He’s done some terrible movies in his time (this is one of them), but I still love Nicolas Cage, especially when he breaks out that trademark Cage Rage of his. Cage calls this performing technique “mega-acting”, and I think Urban Dictionary has probably got the best definition of just what that means:
Mega-acting is a term used in place of “over-acting” when meant as a compliment. “Over-acting” means you’ve gone too far, you have too large an amount of acting, like overfilling a glass and it spills all over the place and you have to clean it up. Mega-acting doesn’t spill because it’s a deliberate stylistic choice. It may be absurd, cartoonish, exaggerated, operatic, but not an accident. You didn’t overfill the glass. You purposely used a huge stein.
You can see a lot of mega-acting at work in these deleted scenes from Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, but the best part is definitely the scene that starts at 1:42, because instead of a flaming skull, Ghost Rider’s head just looks like Nic Cage wearing a Tron hat and black and white face paint. It’s AMAZING.