage's roles in films like Vampire's Kiss and Face/Off prove one thing, it's that he can be really freaking creepy when he wants to be.