I’m not sure what to say about the movie.  Nicholas Cage as Ghost Rider was decent but that’s a pretty hard role to screw up since it’s an easy role to wrap your mind around.  Nicholas Cage as Johnny Blaze on the other hand I don’t know what to say.  I am much more familiar with the early 90s Ghost Rider, Danny Ketch.  I don’t know much of anything about the Blaze portion of the Ghost Rider mythology.  It’s hard for me to judge whether or not he portrayed Blaze very well.

My impression from a wikipedia reading of the mythology is that much of the comedy and puns in the movie are unwarranted and unwelcome.  The movie is a hybridization of the Blaze and Ketch mythologies.  Blackheart is a Ketch villain and the Penance stare is a Ketch power.  Blaze could shoot hellfire from his hands which they show and Ketch could do some pretty cool tricks with his chain that the movie never showed.  Neither Ketch nor Blaze had the power to shape anything metal like the movie shows.  That power is partially unwarranted but not entirely undesirable.  From what I can tell the storyline is entirely original borrowing characters from the comics but not taking any storyline from the comics which is typical in superhero movies.

I would have a hard time believing Blaze was really as much into puns and stupid comedy as the movie made him out to be.  I also didn’t like how the movie progressed like an rpg adventure.  First he gets the bike, then he gets the chain, next he gets the jacket, next the scroll, and finally the shot gun.  Now that I think about it he defeated one of the demons shortly after acquiring each of the items.  I guess the video game will be straight forward.

I was worried the score was going to be terrible and cheesy and it ended up not bothering me that much.  The music was mostly cowboy western themed and considering how they set up the characters it fit fairly well.  I was hoping it would be packed with the most brutal metal they could get ahold of, but I guess that will have to wait until the do a Ghost Rider movie on the Danny Ketch series.

Overall, I wish Marvel would have had this movie done more like how they did Punisher, very serious and action oriented.  The CGI is top notch especially the more evil renderings of Mephisto, Blackheart, the Nephilim and Legion (who was spookily cool at least from a Christian perspective).  The script was too predictable.  If it takes more than cheap gimmicks for you to like a movie you will probably not like this.  This movie is mostly going to be enjoyed by Ghost Rider fans with low standards and the easily entertained.

If they do a sequel, which seems likely they will have to step up the story and character portrayal a lot to keep it from floundering.  If they can do that they could easily secure a third movie by introducing Ketch in the end of the sequel.  Then Ghost Rider will be exactly what he appears to be in the posters, bad-ass and metal.

This is actually the first almost-good thing I’ve read about Ghost Rider to be honest.  It looked absolutely awful from the preview I saw the other day.  I dunno perhaps I will watch it when it comes out on DVD afterall because deep down I am a sucker for comic-to-movie, er, movies

This is an Evil movie I plan on seeing, The special Evil effects from the previews look pretty cool, and Nicholas Cage is usually pretty good.

I like to watch Evil shows. Hear and see Evil things, Belong to Evil Websites. Les used the word Evil 4 times in his post. More Evil….