Travolta Got the Better Role (SPOILERS)

Travolta got the better role..which was only fitting because, at the time, he was the bigger star than Cage.

And paid a lot more, too -- which was interesting because about 4 years earlier, .he wasn't much of a big star anymore, despite the one-two blockbuster punch of Saturday Night Fever in 77 and Grease in 78.

Travolta wasn't much of a big star anymore UNTIL...Pulp Fiction(1994) brought him back -- and, brilliantly, he immediately started charging top superstar pay again and booked a ton of movies in a row just in case the superstardom rubbed off again. (Which it did -- and it has -- but he got about 20 more years of stardom before then.)

So Travolta comes into Face/Off a big star...with (at the time) a full-on movie star persona -- he's a BIG guy now, but still handsome...he can brood, he can swagger, he's got a smile to dazzle when he wants it to he's (as one critic said at the time) "on full voltage Travolta-ness."

And he gets the better role than Cage --- who by then had a Best Actor Oscar to his name("Leaving Las Vegas") and some action hits(The Rock and -- just before Face/Off by a month or so, "Con Air") ...but just doesn't have that "goes way back" 70's historic superstardom that Travolta had.

Why Travolta has the better role: (1) He starts the movie as the tragic hero(Nick Cage's character has accidentally killed his little boy). Here we have "brooding Travolta," sensitive Travolta, and -- a HERO versus the off-the-sharts Psycho Party Man that is Cage's villain. We are on Travolta's side against the evil Cage.

But - once the "big face switch" happens(and body switch for that matter, as a critic said "Cage has a 32 waist, Travolta's bustin' the big 40") -- Travolta gets to play the VILLAIN, for most of the movie, and it is the far better, more flashy, more FUN role to play.

But once the movie has played out to its quite spectacular and "real" boat chase climax and "Travolta the villain" is killed by "Cage the hero"....

....the movie switches Travolta back to his ORIGINAL character(the HERO) and gets to finish the movie as such...with Cage dead, his face and body discarded.

To re-cap:

ONE: Travolta starts the movie as the HERO -- but a restrained, angry, brooding, lost-his-child hero.

TWO: Travolta spends most of the movie thereafter as the VILLAIN -- swaggering, grinning, laughing in sadistic glee at the now-brooding CAGE ("You're just not having enough FUN!") invading the hero's family life, bedding the wife, tough loving the hot daughter, shooting up the place and getting a most deserved death only to ...

THREE: END the movie as...the HERO again. And no longer so sad and brooding, either - he has killed the man who killed his son...

Hero
Villain
Hero

The better role.