Posted on 2nd March 2023
A clip of actors Pedro Pascal and Nicolas Cage in a car in the action comedy film The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent has taken off as a popular TikTok meme, showing two people's opposite reactions to a scenario. Soundtracked with the song Make Your Own Kind of Music by Mama Cass Elliot, thousands of people have made their own edits – including big brands like Lionsgate UK, Specsavers and KitKat.
The scene in the film comes after the two characters – Nicolas, a fictionalised version of Cage, and Javi Gutierrez – have just taken LSD and are having different reactions to it.
The trend started mid-February, with videos like this one (3 million views) captioned "Taking my wife to see a movie that both of us already know is going to be terrible".
Other big videos include @gh0uliasux joking about telling her boyfriend "the same thing for the 20th time in the same day" (5 million views); @lovlils_25 contrasting how she hasn't studied for a test with a friend who stayed up all night revising (2.8 million views); and @lane8998 imagining coming home from work exhausted to see their excitable dog has eaten the entire couch (3.5 million views).
The film's distributor Lionsgate have done a video captioned "when I pitch a Pedro Pascal edit to my boss for the millionth time", which lots of people are finding relatable – Sky TV, for example, have left a comment saying they've "been there". Pedro Pascal is very popular on TikTok at the moment – with more than 4 billion views on the #pedropascal hashtag – after his appearances in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and The Last Of Us.
Specsavers jumped on the Pedro Pascal hype too in a video about their boss's reaction to the brand always commenting on Pedro Pascal edits:
This video from KitKat – who've rebranded their official TikTok account as "KitKat Gaming" – imagines their manager asking "is this TikTok about KitKats or games?". Someone in the Pedro Pascal fandom commented: "First I saw specsavers now kitkat, Pedro is taking over".
As well as taking the original clip from the film and adding captions, some TikTokers are using a greenscreen from @igreenscreenthings so they can insert their own backgrounds. Ryanair's version was about two friends sitting apart on the plane because they didn't purchase seat reservations.
Another approach has been people substituting Nicolas Cage for other film characters and people – like Ron Weasley from Harry Potter in this video, Harry Styles and Hayden Christensen – as well as mimicking the faces in the meme and not showing any of the original scene, like this video from the point of view of someone sharing lots of TikToks with a friend.
Spotting TikTok trends
The Pedro Pascal and Nicolas Cage meme is just one of the new trends quickly picked up and tracked by our Buzz service, which highlights some of the big talking points emerging on TikTok and social media every day.
Buzz from Shooglebox is used by journalists, creators and brand teams who need to spot and stay on top of the latest trends.
It includes a constantly updated box of cards showing at a glance and linking to viral videos, TikTok trends and other things going big on social media. Buzz customers also get regular updates alerting them to some of the things they might otherwise miss or discover late.
This stack of cards for the Pedro Pascal and Nicolas Cage meme gives you an idea of how Shooglebox works – and how it could help you go from spotting a trend right at the start to tracking its development over time.
If you're interested in signing up or finding out more about Buzz get in touch here.
