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Ghost Rider
Director: Mark Steven Johnson
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Peter Fonda
Rated: PG-13
114 minutes
I imagine the first time Hollywood realized they could make millions turning comic books to movies was like McDonalds realizing they could sell breakfast. Cha-ching. Unfortunately, as fantastic as comic books and graphic novels are, as with anything, there are great ones and then there are not so.
Now, Big screen comics can either try to re-create the comic on screen, (Sin City)or create an action movie from the comic (Spider Man/X-Men). Or they could just grab as much cash as they can before anyone realizes what a pile of crap they’ve been served (The Punisher). Ghost Rider as a comic would definitely fall into the grey area of ‘guilty pleasure’. The story is very basic; dirt bike jumper makes ill-thought out deal with devil and becomes the devils bounty hunter.
Nicolas Cage defends his choice for taking this role because he believes comics are a legitimate art form, which they are. However, ghost rider is about a flaming skeleton riding a bitchin’ chopper, Shakespeare it’s not.
Make no mistake, this movie is bad. However it is very close to that fine cult classic line of being so bad it’s good. There is no doubt in my mind that if Bruce Campbell got the role, we could have had the funniest quasi-horror movie since Evil Dead 2.
Good bad or just bad, Ghost rider still has a very cool
chopper, a flaming skull and gratuitous cleavage shots. A formula as reliable
as e=mc2 for big money and, for better or worse, unlimited sequels.
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