Real disappointing.

Rating: 4/10 (30 June 2008)

Of course my expectations for this movie weren't too high but I figured that there would be no way the movie would be as bad as the critics made it sound it was. Well let me tell you that "Ghost Rider" is just as bad as everyone makes it out to be.
The main story had me confused at first and it was hard to figure out who all these characters were. At first I seriously thought that the Blackheart character was a young Johnny Blaze and the scenes involving him were flashbacks of what happened when Johnny had just sold his soul to the devil. Yeah, call me stupid but it wasn't until when Blackheart and Johnny Blaze were for the first time in a sequence together that I realized they were completely different characters. But also when things were 'clear' to me the story remained bad. The story is totally not engaging and it lacked some fundamental things such as a strong good and interesting superhero villain and other characters. Some of the characters that get introduced in the movie suddenly disappear out of the movie, despite showing some potential. Nevertheless "Ghost Rider" manages to still put in all of the other clichés you could expect from a 'superhero' movie, based on a comic book character. It's really a shallow movie to watch, that offers nothing new to the genre and on top of that is made with less quality and style than other recent and more successful attempts.
The special effects weren't much good. Well, perhaps the special effects are not that bad but they just got overused so much in so many different sequences, often leaving nothing more but a pointless impression, plus the fact that the CGI look for the Ghost Rider was just rather fake looking at times. It at least didn't met up with the usual 2007 standards.
It's not that I'm a Nicolas Cage hater but he just wasn't good for the role. Also the entire love story between him and the Eva Mendes character is hardly convincing and really doesn't work out also due to the lack of chemistry. The movie further more also features movie veterans Peter Fonda and Sam Elliott. Most of the other actors don't really know to impress in the movie though.
Despite that the movie featured lots of pace and action, the movie still feels like a real lackluster. It lacks one big good fight and instead features little action bits all the time, which are only leaving you hungry for more instead.
With a different director and certainly a better script, the Ghost Rider character and franchise still show potential. Let's hope that those involved shall realize this as well and "Ghost Rider 2", which is currently in its early production stages, will be a more interesting and better movie to watch, or at least more entertaining.
4/10
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