Ghost Rider [Film]

Ghost Rider is the latest in Hollywood's campaign to resurrect "classic" comic book characters and bring them to the silver screen, and hopefully, renewed popularity. Though I somehow missed out on the comics in the seventies, I definitely would have dug the whole flaming skull and badass bike concept from the get-go, which means I was more than happy to check out the film.

Our story revolves around Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage), a motorcycle stunt performer, who makes a deal with the demonic Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda) in order to save his father's health. This is a bad idea of course, and though Johnny becomes famous, he pays the price when Mephistopheles comes calling to hold him to his end of the deal and become a soul-collecting bounty hunter. Thus begins Johnny's transformation into a Ghost Rider. A lot of people had reservations about Nicolas Cage, and I have to agree somewhat, since it looks like he didn't get enough direction here. His Johnny Blaze has almost zero chemistry with love interest Roxanne Simpson (Eva Mendes) and he tends to waver between playing the character straight and going over the top. That's not all Cage's fault though, as there's definitely a lack of a single vision that permeates the entire film. The supporting cast fares a little better though, since most of them are strictly defined and only in a few scenes. There's also some truly bad dialogue, especially between Johnny and mentor figure The Caretaker (Sam Elliott) that will likely even have long-time fans cringing.

The film is an effects extravaganza, as expected, with the badass bike leaving trails of flame and massive damage in its wake when Ghost Rider appears. It's well shot in general, with some interesting camera placement and cool wall-riding action, but the pacing and editing are way off, with the reasoning of why Johnny turns into a dude with a flaming skull left largely unexplained. The evil minions that come after Johnny are generic wanna-be goths that each have their own elemental power as well, and mostly serve as fodder for Ghost Rider to learn how to use a flaming chain as a rope or a whip. There's also a generic sense at times, as some of the scenes seem to be ripped straight from Sony's other superhero films such as Blade and, inevitably, Spiderman. It's like there's a bunch of stock effects and characters in their computers that keep getting reused. The film also closes with a fairly cheesy remake of Ghost Riders in The Sky, that could have been really cool, but isn't.

Despite its flaws, Ghost Rider is somewhat successful, and even though parts of it get pretty cheeseball, it's still a good time, if partly for the wrong reasons. It's too bad it seems to have been made by committee, instead of Director Mark Steven Johnson (Daredevil, Elektra) taking firm control of the project. [7/10]