Ghost Rider is Back from the Grave (2007)

Ghost Rider is a movie I've wanted to see for a long time. I followed a lot of the news and ate up all the pictures that came out before the movie was released. I was quite a fan of Ghost Rider when he was confined to the pages of comic books. Unfortunately, I started hearing reports that the movie was having problems. I believe it was actually delayed as they tried to redo all the effects after it didn't play well with test audiences. Well today I finally took the chance and watched it for myself. Hit the jump to see if those delays helped the movie any.


For those of you unfamiliar with the Ghost Rider character, he is the devil's bounty hunter, tasked to capture escaped souls (usually demons) and return them to Hell. The man cursed with this is Johnny Blaze, played by Nicolas Cage, who is a motorcycle stuntman and daredevil. He gets his terrible curse after finding out his father has terminal cancer, and when the devil Mephistopheles shows up, he makes the deal to cure his father's cancer in exchange for his soul. The very next day, feeling better and healthier than ever, Blaze's father goes out to do a stunt and dies in a tragic accident. The devil appears before Johnny and admits that while his father's death is tragic, he still kept his end of the deal by curing his cancer. He tells Johnny that he will return for him at some point in the future when he is needed.Years later a demon by the name of Blackheart escapes from Hell. Mephistopheles once again appears before Blaze and commands him to bring Blackheart in. This is when the Ghost Rider is born.

Now that's a long introduction to a character, and it takes even longer to tell in the movie. It's a good 40 minutes before we first see the Ghost Rider, and it's in a weird scene in which Nicolas Cage does what he does best; He goes crazy! Alternating from screams of pain as the hellfire burns his flesh away, and laughter only an insane person can emit, Cage transforms for the first time into a plastic looking skeleton on fire. This brings up my two biggest problems with the movie. Don't worry, there's more than two problems, but this scene gives you a two-for-one special.

First problem is the special effects for the Ghost Rider. Sometimes they're fine. This is usually when the camera is pulled way back, or he's traveling really fast on his motorcycle. But most of the time we're treated to a really fake looking skull on fire in close ups, and there's a lot of them.

In my personal opinion, the special effects were real hit & miss

The second problem I have has to do with the cheesy direction of the movie when Cage is on screen. I know Nicolas Cage can act well, I've seen it before, so I believe the bad acting on his behalf, as well as the rest of the cast probably falls on the director. When Ghost Rider is on screen, it's all serious, badass, and cool. Whenever Johnny Blaze is on screen, it's goofy and has oddly placed comedic elements mixed in. I'm not sure what they were going for, but it certainly didn't work.

I won't even go into the crappy story or the lame bad guys or the complete wasted talents of Eva Mendes. There's actually a scene in which she asks a waiter if she's pretty, he looks at her and makes a disgusted face shaking his head. This movie really was quite the disappointment, just like I'd heard it was, but I just had to see it and judge for myself. In the words of the Ghost Rider himself, "You have been judged...Guilty!"