MovieChat Forums > Face/Off (1997) Discussion > What if the switch happened the other wa...

What if the switch happened the other way around?

posted 8 years ago by jp3183
6 replies | jump to latest

Let's say that Travolta started out as Castor while Cage plays Archer at the beginning of the film. Do you think it would've been better or worse than what we've seen in this movie?

My estimation is that the scenes where the villain is pretending to be the hero (played by Cage) would be less subtle, while the scenes w/ the hero pretending to be the villain (played by Travolta) would be less theatrical. And that may cause a significant disparity in the portrayals.

Then again, both actors were working closely together to make sure that their performances matched. So it's possible that we still would've gotten close to the same improvisations in the entire movie.

[–] McFly_2015 8 years ago

Supposedly Cage does not play villaneous roles. I thought he was great in the first half hour or so while he was playing the bad guy. Where it may have suffered is cage playing good Archer. Travolta made that character a boring, by the book insuffrable bore. It's hard to picture Cage playing that type of character, say what you will about him but he sprinkles fun into all his characters. As you said Cage is a theatrical actor so it would have been a stretch to have him play the reserved Archer.

[–] BoSoxRules 8 years ago

I agree, Cage would have been awful as the real Sean Archer. Travolta needed to play that role.

[–] foebane72 8 years ago

I like Cage as Archer, simply because Troy is too gurny all the time.

Why are you here if you haven't seen the movie yet?

[–] jp3183 8 years ago

Travolta's Archer didn't come off as a bore to me, but I see what you're saying. Interestingly enough, I remember Siskel and Ebert claiming that Cage's character in Con Air was boring. Though I don't agree, that was actually still more reserved than I'm used to from him.

[–] jp3183 8 years ago

I've always wondered how they chose which of the two leading roles to play. Did they actually test it out to see who's better at being each character? It's such a unique situation for actors.

[–] McFly_2015 8 years ago

I've always wondered how they chose which of the two leading roles to play. Did they actually test it out to see who's better at being each character? It's such a unique situation for actors.

it seemed like the idea from the start was to have the actors essentially play each other at the start and then revert into their natural roles. There was even an idea to make one of the characters left-handed but that was dropped. I don’t recall how many villaneous roles Travolta had played by that stage of his career but he did play a bad guy in John Woo’s previous film Broken Arrow so that may be why he chose him for the Archer role.

Cage was better suited for the good guy pretending to be bad and going partially insane.