This is one of the worse Marvel comics adaptations, better than the snoozer MAN THING and not quite as bad as the abysmal ELEKTRA. As soon as the prologue began, with Sam Elliott talking about the history of the Ghost Riders and a stolen contract of souls, I knew there was a problem. The story goes into a stereotypical Hollywood romance, with a teenaged carnival motorcycle driver by the name of Johnny Blaze in love with a young woman, which all comes to an end when he makes a deal with the devil to prevent his father from dying of cancer. The movie then skips fifteen or twenty-years, which is unclear, probably because Nicolas Cage looks like he's at least ten years older than Eva Mendez (and they are supposed to be the same age). It's then that the devil (Peter Fonda hamming it up) comes to collect, transforming Blaze into his bounty hunter, The Ghost Rider. The first transformation into this otherworldly being is cool, as is his riding up and down the side of a skyscraper, but I started to get weary of this the last forty-minutes of the movie, when he seemed to do this every five minutes.
The script is sloppy, the writers not committing to this being a horror movie, an action movie, a love story or even a comedy, complete with cardboard characters and huge plot-holes. There are no surprises here and several times I wanted to get up and leave the theater, primarily because I was bored and knew exactly how this lackluster movie was going to end. I wouldn't even recommend GHOST RIDER as a dvd rental.
This is one of the worse Marvel comics adaptations, better than the snoozer MAN THING and not quite as bad as the abysmal ELEKTRA. As soon as the prologue began, with Sam Elliott talking about the history of the Ghost Riders and a stolen contract of souls, I knew there was a problem. The story goes into a stereotypical Hollywood romance, with a teenaged carnival motorcycle driver by the name of Johnny Blaze in love with a young woman, which all comes to an end when he makes a deal with the devil to prevent his father from dying of cancer. The movie then skips fifteen or twenty-years, which is unclear, probably because Nicolas Cage looks like he's at least ten years older than Eva Mendez (and they are supposed to be the same age). It's then that the devil (Peter Fonda hamming it up) comes to collect, transforming Blaze into his bounty hunter, The Ghost Rider. The first transformation into this otherworldly being is cool, as is his riding up and down the side of a skyscraper, but I started to get weary of this the last forty-minutes of the movie, when he seemed to do this every five minutes.
