Ghost Rider – Review

I saw Ghost Rider this weekend. There are spoilers coming after the jump…

If you’re seen the coming attractions, you already know that it’s about Nicolas Cage turning into the Ghost Rider, some kind of motorcycle-riding demonic thing that looks like a skeleton that’s on fire.

At one point, to punctuate a scene, the demon cracks its knuckles. That seemed ridiculous, because your knuckles crack when you pop the bones loose from the surrounding tissue, so the Ghost Rider shouldn’t be able to crack his knuckles because he’s all bones, no tissue.

Got that? My willing suspension of disbelief was shattered because the walking, talking, motor-cycle-riding flaming skeleton cracked his knuckles.

That probably says as much about me as it does about the movie, but it says a thing or two about the movie, which didn’t work for me.

The movie starts with the back story explaining that there’s a Ghost Rider in every generation and he (or they) have the job of collecting on contracts for the souls of people who’ve sold them to the devil. Then we get to see young Johnny Blaze working in his father’s motorcycle stunt show. Then he cuts a deal with Mephistopheles to save his father from death, only to be double-crossed. Then we cut to him years later, when he’s got his own stunt show. He wants to do an insanely dangerous stunt, but his team doesn’t like the idea. Then he meets his old girlfriend, played by Eva Mendes and her breasts. (Really, half her performance is showing them things off.) This was kind of a slow lead-in, because he still hadn’t turned into the Ghost Rider, but the characters are charming and well-written, so I didn’t mind.

Meanwhile, some mysterious demonic guy comes out of the desert to kill a bunch of people we never met before in a biker bar, and then his evil demon friends show up and they talk about trying to find some contract—I forgot to mention it earlier, but Mephistopheles had set up the most evil contract ever, but the previous Ghost Rider stole it from him—but some of them are worried about the Ghost Rider, but their leader, Blackheart, says not to worry.

Finally, on the night Johnny is supposed to go to dinner with his old girlfriend, Mephistopheles visits him and collects on his contract by turning him into the Ghost Rider and off he goes to find the evil demons and destroy them. The special effects are pretty cool, with the flaming demon skeleton, and his flaming demon bike which leaves flaming tire tracks and sets everything around it flaming.

Whew. I think that’s about the first third of the movie. Does it seem like there’s a lot going on? It sure did to me. I think it’s because Johnny Blaze is not the Ghost Rider.

What I mean is, well, consider Peter Parker and Spiderman. Peter Parker is Spiderman. Peter Parker’s problems are Spiderman’s problems, and Spiderman’s problems are Peter Parker’s problems. He’s one character who sometimes wears a costume.

Johnny Blaze, on the other hand, is taken over by the possessing spirit of the Ghost Rider. The Ghost Rider is a completely different character, which puts him in a completely different kind of movie from what we were watching earlier. The stories really only come together when—I hope this isn’t too big a spoiler—the girl is in danger.

Other than all that flame, and being somewhat indestructible, and having a bike that morphs into a demonic hell-bike, we don’t really learn much about the Ghost Rider’s powers. Come to think of it, we don’t really learn what bad thing will happen if the evil demons find the contract, either.

It got better toward the end, but not fast enough.