Nicolas Cage Says He Doesn't Have A Lot Of Screentime In Renfield
I'm of two minds about "Renfield" after watching the film's trailer. On the one hand, the idea of dropping Dracula and his long-suffering familiar in a modern world where the toxic, unequal nature of their relationship is clear as day to anyone sounds like a great premise for a horror comedy. Nicholas Hoult has found his niche in playing characters like Renfield, e.g. people who are both kind of terrible, if not outright deplorable, yet oddly engaging, as seen in his work on films like "The Favourite" and "The Menu" (not to mention his ongoing turn as the lovable a-hole Peter III on "The Great").
On the other hand, the "Renfield" trailer is disconcertingly heavy on action scenes for a movie with a setup that seems to lend itself more to a character-driven vampire comedy in the vein (darn it, that joke's way too easy) of "What We Do in the Shadows," and having Renfield gain superpowers from eating bugs is certainly a choice. Still, director Chris McKay showed he can balance action with humor while getting to the heart of what makes a pop cultural icon tick with "The LEGO Batman Movie," so there's fair reason to believe he can do it again with "Renfield." That and it's possible, perhaps even likely, the trailer was edited to make it appear as though McKay's film features a whole lot more fighting than it really does.
Equally uncertain is Nicolas Cage's actual screen time as Count Vlad. The movie's trailer is mostly one long buildup to the reveal of the Oscar winner and meme generator as old Drac-y, yet the actor himself is already cautioning people: "Renfield" is very much Hoult's film and not his.
'It's really Nick Hoult's movie'
When you hire Nicolas Cage to play one of the most famous monsters in movie history, you know most people are going to assume he's the film's true star, no matter what it's called. So it has gone with "Renfield," a movie that was overshadowed by Cage's casting as Bram Stoker's legendary blood-sucker from the moment it was announced. Thankfully, the actor is taking the time to clarify his role in the film and adjust expectations, as he did in an interview with Collider:
"The movie's really not about me, Dracula rather, I don't have a lot of screen time. It's really Nick Hoult's movie, and it's about Renfield. I didn't have the time, like the two-hour narrative to really dig deep into Dracula's pathos per se. It's not that. But I did have enough screen time to be able to try to develop a pop-art style to the character that hopefully will be a nice contribution to the other performers that have done it, that have had their take on this legendary character in both literature and cinema."
Circling back to "The LEGO Batman Movie," one of the many things Chris McKay did so well in that film is create a version of Bat's arch-nemesis, the Joker, who is multi-faceted and unlike any other onscreen iteration of the super-villain, yet never pulls attention away from the Caped Crusader and his own personal journey. Ideally, in between scenes of Dracula feasting on his victims and Renfield deploying his insect-powered fisticuffs (even Wednesday Addams knows kung fu now, it's just the world we live in), the director will succeed in doing something similar with Cage's creature of the night. Gotta start 2023 off hopeful, right?
"Renfield" hits theaters on April 7, 2023.