He's Riding Through Your Town With His Head On Fire...

I'm going to start this with the obligatory disclaimer: I tend to have fairly good taste in movies, which most of my associates can attest too, but I also get a big kick out of really stupid movies. Most of these include classics such as "Red Dawn" or "Navy SEALS," but also very much so in the subgenre of adaptation. Case in point: "Resident Evil: Apocolypse." That was probably one of the worst movies ever made, but God dammit, I wanted Zombies, Stars, a Nemisis, and Jill Valentine. I got all four, and I was happy.
The way I look at it is: if you want to see the characters you love so much, read, play, or watch the original work. There is a reason a movie is called an adaptation. In the case of comic book movies, this is even trickier because the characters are so idealized in our own heads. Most people my age see the X-Men as they were presented by Jim Lee and the animated series. An older generation thinks of Wolverine in a brown costume, and the younger generation knows him primarily in black leather. Most of the time the comics themselves fail horribly at delivering the characters we know and love.
This brings me to the main point of this post: Ghost Rider. Most people will see this movie and say it is shit. A quick trip to Rotten Tomatoes will prove this. The honest truth about this movie is that it is shit. It's stupid, it's cheesey, it has horrible dialouge, and the action is sub-par. Once again, though, I want to take it back to the source. The original concept for Ghost Rider was simply to revamp an old Marvel series about a superhero cowboy. Being the 70's, the creators decided it would be cool to have a flaming skeleton wearing Elvis' comback special leather jumpsuit riding a motorcycle. The threw in a little Faust, and boom Ghost Rider. This character was never supposed to have some sort of dynamic like Spider-Man's issues of youth/responsibility/power, or the Fantastic Four's family dynamic. It was a fucking skeleton on a motorcycle.
The evolution of the character never really went beyond this. He got some powers and faught some demons, and there you have it. The character of Ghost Rider is purely asthetic. He was just a way to make kids go "coooooool" and buy the books for the cover art. One of those kids, apparently, was Nicholas Cage. You can say what you want about Nicholas Cage, and it will probably be true: he's an overactor, he's weird and crazy, he's too old to be in this movie, etc... But the one thing Nicholas Cage does have, at least in this movie, is a passion for the character. The man has a big ass Ghost Rider tattoo on his bicep, that they ironically had to cover up for this movie. He's been campaigning this movie for years, just simply so he could be his favorite superhero. The only two other people in the business that have tried as hard as Cage to bring their loves to screen are Sam Raimi and Bryan Singer. This is not to say that this movie is in any way the same caliber as Superman Returns, the X-Men films, or the Spider-Man movies, but neither were the actual comics.
Going back to what I said earlier: This movie is shit. It is pure popcorn shlock, but I had a fuckin blast. This thing has great characters, hellfire, badass chopper scenes, boobs, chains, and Nicholas Cage having a great time. The one thing I absolutely loved about this movie is that they actually went out and made it a western. It's not just a western because it takes place in Texas, but because it grounds the film in supernatural western folklore. It opens with an explanation of the Ghost Rider originally coming from the old west where a former Rider stops the devil (or Mephasopholes, they never actually deferintiate) from aquiring a very large mass of souls and escaping his power. Add in a pitch perfect narration from the man, Sam Elliot, throw in a credit sequence in old western typeface, and you know where this film is going. Then comes the mandatory origin story, which is handled exceding well. This movie stinks of Dare Devil, Mark Steven Johnson's last comic book feature, but if Dare Devil had one thing going for it that everyone can agree on, it's how well Matt Murdock's backstory was presented. Ghost Rider is no diferent. The strongest part of this movie is the first twenty five minutes. The dialouge is written the best, the characters are better fleshed out, and even the film appears to have better texture than the rest of the movie. I was really impressed with all this.
Then comes the rest of the movie. I will be there first to say the dialouge is cringe inducing. I've never heard a theatre chuckle so many times at inappropriate during a movie. It's bad. Real bad. BUT, the actors do the best with what they can. Nicholas Cage is awesome as Johnny Blaze. The reason his age does not bother me, personally, in this adaptation is because he is an Evil Kineival character. He is a national celebrity. E.K. didn't become famous until his mid thirties, which is what Cage is supposed to be portraying here. In the comics Johnny Blaze is a sideshow act. He can be twenty five. The movie Blaze is a bit beyond that. Otherwise, though, I thought the character was there. Sam Elliot is Sam Elliot is Sam Elliot. He plays the same character in every movie, but thats why we love him. He's definitely better in this than he was in Hulk, and that may be simply because this was a western. Peter Fonda is excellent as Mephastopholes, as he damn well should be. The only weak links were Eva Mendes and Wes Bentley as Roxanne Simpson and Blackheart, respectively. They really just read lines the whole time. Wes Bentley's eyebrows certainly do look evil, though.
Now the important part: how bad ass is the Ghost Rider. The answer: pretty bad ass. There is a certain accepted loss in every comic book adaptaion, simply because there isn't anyone who really looks like Wolverine or Superman, or that the costumes on the page simply don't work in the real world. Ghost Rider, being a CG character, however, is presented in all his hellacious glory. He's got gauntlets, hell chains, hell shotguns, a flaming head, spikes, a badass chopper; you want it, he's got it. Watching one of the coolest looking comic book characters looking that cool in real motion on a screen makes me giddy. I got the same feeling watching the Hulk throw tanks across the desert in his movie. The special effects in this movie are awesome. They aren't revolutionary by any means, but given the budget, they make that shit work.
I guess now would be the appropriate time for the bad in this film, and there is plenty. Aside from the horrible dialouge, the script is awful. It's as if someone gave MSJ a very badass bullet page of events to get him started, but then got a five year ld to plan the inbetween. We get decent elemental villains for Ghost Rider to fight with, but what do they do? They stand there and hiss. Then Ghost Rider whips them with a chain and they die. Woooooooooooo. Then Ghost rider will have a badass police chase throught the city and go up a building to stare down a police chopper and lasso it with his hell chains. Awesome right? Well, then he tells the chopper it's pissing him off and it flies away. Woooooooooooo. Thats about it. It's definitely pretty, but theres not much substance. There's not even really senseless violence, the hallmark of cheesey action movies. The final westenesque showdown in the Mexican ghost town is pretty cool, but inevitably dry as well.
Then there's Ghost Rider as a character. As earlier stated he's primarily an asthetic character, but he could definitely be more than that. MSJ apparently didn't realize that, however, and decided to make Ghost Rider a weird zombie thing. When he shys away from Eva Mendes and groans "monster!" it's kind of a kick in the nuts. Luckily, thought, the rider doesn't talk very often. His voice sounds funny as well, but I have no idea what a flaming skeleton would sound like, so I guess I can't really complain.
The reaction towards this movie will depend largely on how you feel about this character. I think most people don't really care that much about Ghost Rider and will say it's shit because it is and they don't care. Others will see it and say it's shit, but also say it was a hell of a fun time watching Ghost Rider ride around and whip stuff. I know there were at least five old biker dudes in the theater with us who were visably excited to see a Ghost Rider movie. To me, these are the real fans, the dudes that grew up with the character and are just happy to see him onscreen. Ghost Rider doesn't have an absurd loyalist fanbase that Dare Devil has and rightly deserves, but I think that is what will inevitably help the movie. It may be a big pile of crap, but when Ghost Rider and Caretaker flame up and take off through the desert to a revamped "Ghost Riders in the Sky," I knew why I was there in the first place. Pure, stupid fun; just like it's supposed to be.

3 out of 5