Superhero Movies: Ghost Rider

Lots of superhero movies news this morning.  Ghost Rider opens this weekend, and although likely to annoy old-time fans of the character (very much including myself) with its merging of the classic Johnny Blaze GR and the later Danny Ketch one, the visuals are as grabbing as you’d think (if a bit cartoony).  Of course, it will help if the film doesn’t totally suck.  Strike that, Daredevil (by the same director) didn’t totally suck, it was just lame.  Let’s hope for better this time around. 

Only a few pre-reviews are popping up, but somebody at AICN has given it a good write-up, for what that’s worth.   Better than a bad one, I suppose.  However, the script looks to be a mess if the commercials are to be believed, and Ghost Rider’s character (not necessarily Johnny Blaze’s ) has been totally changed with GR now being, supposedly, the Devil’s Bounty Hunter.  Which he never has been in the thirty years the character has been around.  Also, I’m not the biggest Nick Cage fan in the world, and we’ll have to see how his Elvis impersonation wears through an entire movie. 

Still, unless they’re just lying, the tracking numbers are supposed to be good (again, this is a *very* visual character, and the commercials are definitely selling that), Nick Cage supposedly loves the role, and this is already vague talk of a sequel.  I guess we’ll have a much better idea a week from now. 

Meanwhile, the story is already going around that Cage (a huge comic book fan, who actually took his acting name from my other favorite Marvel character, Luke Cage) has been trying to get a She-Hulk (!) movie up and running, starring Eva Mendes, his Ghost Rider co-star.  I’m not sure how serious he is about this, but if the Incredible Hulk movie does well next summer, well, weirder things have happened.  (And again, if Cage is serious about this, it will help if Ghost Rider does well at the box office.)

Meanwhile, Nick Cage is feuding a bit with Entertainment Weekly magazine, which apparently included the following blurb, apparently about Ghost Rider:  “We get a kick out of watching Academy Award winners being in movies they have no business being seen in.”  If they mean movies that just suck, like Halle Berry and Catwoman, all right.  However, the statement does sound a little snooty, and I must agree with Cage that the magazine is a tad shallow as well. 

When the actor was asked if pop culture hits like Star Wars will ever start being nominated for Best Picture again, he replied, “They deserve to, but the problem is you have people like Entertainment Weekly who don’t want to take the beret off their head and stop being so self important and pretentious about the little art film, which I love too, but open your mind.”  Again, I’m not the hugest Nick Cage fan, but he’s right that there’s nothing wrong with making art house fare like World Trade Center and also fun junk food stuff like Ghost Rider as well.  Hopefully, though, the junk food movies are good junk food movies.