Ghost Rider

Rating: 6/10 (2 July 2014)

Title: Ghost Rider
Directed by: Mark Steven Johnson
Storyline: We're also introduced to Johnny Blaze and his father being part of a carnival attraction, but this is turned on it's head when Johnny finds out his father has cancer. So Johnny does what any sensible person would do, he makes a deal with the devil to help his father. But naturally when you make a deal with the devil there will be strings attached and his father dies while performing a stunt. We are then re-introduced to an older Johnny Blaze who is a stuntman who can survive any injury, played by Nick Cage. He even has a martini glass filled with jelly beans, this is Nick Cage's way of making the movie's protagonist turn from badass to laughing stock. Nick Cage may be a massive fan of Ghost Rider, but he does not play him as well as others could have. We are introduced to Blackheart at a biker bar. I have two problems with this, my primary one being that Blackheart is suppose to looks like some creature that spawned from hell not a Twilight vampire. My minor secondary problem with this is that Blackheart was originally a DareDevil villain. He completes the jump and rides off to talk to Roxanne more, he then stops her and does one of those movie kisses. You know, the types which if you did that in real life you would probably get arrested for sexual assault. The devil returns to make Johnny hold up his side of the deal and he has to become the rider to stop Blackheart from getting plot device of the Scroll of 1000 Souls. Johnny finally transforms into the Ghost Rider almost an hour into this 2 hour movie. But the transformation scene is one of the few good scenes in this movie, it is also the only time where Cage does good acting, and that acting is for going insane while you're face is melting. This is accompanied by chilling opera music matching the pace of his transformation. Once the Ghost Rider comes on screen, you can forget the horrible faults of movie for the time being and just admire the awesomeness that is the Ghost Rider. His voice is fitting for how he looks. He meets the Caretaker and they get all of the important backstory exposition out of the way before Johnny goes and apologies about standing up Roxanne, needless to say she doesn't take well to it. He goes up against Blackheart's minions again before the police intervene and it then becomes GTA 4 with a Ghost Rider mod. In other words the next scene is one of those BA scenes in which you forget about all of the bad parts of the movie because of how BA the scene is. He hands over the scroll and goes to fight Blackheart who takes hold of the scroll and absorbs the 1000 souls to make him a god of sorts. He is able to get him where he can use his power and then he is able to burn the 1000 soul to kill Blackheart, looks like Blackheart didn't think that one through.
Acting: Straight away I feel like Nick Cage was a bad pick for Ghost Rider, mainly because he is just so eccentric and different as well as comical. I think Josh Holloway would have been a better casting choice mainly because he looks more like Johnny Blaze does in the comics. Nick Cage looks like Nick Cage in this movie, he even acts mostly like Nick Cage in this movie. But in saying that, Johnny Depp was also interested in this role, so I think we got the lesser of two evils here. Same Elliott plays the caretaker and the other Ghost Rider, this was another poor choice for acting as you can barely understand a single word this guy is saying.
Noticeable Camera work: Honestly I was too busy faulting the movie for its story and casting to notice some of the camera work, but there is a good bird's eye shot for the helicopter landing and something similar for the transformation scene when the camera starts off high before zooming into the hellfire burning in his eyes.
Graphics: The CGI for the transformation scene was really well done with Cage's flesh slowly burning and melting off his face as he becomes the rider. As well as the flames on the riders skull looking quite BA at the same time. The skull for the rider is modeled off Cage's x-rayed skull, so props for that.
Costume: The Ghost Rider costume is a nice mixture between CGI and practical. It is faithfully to how it looks in the comics, even if the actor player Johnny looks nothing like it. Blackheart looks nothing like he does in the comics and look like he belongs in Twilight, enough said and the same could be said for the devil who's 'true form' you never see, but you get a feeling of what he looks like from the stupid childish lightning shadow you see at the start of the movie.
Overall Feel: The director that created this movie also made Elektra and Daredevil, so I wasn't holding too much faith out for this movie mainly because of how poor both of those superhero movies were. IMDb also mentions that Cage added some parts to the script, those parts are easy to notice because they are generally the parts which do not make sense or make the movie lose all credibility or sense of seriousness. But the movie is only worth it for the Ghost Rider scenes, but if you're a fan of Nick Cage you'll enjoy this movie. This could have been the most BA B-list Marvel movie of it's time, but it was mostly wasted potential and trust me, they didn't learn their lesson as the sequel is even worse.