Great Ideas that just didn't connect

Rating: 7/10 (20 June 2007)

Overall, I like the movie. It appears very tough to make a great comic book superhero action movie. It was 22 plus years between Superman 2 and Spiderman, so you know it isn't easy. Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns were really, really close to being great. X-Men was just below those. I would ranked this one just above Daredevil and Elektra, although it is hard to resist Jennifer Garner in red.
It was OK. Not the best, but I like Nick Cage and Eva Mendes, although maybe not together. Their chemistry lacked. I blame writers, directors, Cage or story lines, because Eva has a smile that melts steel. The other actors were very good. Peter Fonda as the Devil and Brett Cullen as Johnny Blaze's father were excellent. The other bads were effectively bad and creepy. Sam Elliot was excellent as always, but the part they wrote for him could have been better. Donal Logue and the crew should have been used to help us care a little more for Cage's character.
My kids got me the extended video. It was much creepier than I thought it would be, which is good, unless young kids are watching. I think they did the whole skull on fire thing as best as they could. You can't give a straight skull much expression without animating the eyes, brows and cheeks. And because of that, the body with the skull attached to it seemed a lot like a Scooby Doo villain, which became more acceptable as time went one or I imagine you hated the movie.
Overall, I liked it. The action was cheesy fun, acting was fine, the bad guys sufficiently creepy and it appeared to follow the Ghost Rider legend.