Ghost Rider

Rating:	★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Action & Adventure

Let me just say first of all that I’m a Ghost Rider fan. I used to collect “Ghost Rider” comics in the 90s, I even collected the spinoff series “Spirits of Vengeance” because I loved the image of a biker with a flaming skull. Though I was a fan of Danny Ketch as the Ghost Rider, I was very aware of Johnny Blaze’s story as the first man to ride the flaming motorcycle. When Nicolas Cage signed up to play Johnny Blaze in the current film version of “Ghost Rider”, I was kind of taken aback. After all, Cage is a huge comic book fan. He even owned copies of Action Comics #1 and Detective Comics #27 (Superman’s and Batman’s first appearances respectively) before his home was burglarized. Cage desperately wanted to play Superman on the big screen in the 90s, but things fell through. Thus, he settled for another popular choice: Ghost Rider.

The plot is pretty straightforward and faithful to the comics. Johnny Blaze sells his soul to the devil to save his father’s life. Of course, since he’s the devil, he still finds a way to screw Johnny over anyway. Barton Blaze dies and Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda) promises to collect on Johnny’s promise. Years later, Johnny has become a big time stuntman, performing death-defying leaps on his motorcycle. But when Mephisto comes calling, Johnny becomes the embodiment of the spirit of vengeance, the Ghost Rider!

Comics have become such a popular source material for movies in recent years that people can’t help but compare comic-related films. On the high end there’s the “Spider-Man” trilogy, the “X-Men” films, “Batman Begins”, and “Superman Returns”. On the low end there’s “Daredevil”, “Elektra”, and “Hulk”. So where does “Ghost Rider” fall on the spectrum? Just a few steps above the bottom end. Let me qualify this first by saying that we missed the first part of the film. Jo and I made it to Johnny’s first transformation. But the half of the movie that we did see was just rancid. I mean, the special effects were nice, and the Rider himself looked cool but the dialogue! How many levels of cheese can one put into a film?

What the hell was wrong with Marvel Films? I mean, “Daredevil” was such a bad film, why did they go back to the same director to handle another project? This guy can’t write coherent scripts without resorting to clichés and bad dialogue! I had to convince Jo that “Ghost Rider” wasn’t a badly written comic and hope that this film hasn’t completely turned her off comic-related movies in the future.

I almost forgot that Nic Cage once won an Oscar for “Leaving Las Vegas”. I mean, you don’t really have to act too much when you transform into a flaming skull, but Cage really went over the top during his transformation. And let’s not even bother with Eva Mendes. Her portrayal of Johnny’s girlfriend Roxanne Simpson made me want to set my head on fire. Pardon my French, but she can’t act for shit. I liked Mendes in “Hitch” and I’ve read interviews where she comes off as a genuinely nice and funny person, but she really needs to take acting classes if she wants to keep making movies!

Wes Bentley as Blackheart is supposed to be the son of Mephisto. He’s supposed to be menacing and scary, and every bad thing rolled into one. Sadly, he wasn’t any of these things. As cool as it was to see former biker icon Fonda as Mephisto, he still didn’t seem menacing or evil enough to want to see Ghost Rider take him down. Sam Elliott as the Caretaker could have easily traded places with Kris Kristofferson’s Whistler character in the “Blade” trilogy. That southern drawl was sometimes so inaudible that half the time he spoke, I was wondering if he had something in his mouth.

Don’t let the box office results fool you into buying “Ghost Rider” movie tickets. This is a really bad movie, and it would be an absolute waste of time and money for you to go to a moviehouse and sit through 1 and ½ hours of this drivel. Such a waste for such a great comic icon.