Travolta/Cage Ep. 24 - Michael/The Rock (with Roxana Hadadi)

Welcome to The Rock! (And a Nora Ephron film too, but we know what you’re really here for.) This week on Travolta/Cage, we finally enter that much-vaunted era of Cage, the Schlocky Action Picture, with one of his greats — Michael Bay’s slick slice of ‘90s milporn cheese The Rock. One of the rare films to crystallize Bay’s particular brand of macho maximalism into something approaching a watchable action film, The Rock lets Cage out of his cage as the twitchy “chemical superfreak” Stanley Goodspeed, forced to team up with the dearly departed Sir Sean Connery to stop Ed Harris from extorting the CIA for money to send relief to veterans’ families. (Remind me why he’s the bad guy again?)

On the other side of the spectrum, we’ve got Michael, with Travolta in all his now-portly charm as an irreverent angel who comes to Earth to checks notes help two boring journalists find love? Sure Travolta’s fun, and he gets to dance again, but the rest is a cringeworthy slog through a coastal New Yorker’s vision of what the Midwest must be like. Still, Travolta in those overalls? Good Heavens!

Luckily, along with us on this long road trip is film critic and culture writer extraordinaire Roxana Hadadi (Pajiba, RogerEbert.com), who helps us break down the ineffable goofiness of Travolta’s charm and Bay’s oddly populist relationship with masculinity and the military. It’s us, we’re the Rocketman!