Remember when Nicolas Cage actually chose decent acting roles? Yeah, me neither. Sure, he’s gotten himself a few gems over the years, but I would never describe him as a smart career planner. Anyway, next up for Cage is Knowing, directed by Alex Proyas (Dark City and I, Robot) and written by, well, a ton of people, including Ryne Douglas Pearson, Juliet Snowden, Stiles White, Stuart Hazeldine, and Richard Kelley (who was attached to direct at one point). Knowing follows the exploits of Cage as a professor, who stumbles upon the supposedly cryptic contents of an elementary school classes’ time capsule from fifty years ago. Among the contents is a paper containing nothing but a bunch of numbers, and Cage, in all his professorial glory, decodes it and realizes that it’s the dates, death tolls, and coordinates of every major disaster in the last fifty years. Woah! Now it’s a race against time as the last few entries point to an imminent disaster involving Cage and his family.

If the premise sounds stupid, that’s because it is, but if we know anything about Cage’s choice in action roles, it might be fun (maybe a little? A teeny bit?). Check out the first extended clip below and see what you think. I admit, I wasn’t really turned on by this clip, and really had nothing but questions and a dumbfounded look on my face after watching it. Why go to all the trouble of running down into the Subway to seemingly choose a woman at random to tell to get off? Why, after the train begins to go crazy, do we still see Cage standing and staring out the front and not holding onto anything, as if the train is not running off the tracks and going apeshit? Why didn’t the producers insist on another one of those awesome hairstyles Cage is known for? I guess we’ll never know.

But while you ponder it, be sure to check out this extended clip from Knowing, due out on March 20^th.