Marvel comics have provided us with some great superheroes.
They have also provided us with some of the best antiheroes too. One of these
great antiheroes happens to be the bad ass and hell raising Ghost Rider. He’s
violent, fights demons and Satan, and generally kicks a lot of ass. The first
film to feature the flaming-skull supernatural hero on the other hand does not.
It’s wishy washy with it’s style, plays it safe when it comes to the demons and
violence, and certainly sucks the life from such an awesome character.
Stunt motorcyclist Johnny Blaze (Cage) watched his father
wither away from cancer when he was just a teen. To save his father from
cancer, Blaze sold his soul to the devil. Unfortunately, he still has to watch
his father die in a horrific crash. Now Johnny is on the run and years later is
renowned ability to survive death has made him the best daredevil on the
planet. Once again luck is not with him and when the devil’s son Blackheart
wants to take over the world, Blaze must become the fabled Ghost Rider to
defeat him.
Coming from the director of “Daredevil” (that should already
tell you something of the quality that this film will have), “Ghost Rider”
completely misses the edge and dark feelings needed to sell the character and
story. The tone of the film is very tongue-in-cheek focusing down on the bright
colors, comic book motifs, and caricatures of people rather than the darker
tones that made the character so cool. This lacking balance of fun to the
darkness dumps the general aura of the film down the drain.
To add to the dismal script and the overly complicated for
its own good plot, this is one of the worst casted Marvel films. Cage fails to
bring the depth of darkness to our hero without it coming off as silly and the
supporting cast is abysmally done. Mendes seems to be on autopilot with her
atrociously built romantic female lead and our villain Blackheart desperately
tries to be menacing only to come across as laughable.
If the cast blows and the story blows, the action of the film
better blow everything else out of the water. It doesn’t. Director Johnson places
all of his attention at making things ‘look’ cool rather than actually setting
up exciting and well choreographed action sequences. The fights between Ghost
Rider and the elemental demons are idiotically simple and their execution with
the numbingly over done CGI adds nothing to the plot nor does it entertain.
This is handedly one of the worst of Marvel Comics’ films
and it ranks down there with “Electra”. It’s long winded and poorly built
plot/characters fail to grab the viewer and its action sequences do less than
that. It clings onto the idea that it might just be charming, but the only
thing that charmed me was the ending credits and knowing that this awful movie
experience was over.
Written By Matt Reifschneider
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