Movie Review: Ghost Rider [2007]

Ghost Rider [2007]

Before the rights for the character Ghost Rider reverted to Marvel in the past couple of years, leading to the character's MCU appearance in Agents of SHIELD, there were a couple of movies starring the bike-riding, flame-skull-headed Spirit of Vengeance. And honestly? I'm genuinely surprised that they didn't try to cash in on Ghost Rider a lot earlier, because the idea of a man cursed with transforming into a demon with a flaming skull for a face, a badass flaming chopper bike and fighting with chains is such a badass concept, and I can't really think of any superhero -- Marvel or DC or otherwise -- whose design feels more insanely metal than the Ghost Rider.

And... and in 2007, he got a movie. No one ever really talks about this or its 2012 sequel, and I didn't watch either of them until recently. And... as a movie that ran for 120 minutes (I watched the extended cut) it's... it's not bad. Perhaps the big point to question is the casting of Nicholas Cage as the titular Ghost Rider. Cage's antics only really crop up when he's in Johnny Blaze mode, though, and it has around a 50:50 ratio of being hilarious since it's so out-of-place, or just falling flat on its face. There are some moments that I find genuinely funny, like Cage's narmy declaration of "SPIRIT OF FIRE, COME!" or whatever that line was, or Cage's insistence to chomp down on jelly beans through a cocktail glass. But at the same time, it does take me out from the movie at times. Not enough to really be straight-up bad, and I find myself enjoying the storyline relatively watchable. Of course, I am someone who admittedly doesn't know a lot of the Marvel comics characters outside of more modern movies and a couple of video games, so while I'm undoubtedly familiar with Ghost Rider, I'm unfamiliar with his alter ego, Johnny Blaze, and I'm not sure if this is normal behaviour for the eccentric stuntman. Still, Nicholas Cage's easily the second-best part of this movie both for the parts when he's actually giving it his all, and the parts where his antics makes things particularly hilarious.

Regardless, though, all of Nicholas Cage's antics is definitely well-balanced out by the fact that the titular Ghost Rider himself is genuinely fucking badass in this movie. It's like watching the Transformers movies where the entire movie might be a trainwreck, but the actual CGI action stuff is genuinely good. And Ghost Rider? Ghost Rider's done amazingly well. Between that scene in the prison where he just blazes out and appropriates a spiky jacket, or spinning a flaming chain to create a hellfire vortex, or lassoo-ing a police helicopter while shouting "yeehaw!", or rising out of the river while flipping the bird... or, my favourite sequence, that spin-around as he drives up a building.... the visuals for the Ghsot Rider, his flaming motorcycle, and the way that the asphalt just rips up behind him is just amazingly done. 

Unfortunately... nothing else about this movie sadly is. The backstory and introduction to Johnny Blaze's character is done well enough, with this old man, really the demon Mephistopheles, getting young Johnny to sell his soul (albeit by quite literally tricking him to bleed on a contract) for Mephisto to cure his father's cancer... but then to cause his subsequent death in an accident. This causes Johnny to leave his childhood love, Roxanne, and then continue on his father's legacy as a stuntman famous for insanely death-defying stunts, and Nicholas Cage's performance does really sell a devil-may-care man with an implied death wish and a huge, huge dose of eccentricity. Again... not sure how accurate it is for the character, but Cage's performance in these early scenes do fit what we're told about Johnny Blaze within the movie. 

Oh, and Roxanne also shows up, now an independent lady reporter played by Eva Mendes, who's a independent strong woman TV reporter... who, after a couple of excruciatingly long scenes, ends up falling head-over-heels over Johnny Blaze and ends up being a generic love interest that quite literally throws herself at Johnny despite the multiple times that Johnny's accidental transformations into Ghost Rider causes him to miss out on actually showing up at dates. 

Mephisto shows up and demands that Johnny do what he had sold his soul to do -- become the Ghost Rider. And the painful transformation into the Ghost Rider, and his subsequent rampage as  he hunts down the movie's antagonist -- Mephisto's errant son Blackheart and his posse of mini-bosses lieutenants -- is freaking awesome. When Johnny Blaze and his bike transforms into the Ghost Rider, he's more of a force of nature than character and that is absolutely fine with me. He quickly faces off against Blackheart, survives his minions and a truck crash, and then murders the one with earth-based powers. We also get to see that the Ghost Rider's drawn to sinners, as he stops a robbery and uses his Penance Stare to murder some poor robber and reduce him to an eyeless, soulless corpse. 

Blackheart, meanwhile, is apparently after some deed over the souls of an entire city of sinners, which will cause him to get stronger than Mephisto or something? It's something that was dropped onto our lap at the beginning of the movie in an exposition dump, but it honestly isn't particularly relevant. After some mid-movie finnagling, some needless Johnny and Roxanne drama, before another showdown that led to the aforementioned awesome building-ride. Johnny kills the second mini-boss, an air-powered demon, before meeting with an old grave-digger/caretaker man who helped him out a couple of times before, and reveals himself to be a Carter Slade, cowboy Ghost Rider, who rides a flaming horse to accompany Johnny Blaze to the location of the ghost town and bid him adieu. Not... not quite sure what Carter's function is other than to add some world-building, but the role is acted amazingly well.  

And as Ghost Rider kills the final Blackheart goon, a water-based one, he comes face-to-face with Blackheart himself, and... wow, Blackheart's lines are delivered with such blandnesss that when he actually ends up absorbing the damned souls of the cursed town and goes "I am Legionnnnn for we are mannnnnyyyyy", it's so ridiculously poorly delivered. I mean, he's not given any lines worth noting, but still... Anyway, we get a bit of a shootout as Ghost Rider takes down Blackheart with his hell shotgun and his penance stare because Blackheart has 'souls' now, and then rides off to the sunset all edgy and shit, having retained his Ghost Rider powers because Mephisto can't take them back or something. 

And... and honestly? On paper, the plot for this movie isn't bad for a simple, non-derivative superhero movie. But the performances given by Eva Mendes (Roxanne) and Wes Bentley (Blackheart) in particular are so bland and bad, not helped by the atrocious dialogue Blackheart has to put out and the very vapid, cleavage-showing excuse of a character that is Roxanne. Cage, Elliot (Carter Slade) and Fonda (Mephisto) are easily the best parts of this bad movie, as are the CGI, but it's not enough to really save it. Still, it's a very fun movie nonetheless, the sort of B-movie you'd be happy to boot up and have a hoot at gawking on the action scenes and laughing at the poor acting with your buddies. It's not a good movie, not by a long shot, but I enjoyed myself watching it.