Director: Mark Steven Johnson
Writer: Mark Steven Johnson
I saw this when it first came out and it was horrible then and time has only made it worse. It really drives me nuts when movie like this suck and idiots say things like “well what did you expect? Its a Ghost Rider movie! It ain’t Shakespeare!” as if that is what I was expecting. After multiple good to great comic book movies it is possible to take a dopey comic book and make something good out it! From Batman to Spiderman to X-Men and now the six film Avengers series there have been plenty worthy adaptations of these characters. I hate when people just accept the scraps that they are given “Any bullshit Ghost Rider is better than none right?” NO! Not right! Garbage is garbage and this is garbage.
I was an avid comic book reader for about a decade and I never really read much Ghost Rider to be honest. It always felt like a character created of a specific time. Much like Silver Surfer invented to take advantage of the surfing fad, Ghost Rider feels like a character made to take advantage of Easy Rider type counter culture. More fad chasing less character. So it never really interested me. Like Venom for some reason because the character LOOKED cool it became a favorite and stuck around through the decades.
The basic premise isn’t that novel. Guy sells his soul to the devil, think its a good idea for some reason, it comes back to bite him in the ass. In this particular story Cage plays Johnny Blaze (Ghost Rider is on fire! Get it!) a daredevil motorcycle rider. Blaze sells his soul to the devil to save his ailing father from cancer only to lose him anyway. So Blaze becomes a sort of bounty hunter for the devil. Hey that isn’t that bad on a concept. But instead they have to make Ghost Rider a hero and not some cool anti-hero. They give him other bizarre and pointless villains to fight. One of them is like an air guy? So Ghost Rider uses his flaming chains as a Ribbon Dancer wand and sucks out the oxygen, thus vanquishing the baddie.
The movie starts off with a terrible voice over explaining all of the story, the sure sign of a shitty movie. Is this ever really an effective way to start a movie? Just tell people the story instead of actually showing it? You are a movie after all. It is a visual medium. Eva Mendes plays the love interest, a nosy reporter, and really who gives a shit. I actually forgot she was in it until I put this post up and saw her on the poster.
Sam Elliott plays another Ghost Rider except you don’t know it until the end. His whole character is to just tell Blaze what is what and for Blaze to never really ask him any questions and just accept everything. Elliott reveals himself to be a Ghost Rider as Blazes rides into the final battle. Elliott bursts into flames on a horse that is also on fire. Pretty cool! They ride through the desert for about ten seconds and then Elliott is like “well this is where I stop! I don’t think we have the budget for two of us running around!” tips his hat and that is that. What a fucking tease.
This movie is just horrible written, paced, and structured. The jokes SUCK and the plot is pointless and most of all boring.
Side Note! Cage’s fake abs in this are totally hilarious! Also IMDB says that it took THREE HOURS to apply his hair piece for this. That is really really great.
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