Ghost Rider (Mark Steven Johnson, 2007)
Daniel Swensen
Things to note about Ghost Rider:
Fast-forward twenty years. Johnny Blaze is now a successful stuntman, performing ever more dangerous feats because he has a death wish and his past haunts him, and so on. In a vague effort to make Blaze look like less of a cookie-cutter “tortured hero,” the movie shies away from the obvious alcohol-fueled tirades, instead showing Johnny eating M&Ms from martini glasses and giggling frantically at television shows with monkeys in them. Apparently, this is supposed to be some sort of characterization, but I’m only guessing.All is not well, however, because a group of leather-wearing B-movie demons have arrived to find some scroll that’s hidden in a cemetary that will unleash a global apocalypse… again. You’d think, with apocalypse-triggering knick-knacks more common than Cracker Jacks, some enterprising demon would have had a lucky break by now. I’ve literally lost count of the number of movies I’ve seen with this plot, but never mind. The head demon, Blackheart (Wes Bentley) is a trenchcoat-wearing ninny who looks like a mildly threatening Hal Sparks, and his cohorts — sporting a vaguely elemental theme — all look like they should be getting ripped on Mad Dog 20-20 and hitching to the Dokken concert. These grim scions of the underworld show off their terrifying bad-assery by ruthlessly dispatching unarmed waitresses and overweight gas station attendants in the middle of nowhere while searching for the sacred widget.
Meanwhile, Johnny Blaze has discovered that the Devil has “called in” his contract, and that every night when the sun goes down, he is now doomed to become a gruesome flaming skeleton with a bad-ass motorcycle, dispensing dark vigilante justice by frying the living shit out of random pickpockets and causing a lot of property damage. By day, he must hide this fact from his star-crossed love, Roxanne (Eva Mendes), while enduring cryptic, useless aphorisms from the wizened Caretaker (Sam Elliott) about his newfound powers.
It should be noted, by the way, that Mendes’ character Roxanne sets a new low for female love interests in crappy comic-book adaptations. Ostensibly a plucky cub reporter (comic book movies can never seem to get enough of those), she turns out to be an insecure, cloying waif who spends most of her time sitting in restaurants waiting for Johnny to show up, drinking like a fish and asking the waiter if he thinks she’s pretty. I know comic book movies have never been super-feminist, but come on, fellas. It’s the twenty-first century here.
While most of Ghost Rider is a predictable bore, a few scattered bits are genuinely amusing. The sequence where Ghost Rider supernaturally tricks out his motorcycle to blasting heavy metal music is like an Iron Maiden fan’s wet dream made flesh. Ghost Rider’s voice is also unintentionally hilarious, sounding like nothing so much as Nic Cage in dire need of a Clorets. Also particularly amusing are the evil supernatural henchmen, who are by far the most worthless comic book heavies I’ve ever seen. They show up, mildly inconvenience Ghost Rider for about ten seconds apiece, and then scream and weep for mercy as they are brutally dispatched. Not a one of them so much as even slows him down. Also, after each “battle,” Ghost Rider grimly winds his supernatural bike chain around himself and poses dramatically. This would be more convincing if besting any one of these demonic schmucks had taken more effort than putting an English muffin into the toaster.
At any rate, the movie lumbers to its inevitable conclusion, the highlight of which is, as previously mentioned, Sam Elliott thundering across the desert on a flaming skeleton horse. All other considerations aside, the awesomeness of this moment is not to be denied; unfortunately, it’s both completely irrelevant to the plot and lasts about forty-five seconds. Frankly, I found myself frequently wishing the movie had been about the Caretaker instead — ninety minutes of Sam Elliott leaning on his shovel and winking by day, then turning into a terrifying specter at nightfall and immolating people who park in the handicap zones. Now that’s a movie.
The climax of Ghost Rider comes when Frost is possessed by the blood god La Magra, who then goes on a rampage — oh, no, wait, that’s the ending to 1998’s Blade. I got confused because the ending to Ghost Rider is pretty much exactly the same. Finding the mystical super-scroll, the villain makes much noise about an “apocalypse” and the “Hell on earth,” where “Hell on earth” is apparently a metaphor for some CGI ghosts flying around and the bad guy becoming slightly tougher for five minutes. If Wes Bentley had only said “fuck” a few more times, like Stephen Dorf did in Blade, the two endings would have so indistinguishable as to be legally actionable. (But don’t worry — the final scene isn’t entirely ripped off from Blade. If you watch closely, you can find the part where it also rips off The Crow.) There then follows a heartfelt denoument where Cage points awkwardly into the camera and swears on his very soul that he’ll be back for the sequel.
But Is It Fun?
Overall, I found Ghost Rider cliched and boring (even by comic-book movie standards), with disposable, irritating villains, a shoddy script made up of the mediocre parts of other comic-book scripts, and an ending that literally had nothing new to offer. As a movie, it’s roughly akin to those old direct-to-video Full Moon Features epics like Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys and Robot Jox than it is a mainstream film. If you standards are very low, you might want to give Ghost Rider a shot. Otherwise, there are more amusing ways to waste your time.
Not recommended.
August 23rd, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Wait.
What are you saying about Robot Jox?
August 23rd, 2007 at 5:40 pm
wow. my friend said it was abyssmal, but thanks for the hilarious review. at least it was good for that. what a shame it made so much money. i can only hope the sequel is a miserable failure.
btw, did you mean full moon productions”?
August 23rd, 2007 at 5:51 pm
I was thinking more like a Sci-Fi Channel movie with a budget but you’ve nailed it with the Full Moon analogy. The thing that’s particularly irksome about that only good scene in the film is its explanation.”I only could turn into the Ghost Rider one last time.” and so I chose to use that to ride across the prairie and do nothing.I was so bored and annoyed by that point that it made me frustrated that they finally had a chance to do something cool and just threw it away.There’s also that bizarre scene with the shirtless Nic Cage where it looks like his body either has airbushed abs or they’re computer generated.Just a million bizarre decisions that are neither interesting or fun.
August 23rd, 2007 at 6:26 pm
christopher, I did indeed mean Full Moon. Damn it. Thanks for the correction.
Mike, I totally agree about the wasted moment with Elliott. I really would have rather seen a movie about him. I didn’t notice the shirtless CGI, but that doesn’t surprise me at all.
August 23rd, 2007 at 11:15 pm
A lovely review of a film I didn’t have the courage to watch. I took one look at the first teaser, and thought to myself, “Self, check your memory: isn’t Ghost Rider the one comic character with less dramatic potential than the Hulk?”
It always seems to hurt a little when talented people get involved with a dismal film.
August 24th, 2007 at 3:42 am
In seriousness, thanks for taking the hit, Dan. Despite the fact that I really had no interest in the character, no love for Nic Cage, and no respect for the director (not after he fucked up Daredevil), I thought that maybe they might pull off something fun. I immediately was disappointed in the tone of the film from the first trailer, with its hokey orchestrated music. Ghost Rider is so seventies, he might as well wear a leisure suit. This film needed some Blue Oyster Cult.
August 24th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
It bothers me that they are treating this comic book movies as throwaways instead of investing some time and effort to either reimagine a really cool hero or bring to life the hero in all his comic book glory.
It is well established that I am possibly the most forgiving movie goer around. I don’t expect a regular ol’ movie to reinvent a genre or avoid cliche, but there are limits. There was nothing about Ghost Rider I find appealing. Maybe if I was into motorcycles I would feel a tug to see it, but that would mean I’d also want to see Wild Hogs.
August 24th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
While I might question statements such as “sets a new low for female love interests in crappy comic-book adaptations” and “most worthless comic book heavies I’ve ever seen,” I’d hate to appear to be defending this awful movie. Besides, I don’t want to waste the time to even think up alternatives. This movie sucked hard. iPod-loving guy at work talked me into seeing it, even though I dislike Cage. I should have known better; he likes Fantastic Four, too.
August 24th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Well, Jimbow, I’ll be happy to hear your case for weaker henchmen than those found in Ghost Rider. I don’t mean just random thugs with guns; these guys were demonic entities that are supposed to be all supernatural and fearsome. And yet they spend most of their time screaming in pain or begging for their lives. Not very menacing at all.
As for Roxanne, I really was disgusted by her character. Granted, most female characters in comic-book movies end up as damsels in distress, but at least a few of them manage to either have a capable moment or two in which they aren’t completely helpless or insecure. Roxanne never manages this, in my view. The scene in the restaurant really was a new low for me. “You think I’m pretty, right?” Ugh.
August 26th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
That was one quite awful movie. I still can’t believe I talked myself into seeing it in the theatre. The script was crap wrapped in suck deep fried in stupid and covered in idiocy sauce, and the acting was worse.
August 27th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
can someone explain to me why nicolas cage is an action star? i find a lot of people who don’t like him. sure, he makes a great weirdo - but leading man/action hero? i can’t believe he was being considered for superman. that would have been ridiculous.
August 27th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
I liked Nick Cage in The Rock, but he was an unlikely hero, which sort of worked. Otherwise, he pretty much seems like his character in The Weather Man: some kid’s neurotic, middle-aged dad.