BEFORE: Just two days until Comic-Con now, I'm planning to put my chain on hold after the next film, though I'm going to try and catch a screening of "Iron Man 3" while in San Diego, either at the convention or in a theater. I should be able to block out two hours for a film somewhere during a five-day trip. Nicolas Cage carries over again from "Season of the Witch" as we hit the real comic-book films.
THE PLOT: As Johnny Blaze hides out in Eastern Europe, he is called upon to stop the devil, who is trying to take human form.
AFTER: Hmm, that's funny, I was about to mark this as a FOLLOW-UP to "Ghost Rider", then I couldn't find that film listed in this project. So I must have watched it before 2009. Not to worry, this film is just as appropriate as a follow-up to "Drive Angry" - both feature Nicolas Cage with supernatural powers, trying to prevent the ritual killing of a young child. Of course, the presence of a cabal of monks also hearkens back to "Season of the Witch", plus the villain here uses dark magic and is able to place his soul in other vessels, which sounds a lot like Voldemort - so there's a shout-out to last week's "Harry Potter" wrap-up as well.
I kinda dug this one, though I know it got a bad rap and did poor box-office. OK, so it didn't make back its budget theatrically, but that still leaves DVD and cable, right? I guess Ghost Rider is considered a 2nd-tier superhero, and really only the top tier heroes seem to do well in films. Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Avengers and X-Men have all done well, but Green Lantern, Green Hornet, The Spirit, The Shadow, not so much. Which is a shame because a motorcycle riding demon with a flaming skull head should come off as pretty cool.
Plus, the movie should look a lot cooler than the comic, just because it, well, moves. A car chase should look better on film. Stuff burning up and exploding looks better on film. I don't know why Ghost Rider's skull is gray here and not white, but that's a minor point - I guess the white bones didn't read well on camera, or someone figured that since his head is on fire, the bones should look burned.
The comic books usually stick with the standard flaming motorcycle, but the film suggests that the Ghost Rider could use ANY vehicle for his purposes, and in fact shows him controlling a flaming truck and also a large piece of construction equipment, which looked really cool. So visually the film has the advantage, but what about the story?
Turns out there are only so many different comic-book plots, and they just keep using them again and again. Hero fights villain, hero dies and comes back to life, hero has to go on a quest. It's all pretty basic Joseph Campbell-type stuff. When you know the formulas, this film just comes off as a quest/chase combined with a standard loss of power. And anytime a hero loses his superpower, it's just a matter of time before he needs to (or is forced to) get the power back.
But even though it's a little by-the-numbers, I'm willing to cut this one a little slack, because it hints at the larger aspects of the Ghost Rider story. Fighting an agent of the Devil and his minion is pretty typical, but the question is raised about Zarathos, the demon who gives him his powers. What is a demon but a fallen angel? And they've riffed on this in the comics, too - it explains how Johnny Blaze is able to use the power of a demon to do positive things.
The kid he's trying to save here is named Danny, and it's shown that he has some otherwordly powers as well. When they updated the Ghost Rider character in the comics a few years back, they retired Johnny Blaze and gave the powers to a teen named Daniel Ketch, so I'm wondering if this is hinting at the plot for the next film. Even if Nicolas Cage doesn't sign on, they can just age this Danny kid by a decade, give him similar powers, and go on from there. Smart.
Also starring Idris Elba (last seen in "Prometheus"), Ciaran Hinds (last seen in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2"), Violante Placido, Johnny Whitworth, Fergus Riordan, Christopher Lambert.
RATING: 6 out of 10 bottles of wine
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