Ghost Rider Or How To Screw Up A Comic Book Movie

In order to grow as a human being and improve upon yourself and your habits you generally have to realize that you may not be doing everything perfectly. Today's movie taught me the valuable lesson that just because a movie is based on a comic book doesn't mean it will be good or even enjoyable. Before I delve into all the reasons this movie nearly made me cry for humanity I should probably explain why I ever picked up this movie in the first place and what the story involves.

When this movie first came out I was moderately interested because the trailers looked alright and my unreasonable attraction to leather jackets and things that are on fire. A couple of my friends saw it and while they didn't exactly come back gossiping about like school girls they said it was alright. What I failed to do at that point in time, which is now my usual go to action when I get interested in a movie, is to look it up on Rotten Tomatoes and see what a collection of film critics say. I know many people don't really like to listen to critics for numerous reasons but I do this because it tells me what to expect. In this case they told me to expect horribleness but their cries went unanswered since I never even looked at their reviews. So with the terribly burden of high expectations I purchased this movie for five bucks used without seeing it and sat down for an enjoyable two hour romp through super hero world.

Our story begins long long ago with the devil and a deal for souls...and oh forget it let's see Nicolas Cage's crazy hair! Ok ok we'll look at how this all begins. So Johnny Blaze and his dad are a motorcycle duo working a local fair but despite their at the very least fun living all is not well since Johnny's dad smokes as much as a house on fire and has terrible cancer. Lucky for Johnny the devil is in town and offers to heal his daddy in exchange for his soul. Things of course don't turn out well and the devil shows up years later to have Johnny become a skeleton with flames on it and a sweet bike to go after his son that is aiming to make hell of earth come just a little earlier than expected. Now it's up to Johnny to master his new powers and stop the apocalypse.

While I will admit I ignored them at the time this movie had about three reasons to worry.

#1: Nicolas Cage. In the mid-nineties if you had a movie with Nicolas Cage it was a party but nowadays if you want to see the crappiest most ridiculous movie that's out at this point in time you need look no further than the one with Cage in it. Let's forget the man's poor choices of scripts and focus on the real reason he's bad in this movie: his age. I'm all for having older actors be action heroes and will gladly watch Bruce Willis be John Mclane into his sixties as long as the action holds up. But here Mr. Cage is essentially supposed to be an Evel Knievel but he doesn't look like he would be competent on a bike. I don't even have the time to get to his poor choice of hair. If the man would just accept his V-shaped bald spots I would respect him a little more these days.

#2: The second smoke signal that this movie set out was its supporting cast all of whom are reasons to worry about the movie you're watching. Donald Logue's career has always been littered with lower grade action movies and I've most recently seen him in the terrible adaptation of Max Payne. Eva Mendes is very pretty but her film choices haven't exactly earned her critical acclaim considering the most successful movie in her career has been Hitch which was anchored by Will Smith.

#3: Action sequences. I should have been worried when the previews showed off only one cool shot in the entire thing but I didn't figure that would be the highlight of the entire movie. I mean the budget was at least one hundred million and apparently to our directors driving in a straight line and lassoing a chain around a demon is really cool. Not by my standards. If you want to see if done right look at Spiderman 2, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and many others if you want to see super hero action done right. This lesson is also known as how not to waste a budget on CGI.

Sadly this movie can't even fall into my beloved "so bad it's good" category because even if I was in a chemically altered state I couldn't even bring myself to laugh at the cringe inducing dialogue and once again Mr. Cage's hair. Overall this movie has the feel that no one is trying very hard. All of the baddies fail to feel truly evil and the hero is such an idiot and man child that you can't really relate to him. This movie also realizes one of the things that many movie directors forget. The supernatural is something that should only be used responsibly. There's almost nothing that can kill a movie faster than a "deal with the devil" if the very concept of the deal doesn't freak you out. In this case you're hoping he takes the deal because you want to see Cage's face be on fire.

There is nearly no way that I can recommend to anyone so instead I'll offer a challenge to those who can stomach nearly anything. I dare you to watch this movie and get a feeling of genuine enjoyment. If you accomplish this feat you are a greater person than I.