Pedro Pascal has revealed Nicolas Cage partially inspired his performance in Wonder Woman 1984. The upcoming sequel to 2017's Wonder Woman fast-forwards 66 years from the first movie, catching up with Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) as she works at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC, with Barbara Ann Minerva (Kristen Wiig). Those are some of the only concrete details that have been released so far; there are still a lot of unknowns, like how Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) comes back from the dead, how Barbara turns into the villain Cheetah, and what, exactly, Maxwell Lord (Pascal), a charismatically sleazy business mogul and media personality, is up to.
Lord hasn't received much screentime in any of the numerous Wonder Woman 1984 trailers, so his character is still something of a mystery. In the comics, Lord is primarily an antagonist to the Justice League; he tries to use his wealth and power to control them and, when that doesn't work, he tries to turn them against each other. Eventually, he develops telepathic mind control powers and Wonder Woman kills him on live television. In Wonder Woman 1984, Lord is known as the king of infomercials, promising to give people everything they could ever want. Director Patty Jenkins' version of Lord is a cross between Gordon Gekko, the fictional unscrupulous villain of 1987's Wall Street who notoriously proclaims "greed is good," and Tony Robbins, the all-too-real motivational speaker and self-help guru who started shilling his products and programs on infomercials in the late 1980s.
Screenwriters David Callaham, Geoff Johns, and Jenkins might have drawn inspiration from Gekko and Robbins while writing and crafting Lord's character, but Pascal channeled another figure to help bring Lord to life: Nicolas Cage. Pascal told Entertainment Weekly Cage inspired his performance in one specific scene, adding, "With Wonder Woman, [Gal Gadot and Kristen Wiig] are doing the action, baby, and I'm doing the schm-acting! I am hamming it up!"
Pascal didn't mention what happens in the Cage-inspired scene, or if he emulated a specific role of Cage's or went for a more general pastiche of his over-the-top performances. Lord's narcissism and pursuit of wealth do call to mind one of Cage's early roles, though: Peter Loew in 1989's Vampire's Kiss. In one of Cage's most unhinged performances, he embodies a literary agent with a work-hard, play-hard attitude who's slowly losing his mind, causing him to believe he's turning into a vampire. This leads to some of Cage's best overacting as he spews holier-than-thou vitriol that frequently does not make sense. Admittedly, the whole mentally ill vampire part is pretty far removed from Lord, but the excess and self-absorption of a particular kind of career-driven man that could only have existed in the 1980s is the same.
Pascal speaking openly about his influences is smart; instead of drawing comparisons to Cage's work, he's invited fans to view his performance as a loving homage. Early reactions to the film have been extremely positive, with a few praising Pascal in particular. And if Pascal hams it up as much as he claims in Wonder Woman 1984, it'll be fun to watch his performance, regardless of influences.
Source: Entertainment Weekly
