Great for Comic Book Fans

Rating: 9/10 (17 February 2007)

Two things I said about this movie before it came out:
1. I don't care if it's good, I still want to see it. 2. I've been waiting for this movie since I was ten years old.
Ghost Rider is the latest of the Marvel Comic movies and happens to be one of the comic books I read when I was a kid. So it appeals very well to the ten year old in me. I'm not sure if it's among the best Marvel Comic movies -- like the Spider Man films, which are strong in plot and character -- but it's certainly among the coolest. The defining moment in the film for me was Johnny Blaze's (perf. Nicholas Cage) first sight of the chopper given to him by Mephistopheles. First thought: wow, that's a really cool chopper. Shortly afterwards we watched it transform into the Ghost Rider chopper. Second thought: woah, that's a totally cool chopper.
If you're not an adolescent boy or at least have some adolescent boy in you, you're just not going to appreciate this film.
Once you get past the basic I-sold-my-soul-to-the-devil-and-now-regret-it plot, the film is mostly a sequence of cool scene after cool scene. I'd describe some of them, but many are dependent upon surprises that make the coolness possible. As an adolescent boy film, it shares the same adolescent view of sexuality present in all Marvel films: the male hero's love interest primarily exists to quell the rage of the angry young man, who had a strained relationship with his father (or father figure) and none with his mother, who is usually dead. This is the case with the Hulk, the Punisher (dead wife), Spider Man, and now the Ghost Rider, at least -- maybe the Daredevil too, but I don't recall offhand. Seeking a replacement for an absent mother is the driving force behind the male hero's emotional life. In Marvel films this device pushes many of the films to the point of emotional cliché. Significantly, the first two Spider Man movies seem to downplay this element (though I suspect it will exist in full force in the next one) and the male hero is more interesting as a result.
But forget all that. If you're entertained by cool films, cool action, and cool choppers, don't miss this one. I do have to give the filmmakers credit, though: this latest cool chopper film brought back an actor from the first really big cool chopper film: Peter Fonda in Easy Rider. I just wish they'd let the Devil ride a Harley; maybe have a showdown with the Ghost Rider on his chopper in the end. That would have been the ultimate in cool.
Maybe it'll be in the next Ghost Rider movie.