A sad testament to the power of mass-marketing

Rating: 3/10 (19 June 2007)

It was fashionable for a while in artsy communities to say 'Painting is dead', because while many paintings were being produced and sold, all the paintings were supposedly relying on the same clichés, the same themes and flourishes. Ghost Rider suggests to me that while film is not dead---plenty of brilliant stuff is still out there being made--- the 'Hollywood blockbuster' is dead.
Plenty of enjoyable, decent movies have been made from characters and plot-lines developed out of comic books over the last few years. Even some of the weaker ones have at least been interesting stylistically (like Sin City, for instance). What is incredible about Ghost Rider is that it fails despite having everything in it's favor. It's not justifiable by saying 'Well, it was a comic book'---- So? In many ways, this is to the favor of any comic book movie, since the film-makers can select the most interesting elements of an already developed mythology to work with. The Ghost Rider was an interesting comic-book character, certainly more so in the second incarnation (Which would have been a better movie, I'd say), and has long been championed by comic-book aficionados who consider heroes like Superman and Spiderman too 'mainstream' and simplistic. Thus, this movie already had an audience, had a dedicated, eager audience, and had dozens of interesting story lines to work with, and no excuse to suck as bad as it did. The blame for this film's failure cannot be put upon the comic book. It falls squarely on the script-writers and the 'acting'.
Instead of making a movie, the film-makers assembled a montage of 'action movie clichés' and tied them together with a feeble plot which, upon any scrutiny, is recognized as nearly nonexistent. Most of the problems with characters and plot have already been pointed out by other posters here, and so I'll only offer a few tangential bits of observation.
*SPOILERS FOLLOW* Some formulaic elements fall into an almost archetypal grey area of critique. For instance, almost any action movie relies on some 'sidekick' figure, a best friend of the protagonist, who provides comic relief and/or common sense to balance out the seriousness/passion of the protagonist. And it's quite formulaic to have this sidekick or friend get killed (or at least seriously hurt) by a bad guy, thus inciting the rage of the hero and driving him to 'beat the bad guys'. In Ghost Rider, the sidekick is dropped from the movie half-way through like useless baggage, brought back in a scene just to get killed, and is then unemotionally confirmed as dead by our hero. Even the most basic formulaic elements of film were marred by the script-writers.
Here's another bothersome observation: When the police detectives conclude that Blackheart's victims have been killed from sulfur toxicity, Eva Mendes quickly insists it's got to be 'religious' in nature. Since there's mention of brimstone in the Bible. Which is, as we all know, the only religion that exists. This actually really bothers me, not just because it's stupid, but because it bypasses all the other much more likely implications of reality in order to speed up the plot and confirm for the audience that everyone ought to know minor details of the Bible (here's another; brimstone was a divinely ordained punishment only God and his angels could inflict upon sinners and 'the fallen'. Not something that the devil or demons had use of due to proximity. Which is to say, it was their curse, not their power.) SPOILERS ARE SOMEWHAT OVER Then there's the matter of clichéd one liners. If they had been edited out of the film entirely, Ghost Rider would have been a very short movie, basically the credits and Nicholas cage posing in front of a mirror for three minutes.
The special effects are decent enough, but considering the budget, so what? There's more to criticize. So much more. In the end, what is really irksome about this film is it's self-indulgent assurance the audience is still watching it. At several points, for no reason, characters stare at the screen and roar/morph/talk simply to let the viewers see/hear 'how cool' it is. Bread and circuses, folks.
And, apparently, Alzheimer's. In one particular scene, we are given a 'flashback' to remind us of something that happened about fifteen minutes previous, which really doesn't require explanation, since it's so obvious. But then, just in case we forgot in the span of a second, we are immediately told of it again by our hero, relaying it to his apparently expendable and disregarded 'sidekick'. Why? I mean, seriously, why? Is the average American that lacking of an attention span? This movie was a waste of time. It confirms to me that the Hollywood Blockbuster is either dead or dying. With so much in it's favor, this movie fails to even present a glimmer of originality, instead relying on brainless 'cleverness' a step behind 'Mallrats'. At least 'Mallrats' recognized it was a comedy. Ghost Rider can't remember whether it is or not. And thus, in so many ways, is a tragedy. It was a film that was practically guaranteed to be a blockbuster. It was a chance to provide something new, something interesting, something that hadn't been done. But the film-makers and actors decided it was too much effort to give an audience something worthwhile, and instead felt compelled to feed them the same generic 'the self and love must be denied for masochistic sense of duty' crap. Which, by the way, is almost exactly the opposite of what the Ghost Rider comic book series was about.