10 Actors Given A Second Chance In Superhero Franchises

The Failure(s) - Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider – Ghost Rider Series (2007-2011)

The Second Chance - Big Daddy – Kick-Ass (2010)

Nicolas Cage is widely considered to be a bad actor, but that isn’t really fair. True, he has been in far more terrible films than classics, a balance not helped by the bargain bin fodder that he has recently been ‘starring’ in out of financial necessity, but his Oscar nominated performances in Leaving Las Vegas (for which he took home the award) and Adaptation exemplify that he can be a terrific performer in the right circumstances.

Cage is a huge comic fan, having taken his stage name from Marvel’s Luke Cage and named his son Kal-El, the Kryptonian name of Superman, who he was lined up to play in Superman Lives, a reboot helmed by Tim Burton that was ultimately shelved. He would finally play the character (if only in voice) in last year’s Teen Titans Go! To The Movies.

He finally got his chance to play a superhero in 2007’s Ghost Rider, which sits alongside Elektra and Catwoman in a collection of truly awful 2000s comic adaptations. An inexplicable (and worse) sequel followed in 2011, but in between the two Cage put in a fantastic performance in Kick-Ass, the massively entertaining take on Mark Millar’s series.

The role of the renegade Big Daddy let Cage play heroic and hammy in equal fashion, but sadly marks the last time in was in a live action film worth watching.