Saturday, August 25, 2007

He Walks in Both Worlds

His curse became his power.

Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) was only a teenaged stunt biker when he sold his soul to the devil (Peter Fonda). Years later, Johnny is a world-renowned daredevil by day, but at night, he becomes the Ghost Rider of Marvel Comics legend. The devil's bounty hunter, he is charged with finding evil souls on earth and bringing them to hell. But when a twist of fate brings Johnny's long-lost love (Eve Mendes) back into his life, Johnny realizes he just might have a second chance at happiness - if he can bear the devil and win back his soul. To do so he'll have to defeat Blackheart (Wes Bentley), the devil's nemesis and wayward son, whose plot to take over his father's realm will bring hell on earth - unless Ghost Rider can stop him.

Title: Ghost Rider
Release: February 16, 2007
Genre: Action/ Fantasy- Superhero
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Based On: Ghost Rider comics
Writer: Mark Steven Johnson
Director: Mark Steven Johnson
Music By: Christopher Young
Produced By: Avi Arad, Stan Lee, David S. Goyer, Michael DeLuca, & Gary Foster
Distributed By: Columbia Pictures & Marvel
Run Time: 114 minutes

I was so excited when I first heard that Ghost Rider was coming out. I had never heard of the comics before (I’d never even read a comic until after I graduated high school, so that’s not unusual) but the idea of a flaming skull dude who fights evil and is Nicholas Cage in his down time just sounded like a good movie to me. Then once it came out everyone I knew who saw it said it was just okay. Surely not! Yet when I finally did get around to watching it I have to agree, it was just mediocre.

Nicholas Cage is a really great actor most of the time but I haven’t seen a decent movie by him since National Treasure (speaking of which there is soon to be a sequel!) but I thought he did a really good job as the main character Johnny Blaze. Also Eva Mendes played her part as Roxanne (Johnny’s love interest and former childhood sweetheart) pretty well too. The only thing I can really complain about with the acting in the film is that sometimes it’s a bit overdone.

I don’t know who is responsible for making what could have been fantastic, into a "just okay" movie. I can’t even pinpoint the reason I didn’t love it like I thought I would. It’s not the special effects teams fault because they held nothing back and made Ghost Rider look really cool but I think the editing process may shoulder part of the blame because sometimes the story seems a little uneven. Overall I have to agree that the film was just okay. Hopefully whenever they make the sequel (and you know they will) it will be much better, although who knows?

~ I have only seen the theatrical version of Ghost Rider. There is a director’s cut on the DVD which is said to be better but I haven’t yet seen it.

Find Ghost Rider Online
Official Site
Imdb.com
Wikipedia

Links:
Ghost Rider Blog

Trailer:


Nick Cage Interview:


Related Reviews
Nicolas Cage- Johnny Blaze / Ghost Rider
National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007)- Ben Gates

2 comments:

  1. I totally loved Ghost Rider!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have the director's cut, it's not much different. The movie was okay, but it looked cool enough that I still enjoyed it. My main problem was Blackheart. That dork did not look like the son of Satan.

    Also, did Ghost Rider have to point at things in an overly-theatrical way over and over again? Distracting.

    Other than that, it's a fun movie to watch, bad script and all.

    ReplyDelete

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