Ghost Rider - 2007

"Ghost Rider" - 2007
Dir. by Mark Steven Johnson - 1 hr. 50 min.

Official Trailer (Espanol)

by Clayton Hollifield

2007 was a simpler time. Superhero movies hadn't yet steamrolled everything in sight. Also, you could still shop at a Toys 'R Us. And, you know, do other stuff too, like shaking people's hands or coughing in public. Nicolas Cage was known for making batty movies with even battier acting choices yet, but that was still pre-meme supremacy era. The odds that any given superhero movie was going to be worthwhile was an uneven bet. Hollywood didn't know what to do with this material, outside of individuals who got it right. But studios seemed more willing to take a shot at these kinds of movies.

Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) is a second-generation circus motorcycle stunt rider, part of his father's act. Burton Blaze (Brett Cullen) is his father, a stern man with a dangling cigarette and rockin' sideburns. After another night of getting his ass chewed out (not a euphemism - people didn't eat ass in 2007, at least not as a point of public pride), Johnny discovers some concerning news about his father. In classic fashion, a very fancy man, Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda) shows up and offers young Mr. Blaze a deal; his father's health for Johnny's soul. Johnny takes Meph up on the offer, and it turns out to be not exactly what he expected it to be. So Johnny bails super-hard, leaving his life (and girlfriend) behind.

Life ain't nothing but bikes and jelly beans

There's a lot to say about this movie, which seems weird, because there's not a lot to this movie. So let's go with the good first. The cast for Ghost Rider is pretty good. Nic Cage is bonkers, and I had no confidence anyone would get this right as a movie, so it at least has his stash of insane line readings to fall back on. But past that there's Donal Logue as Johnny Blaze's buddy, Eva Mendes as the female-shaped object, Sam Elliott doing Undertaker-style promos in a graveyard, Rebel Wilson making the most of her one minute on screen, and Peter Fonda cashing in some motorcycle-movie credit here. Everything interesting in this film comes from actors hamming things up. One problem for me is that the villain, Blackheart (Wes Bentley) was eye-rollingly bad throughout the film, in pretty much every way. If you sat down and thought about what's the worst version of the villain from Hell trope, please believe that Wes Bentley topped that and took home a trophy for how bad his character was. I don't know if it was him, the writing, or an unholy combination of the two, but when the villain just comes off like a try-hard dork, then the hero vs. villain aspect that's supposed to drive the film is going to fail.

The biggest problems with this film is that you can see the Hollywood fingerprints all over it. Part of that is that they had not yet figured out how to consistently nail superhero stories. In the Avengers arc, yes there were romantic elements present, but that's not the thrust of any of the stories. They're oddly asexual in that manner (aside maybe from the first Thor and Natalie Portman's delightful agogness); they're more about rising to the occasion, heroism, duty, honor, and all that stuff. In Ghost Rider, one of the main plot points is Johnny Blaze continually bailing on Roxanne (Eva Mendes), and that part of the story is given more attention than the whole save-the-world-from-Mephistopheles thing. Superhero stories are about looking good enough to get laid, but not about the actual laying. This one falls back on having the basic romance being the thrust, instead of just having Ghost Rider looking badass and scaring the crap out of hoods. There is also the fact that there's not another memorable female character present, which isn't make or break, but is part of the problem here. Roxanne exists not out of her own agency, but basically as something for Blaze to win over.  

But the biggest issue is a problem that we film-viewers are going to have to increasingly deal with: old digital effects look cheesy. I'm not going to hammer on that point, but watching a 13 year old movie that relies on effects is going to have to compete with all the advances that digital effects have made in that time span. I will give some credit; I've been re-reading the 90's Ghost Rider comics lately, and this movie does a good job of replicating the look and feel of those comics. Unfortunately, the people who would be stoked about that would also be annoyed that the main character of the movie is Johnny Blaze, since it was Danny Ketch who was the star of that particular comic series. Comic fans are funny like that.

Chug!  Chug!  Chug!

So look, Ghost Rider was a bad movie even when it came out. I think the main reason this one exists is because Cage was a Ghost Rider fan, and he got to get paid to cosplay, and why would you turn that down? But it's not like there are any great Ghost Rider comics to have drawn upon for inspiration, it's just a character that looks awesome, but no one has really managed to do much with that. Time hasn't done this movie any favors, but the cast is absolutely to my taste. So it wasn't painful to rewatch. It's also pretty unlikely I'll be rewatching it again soon; literally everyone I liked in this movie has other movies that are way better.

1.5/5 - Streaming (HD)

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance - 2012

"Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance" - 2012
Dir. by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor - 1 hr. 35 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

First off, if you're in any way annoyed/offended by Marvel Comics' treatment of Ghost Rider co-creator Gary Friedrich, feel free to direct your attention/dollars to this benefit t-shirt.  I intend to, myself.

Onto the movie, which isn't very good.  You could probably tell that from the trailer, but let me reinforce that point.  There are concrete reasons for why this isn't a good movie, some of which are entirely unrelated to the source material.  But, since I brought it up, let's address the source material.  One thing has been proven in regards to comic book adaptations: if there isn't already a definitive story to refer to, Hollywood is largely unable to create one.  It's the dividing line that ought to be used when determining whether or not to make a movie based on any given character.  The biggies (and the most creatively successful franchises) like Batman, Spider-Man, or the X-Men all have numerous famous stories that you could pick up and use as the foundation for a movie.  The unsuccessful ones (and I'm counting the ones that have multiple attempts), like the Incredible Hulk, Punisher, or Ghost Rider movies, for the most part don't have any stories that you'd hand to someone as an ideal representation of those characters.  Good stories, sure, but Batman has at least half a dozen stories that you'd need to read before you had a good grasp of the character.  Speaking as someone who's read more than a few Ghost Rider comics, the essential Ghost Rider story either doesn't yet exist, or there just isn't one.

And over these multiple attempts that just never click with characters like Ghost Rider, the vacuum that exists where a definitive story ought to live has never been filled in adequately by any Hollywood screenwriter.  Ghost Rider, as a character, is pretty much a cool visual and spooky Devil nonsense.  When you hand this half-formed mess to filmmakers like Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, whose resume includes directing the "Crank" films and "Gamer," as well as writing the hot garbage of "Jonah Hex," it's highly unlikely that they're going to build anything meaningful on such unstable ground.  Yes, there's fire and explosions everywhere, but they also take Johnny Blaze from a teetotaler in the previous movie (remember his infamous martini glass of jelly beans) to an alcoholic pill-popper in an effort to lend some PG-13 grittiness to the proceedings.

I feel like I've adequately expressed why and how this movie isn't very good, and I don't think there's any reason to keep beating that dead horse.  Instead, I'll take a gleeful turn, and let you know that pretty much every bit of joy that there is to be had in this film is due to Nicolas Cage's fantastic over-acting.  Most people would be demoralized to have to produce such an awful film (and really, if there's anything about this film that I've overlooked that would suggest that the goal was anything other than producing a hot turd in a vain attempt to turn a quick buck, I beg you to let me know what it is), but it seems to energize Cage instead.  I respect his commitment to go down enjoying himself, and I honestly wish that I was capable of mustering that much energy in a lost cause.  There are a couple of line-readings that are absolutely fantastic when they have no business being anything more than drek (particularly his, "Yeah.  Black, French, alcoholic priest, kind of a dick.  Why, do you know him?" when asked about another character, which rivals some of Julianne Moore's best stylized dialogue deliveries in "The Big Lebowski").  If you're going to see this movie, Cage is the sole reason to do so.

There's not much reason to delve into the plot (typical "save the kid from the evil religious boogeyman" nonsense), or much of anything else.  When things weren't getting shot or blown up, "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance" was boring.  Boring as Hell, you might even say.  That was at least half of the film, and even at it's modest run time, there was still way too much of the trademark Neveldine/Taylor video-game inspired "reach the checkpoint" storytelling going on, and not nearly enough actual character development.  I mean, if you're going to make a whole movie about a biker with a flaming head having to save some kid from the Devil, at least try to make me care about any of the characters.  Start with one, and work from there.  If a filmmaker can't manage that, at least blow some more shit up.

1.5 / 5 - Theatre