Saw Ghost Rider this weekend, and having walked in with low expectations (which, to be fair, I bring to almost all movies now), I was pretty satisfied. It definitely wasn’t great, but the incredibly cool visual impact of the character made up for a lot. I’d say it was a three star movie, grading on a curve.
Because this is a movie, the Ghost Rider origin has been simplified, and because this is a modern movie, it has been made a bit dumber. Johnny Blaze is a young stuntrider who does a circus act with his father. Pop has cancer, and the Devil (Peter Fonda, apparently cast in this motorcycle heavy movie because he starred in Easy Rider) offers Johnny the normal contract. In this version, Johnny is basically bum rushed and tricked into signing away his soul, were as in the comic he was much more the author of the situation. Nuance makes movies bad, I guess.
Being the Devil, Johnny’s Pop is indeed cured of his cancer, but dies during a motorcycle stunt. In another difference from the comic, Johnny doesn’t immediately become the Ghost Rider, but is informed by the Devil that one day he’ll be collecting on the favor. Sort of like the Godfather. Johnny leaves town, abandoning his young girlfriend Roxanne in the process.
Years later Johnny has turned into Nick Cage. (I’m not a fan of his generally, and his performance here is one of his worst. He affects an irritating Elvis voice throughout and actually plays Johnny as so slow that I actually wondered if he was meant to be semi-retarded.) He’s a world famous motorcycle stunt guy now, although he’s insecure because when he defies death he doesn’t know if his skills are saving him, or if the Devil is working to keep him alive. By the way, I found the scenes of his big stunts really boring, since you know they involve CGI trickery. I’d have rather seen something less ridiculous but actually done in the real world.
So Roxanne comes back into Johnny’s life, and the Devil shows up, and makes Blaze the Ghost Rider, the latest of a line of Devil’s bounty hunters. The Ghost Rider is a flaming skeleton in motorcycle leathers who, I must admit, looked pretty nifty, even when he seemed cartoony. Blaze turns into the Ghost Rider at night when Evil is present (a mixture of two his non-contiguous transformation triggers), and is sent to hunt down a powerful demon out to take over the world blah blah. This later stuff was pretty run of the mill.
Made by the guy who directed Daredevil, Ghost Rider is unsurprisingly absolutely no better than it needed to be. The villains are lame and (especially the henchmen) too easily defeated. The script is mediocre at best, as are the performances—except for old pro Sam Elliott—and so on. Particularly irksome were some really stupid, literally wince-inducing attempts at humor, like when Elliott calls Blaze “bonehead.” Because as the Ghost Rider he has a skull for a head. Get it?
This film was predicated on the idea that the Ghost Rider was cool enough visually to make up for all that, and luckily this proved to be the case. However, the character’s best comic book bits, including his ability to ride his hellfire bike up vertical surfaces, are covered in this movie. So I don’t know what they plan to do if they make a sequel.
For those who don’t follow comic books, the Ghost Rider had two separate incarnations, and the film basically melds the two characters and their slightly varied powers together. Here the Ghost Rider actually dresses like the second, non-Johnny Blaze GR, which I kind of understood. However, the thing is that we do see Blaze performing stunts, and I have no idea why they couldn’t have at least tossed the fans a bone and have him wears his traditional Johnny Blaze leathers early in the movie. The Ghost Rider doesn’t really adopt his signature look until about half way through the movie, so there was plenty of opportunity to do this, and it would have been a nice touch.
