Nefarious Films Reviews

"Ghost Rider"2007

Director: Marc Steven Johnson

Writer:  Marc Steven Johnson

Starring:  Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Peter Fonda, Sam Elliot, Wes Bentley

People make movies for all manner of different reasons. Some filmmakers do it to expose injustices in the world, some people do it to try to present life to others in the unique way they see it while others just have that burning desire

 to tell a good story well. Then there’s the people who made Ghost Rider who, as evidenced by this film, one can only assume are a couple of Beavis and Butthead type simpletons wowed into a blissful state of utter awe by such wonderful things as fire, skulls, motorbikes and boobs and were determined to throw all these things together with their entire reasoning being, “yeah sweet…that’d be like, so cool man”.

Of course that isn’t such a bad motive for making a movie, child-like enthusiasm will always be preferable to the sort of profit-obsessed soullessness that shapes so many Hollywood productions. The problem that arises is that simple motivations often result in a simple end product and that is true in this case. This movie is beyond simple, it is beyond dumb, it is so far beyond stupid that it exists in some weird other realm of such awe-inspiring ridiculousness that it is as pointless to criticise its stupidity as it is to criticise Nicolas Cage for wearing bad wigs in his movies.

Admittedly the comic book source material hardly reeks of maturity but Spiderman and Batman had similar problems yet managed to become fairly thoughtful character based movies (even if that character does insist on wearing tights and cruising the back alleys looking for bad guys at night). Even by comic book standards however Ghost Rider’s back story is nigh on impossible to explain with a straight face, something that Nicolas Cage (as both Blaze and the Rider) should gain respect for as he actually almost manages it in this film. The story goes something like this however: Johnny Blaze is a motorbike stunt rider who was once tricked into selling his soul to the devil who has now decided to imbue in him the powers of the Ghost Rider, Hell’s own bounty hunter who must now defeat the devil’s son and his gang of supernatural miscreants before they get their hands on some maguffin that will give them all the usual power to control the world stuff these kind of guys are always after.

What this all amounts to is Nicolas Cage bombing around the place on a motorbike doing his best Elvis impressions while trying to not be upstaged by Eva Mendes’ incredible cleavage until night falls when his skin falls off, he goes on fire and bombs about on a motorbike, fighting bad guys while trying not to be upstaged by Eva Mendes’ incredible cleavage and his own hellfire powered motorbike. That really is all there is to this film, there is no internal logic, character development or even really any story. It is all just a series of set pieces designed to show of all the cool things the special effects crew can do.

Trying to follow any sort of story in which the normal rules of cause and effect apply is sheer folly in Ghost Rider. An example of the sort of blatant inconsistencies this film is peppered with is that Blaze can seemingly shrug off any sort of damage as Ghost Rider and not feel any effect when he reverts back to human form. He is riddled with bullets, crushed by trucks and goes hand to hand with demons without a single mark on him when he wakes up. That is until he goes up against a mere human mugger who sticks a little knife in his shoulder, a wound which Blaze bafflingly retains and needs stitches for. Though of course the real reason this happens is so that the film can have one of those ‘valiant hero getting stitched up’ scenes. This is indicative of the sort of contempt the film displays for conventional logic. Another moment of almost genius abandonment of sense is when Blaze and his mentor, a grizzled old cowboy (played by grizzled old cowboy specialist Sam Elliot), an ex-ghost rider himself ride across the desert to their final confrontation with the bad guys. This is a terrific scene with Blaze on his customised hell-bike and the cowboy on a flaming hell-horse speeding across the sand setting the night on fire to the sounds of a beefed up version of Johnny Cash’s Ghost Riders in the Sky. It is unfortunately then rendered completely pointless by the cowboy telling Blaze that he only had one transformation left in him and he thought it was best used on that. Rather than helping in the oncoming battle?? What??? But then of course we wouldn’t have got that cool scene if that hadn’t happened. This sort of thing happens time after time in Ghost Rider, get used to it.

Ultimately the question of whether this film is any good or not is resoundingly answered with a deafening NO! This, of course, does not mean that it is not enjoyable however and if you have seen the posters and trailers for this film and think, “cool, that’s the movie I want to see” then enjoy it you most probably will. Immensely.

Rating: 6/10