The 1990s was a great time for movies. The decade delivered some truly iconic movies across just about every genre you can imagine and saw filmmakers do just about anything. It was a decade where limits were pushed, both in terms of the use of CGI and technology in filmmaking, as well as narratively. It was a decade of big creative risks, but it came with big rewards as it’s a decade that gave us films like Pulp Fiction, Jurassic Park, and many, many more. But the 1990s was also a decade of sci-fi, sometimes bordering on the ridiculous, and now one of the wildest and most over the top sci-fi blockbusters of the era is about to leave Netflix.
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Set to depart Netflix on January 19th is Face/Off. The film, released in 1997, stars Nicholas Cage and John Travolta and as a terrorist and an FBI agent who undergo experimental surgery to quite literally swap faces as well as voices and appearances in order for the agent to obtain the location of a bomb. It goes about as well as you’d expect but the film was wildly popular — and a sequel is supposedly on the way.
Face/Off Was a Massive Hit — But The Sequel Seems to Be Elusive
While the general idea of Face/Off sounds insane, it’s actually a very good movie — and it was well received by both fans and critics alike. When the film was first released, it received a great deal of praise, particularly in how the film operates with a role reversal style between Travolta and Cage who are, ultimately, playing not just characters, but playing each other playing those characters. Director John Woo was also praised for his work in the film and marks the first major film where he was given a lot of creative control. The movie has since been considered one of Woo’s best films. The film was also a huge box office success, making nearly $250 million at the global box office on a budget of just around $80 million.
The film’s success interestingly didn’t immediately lead to a sequel, as one might expect when a film does so well. Instead, it wasn’t until 2019 when Paramount announced that there were plans to remake Face/Off, though that announcement indicated that the film would feature a new cast. Then, in 2021 it was reported that Godzilla Vs Kong filmmaker Adam Wingard would helm and that the new film would be a sequel rather than a remake. There really hasn’t been any additional updates instead. For now, fans wanting to enjoy the identity-swapping sci-fi action that is said to have inspired Internal Affairs which, in turn, inspired Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, will just have to settle for streaming it on Netflix before it’s gone.
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Official art by Bastien Lecouffe-Deharme -
Image courtesy of Tor Books/Macmillan -
A photo of the Retrovolt Arcade taken in 2017, showing several classic arcade cabinets and stools. -
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