s 1 of 2 scheduled reboots
Author: nvjs from United States
27 June 2012
Johnson must be a fan of Uwe Boll or the last thing he watched before taking on this project, was of Boll's. This crap resulted in a "reboot" which wasn't much better, and Daredevil which is also up for an overhaul. Not a good batting average. The "plot" for this movie was lackluster at best. The acting by Wes Bentley was horrid and I believe it's 50/50 director and actor's fault.Bentley obvious wasn't concerned about his performance or watched his dailies to adjust his "method" or "approach". Even worse is the awful grating of Ghost Rider's "voice". Sounds like Ghost Rider has a carton a day habit. Then there's Eva Mendes trying to make the best out of a bad project along with Cage. But this movie is just inexcusable for looking like a 20 million dollar flick with a supposed 80+ million budget. I think Johnson spent it all on Cage's hairpiece.
3 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
The critics are right
Author: pninson from Seattle, Washington
11 March 2007
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
This was one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time. The setup is OK (the "origin")but there's no follow-through. The movie is essentially plot less, and the villains are stick figures who are easily dispatched. Wes Bentley, burdened with some awful makeup and tricked up to look like a pasty-faced Elvis impersonator, is given little to do. He is never threatening and our hero (so to speak) has little trouble wrapping things up.
Ghost Rider tries to be funny, with some howlingly bad dialogue (I admit, I laughed most of the way through, which has to count for something), but it's never more than a caricature of itself. Even a comic book movie has to have something for the audience to identify with. Spider Man 2 was a strong picture largely because Alfred Molina's characterization of Doctor Octopus had a human dimension.
Yes, character and story matter even in "fun" pictures. There's little to enjoy here other than some visual effects, and that's not worth the price of a movie ticket. I was ready to leave an hour before it ended; it is that boring.
As for the adaptation, I'm not a purist, but there was nothing of what made the comic book exciting (at least in the first couple of years). Gary Friedrich and Mike Ploog, who created the character, put him in a situation in which he was struggling for redemption. There's no sense of any tension between good and evil in the movie; it's just Cage being doggedly Cage-ish and wisecracking his way through a limp, lifeless, by-the-numbers formula picture.
I'd rate this one at the bottom of the heap for the genre. I can forgive lapses in logic and corny dialogue, but just don't bore me. That's all I ask. Ghost Rider darned near put me to sleep.
4 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Heartless
Author: Cheese Hoven from United Kingdom
18 December 2009
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
At various points during this movie, the trite villain Blackheart kills people in cold blood by pushing his icy fingers in their hearts. This frozen emptiness where the heart should be in a way sums up this dreadful adaptation. Blackheart murders many people in cold blood and we, the audience, are not supposed to feel anything about it. By far the worst instance of this is when (Ghost Rider) Johnny Blaze's best friend (and the one character in the whole film who is sympathetically drawn) is murdered in said fashion in front of GR. GR sheds no tears about him and he is never again even mentioned. His death and those of others has no other function but merely to show us the badness of Blackheart who would otherwise be a faintly comical white-faced Goth. This callousness extends elsewhere in the movie. At the start, Johnny Blaze's dad is killed by Mephistopheles after being on screen for what must be less than a minute in total and speaking about two sentences. Since we do not see the bond between father and son, the father's death, which is of cardinal importance to the storyline, is thus robbed of any emotional power beyond Johnny's melodramatic scream of "nooooooo"! Likewise perfunctory is the treatment of Johnny's girl, Roxanne, which in some ways is the most hilarious aspect of this unintentionally funny film. Having watched Johnny diligently carved "Johnny & Roxanne 4 ever" in a tree, she then informs him she has to leave him at her parents request. He objects and suggests they ride off together into the sunset. However, at the appointed time, and having become the devil's apprentice, he leaves her standing under the tree.
This frankly makes little sense, but worse is to come.
A year having passed but everyone having aged at least 20 years, she is now a TV reporter while Johnny is a stunt cyclist. An inept comedy sequence ensues with Johnny eventually getting a date. Alas, he finds himself turning to fire (Not surprising considering Nicholas Cage's wooden performance) and goes on his first Ghost ride, leaving her in the lurch yet again.
Roxanne turns up at his place the next day (somehow getting in-) and throws herself at him! He then reveals his is the emissary of Satan which has her leaving yet again.
An odd scene with Blaze being arrested and thus having to reluctantly fight prisoners is next. It is hilarious and I wonder if it is not some kind of tribute to a similar scene in the even more inept Death Wish 3 film?
Another ghost ride ensues with the usual clichés -swat teams, helicopters, etc. This is of course witnesses by Roxanne who realises at once that the flaming headed cyclist is actually her Johnny. Blackheart notices this and announces "now we know his weakness. Hmmmmm." a classic of movie badness.
I could go on. The script is so inept that you wonder if anyone actually read it. We are supposed to have a villain who has acquired a power so potent that it can literally bring about Hell on Earth yet Ghost Rider is able to defeat him ....
...by looking him in the eye!
4 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
One of the worst comic-adaptions ever
Author: sisko42 from Germany
8 July 2009
Watched it last evening on DVD. There's not much to say about this catastrophe. But know this: Bad Screenplay(poor dialogs that hurt your ears), a lot of unfavorable camera-angles(my father would do a better job with his old super8-cam), real bad directing(a lot of scenes are unintentional funny), and on top of this the worst performance of Nicolas Cage to this date(most of the time his face looks like somebody smashed his brain out. You think a stone would trick him). Unfortunately this Extended Cut makes this film not better, but extends the pain to watch. Ghost Rider rides with ease in my personal Top 20 of the worst movies of all time. You've been warned!
4 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
One of the Worst Superhero Films To Date...
Author: fearfulofspiders from United States
5 September 2008
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Right up there with the Fantastic Four movies, Daredevil, and The Hulk, Ghost Rider is easily one of the worst superhero films to date.
From cheesy dialogue to an uninteresting superhero and villain, this film just does nothing for the audience... nothing.
As a superhero, our title character is arguably the most dull and uninteresting of all the Marvel icons. Ghost Rider, as a concept and as a whole, is l-a-m-e.
Nick Cage's performance is once again in that depressed monotone voice of his, as he sleepwalks through this role. Eva Mendez is equally terrible, as well as the unknown people in the background -- and especially the "villain".
The script is weak, and the direction rivals that of a Paul W.S. Anderson work of crap.
The music is one I'd stomp on the floor repeatedly for its uninspired sound and nonsensical composition.
All in all, this is at the bottom of the barrel as far as action/superhero/and origin stories go. Definitely skip out on seeing Ghost Rider.
6 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Queasy Rider
Author: dunmore_ego from Los Angeles, California
1 August 2008
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
If there's another word for idiocy, I think that word is GHOST RIDER.
Sloppy editing, directionless direction and idiotic writing make this the number one feel-retarded movie of the year. And Nicolas Cage in eternal mourning-faced mode as the Ghost Rider doesn't help any. He is stunt biker, Johnny Blaze, employed by the devil (Peter Fonda, embarrassing himself) to stop the devil's son dominating the world. Oh yeh, and when he turns into Ghost Rider, his head turns into a flaming skull. For no reason other than it looks kinda cool.
Sam Elliott lends his balls-grit voice to the narration and appears as a supernatural gravedigger, but even that compounds the stupidity. His first lines narrate how every generation spawns a Ghost Rider, whose job is to collect souls sold to Satan. Okay, nice premise – now start confusing me… Seems the Wild West Ghost Rider (from the 1800s, I'm guessing) "outran the devil himself" because he didn't want to collect 1000 souls on one particularly meaty contract.
Where to start with the stupid questions, knowing there'll be stupid answers at the end of all of them? Is it within the Ghost Rider's capacity to discern how many souls the devil should be bagging? He's just an apprehender, a bounty hunter; it's like bequeathing that redneck moron Dog the Bounty Hunter or one of those Nazi cops from COPS jurisprudence and the ability to execute sentences on nothing but their own cognizance, when we all know they are merely apprehenders with zero powers or intelligence beyond clicking on cuffs.
So what about the Rules for Supernatural Beings? How fast can the devil run? And since the Ghost Rider is a supernatural being himself, how fast was HE actually running to outrun the devil? And was he galloping across desert plains, or in some other dimension? If in some other dimension, were they "running" physically - with feet touching the ground for traction, or in some invisible medium? Any answers from geekboys forthcoming?
Every single minute of GHOST RIDER raises more idiotic questions about supernatural rules. For example, the GHOST RIDER is a supernatural being, so when evil supernatural beings fight him (beings fashioned from earth, air, fire and water), why do they bother punching each other? They're not operating on the same rules we are in the physical plane – for cryin' out loud, when a truck runs into the Ghost Rider he is unharmed, so why does the being made of water even *think* that he could debilitate him by PUNCHING? Or hanging him by the neck with a chain?
Later, a supernatural being made of wind laughs when Ghost Rider tries to punch him, then he eats crow when the Rider whirls his whip around and somehow creates a vortex of fire that sucks the wind being into nothingness. Riiiiight…..
At one point, like some kind of superhero, Ghost Rider saves a girl from a pursesnatcher and then condemns the pursesnatcher to hell as if he had lied Amerika into a false Iraq war, causing the deaths of 100,000 people and consigning Amerika to a trillion-dollar debt which four generations would have to shoulder. It's the SUPERMAN conundrum: while he saves a cat in a tree, a million African children die for want of diverting a river to save their village. Get your priorities right, Bonehead!
Marvel really screwed the pooch with this D-Lister; Stan Lee didn't even bother making a cameo. The origin tale works gangbusters as a comicbook, but in this age of semi-realism in Marvel films (SPIDERMAN, X-MEN, PUNISHER), GHOST RIDER gasps for credibility with its insanely convoluted mythical storyline and rule-less landscape.
Frumpy Eva Mendez is Johnny Blaze's long-suffering romantic interest, Wes Bentley gives a pointless performance as the devil's son, and Donal Logue tries overacting to save the movie. Didn't work, but at least he's got some cheese for his demo reel.
I'm ashamed to call myself a Ghost Rider fan...
Author: Slevin Kelevra from United States
3 April 2014
The fear I have whenever I say "I'm a fan of Ghost Rider" stems from the thought that people who do not know the comics will think I'm a fan of these movies. This is one of the worst comic book movies of all time. Captain America with Reb Brown? No, bad but fun to watch. The Captain America movie from 1990? Close but... not the worst. The original Avengers movie from 1998? Easily 2nd place. No this Ghost Rider movie takes that title. Because we didn't expect those other movies to be any good. Ghost Rider on the other hand had every chance to be a good a movie. It's not hard to make a good Ghost Rider movie, your character is a flaming skull... that should be instant awesome but no this movie goes out of it's way to spit on the fans.
Before I tear this movie a new ***hole let me say what I like about it. The visuals were about the greatest part of the movie. They did capture Ghost Rider comics very well, because the concept art, props, characters and settings all came from the only department with people who actually work on comic books. Everyone else were a bunch of Hollywood snobs. So the Rider's bike, the Ghost Rider himself, the Phantom Rider (the original Ghost Rider that looked like a cowboy) and his demonic horse were all visually amazing.
That's it, even when they have something awesome they make sure to destroy it as fast as possible. I'll sum up the entire movie in one scene: The Ghost Rider and the Phantom Rider are about to head off to the final confrontation. The Phantom Rider says he's coming with Johnny Blaze and they take off together making one of the most visually awesome build ups to an ending. The Phantom Rider... A flaming skull under a cowboy hat riding atop a flaming demonic horse riding next to The Ghost Rider on his flaming demonic motorcycle. The level of awesome this is cannot be described... and what happens? Right before the battle they stop and the Phantom Rider says he can't go any further then just leaves?! That was his last transformation really? He couldn't wait till they got there then transform so he could actually help in the fight. They tease you into thinking a demonic cowboy with his signature flaming whip and hellfire revolver is going to team up with a demonic biker with his flaming chain... but no that scene would be too good for this movie. It would actually make the movie awesome, so they didn't want to do that. He just rides there and ****s off.
There's Ghost Rider in a nutshell. Visually building you up and then completely ruining it with stupidity. A massive disappointment, and I didn't even go into the fact that they completely destroyed the comic book lore and re-writing everything to fit their stupidity. If you say "Well the Phantom Rider only had a little more juice and he just wanted to ride there, they travel faster when they're transformed so if he didn't it would take forever" No no... no. Ghost Rider doesn't have juice, he's a demonic being under the control of the devil who breaks his control and thus serves under the body he is in, Johnny Blaze. There is no juice, power level, it's not a super power the Ghost Rider is a being. So the Ghost Rider can't be in two bodies at once, but I was willing to let that major screw up slide had they joined the two together in combat to team up. They did nothing, it was a trailer shot. You got tricked, they already had your money... screw you leave the movie early if you want we already got paid. And that is EXACTLY what they did, the proof is in the trailer for Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance. They trick you into thinking it's going to be a good movie leave you with nothing but pretty visuals.
Ghost Rider 2 Spirit of Vengeance turns out to be worse. The Ghost Rider with blue fire is a COMPLETELY different person, Johnny Blaze isn't the Ghost Rider with blue fire. He's the next Ghost Rider after Johnny Blaze and his name is Daniel. And they had a character named Danny to trick you even more. Spirit of Vengeance isn't the Ghost Rider either he's a villain in the comics. But according to the movie's story Johnny Blaze is still the Ghost Rider only now the Ghost Rider has blue fire cause he's the Spirit of Vengeance? That's like saying Superman is Lex Luthor, that's like taking The Joker and revealing it's been Batman all along! It's BULL**** They knew they were tricking you into thinking it was going to be a good movie, they knew we all thought Nicholas Cage was being replaced with a new Ghost Rider. I'm going to do the Rider justice and burn this decrepit movie and pee on it's ashes. Oh my god that reminded me Ghost Rider pees fire in the sequel.... AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I HATE THESE MOVIES!
terrible.
Author: drkilljoy731
22 January 2014
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
I was forced to see this and the behest of a family member. I didn't think it would be very good but didn't think my eyes would be sodomized that hard. The acting especially of the bad guys is as hammy as a Smithfield ham. The visuals were pretty good for the time looked nice. The plot points are horrific I mean when I found out the main demon was the devils son I nearly died from the cliché. Especially when it was disclosed by the actor finishing a statement with the word father. It was as cheesy and stupid as it sounded. I would continue to beat this movie down but i don't want to remember it anymore. It may be irrational but i absolutely hate this movie and wish i could give it no stars ,and have it end up on the bottom 100 list.
1 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Mark Steven Johnson: Please Stop Making Movies
Author: mike-downing-1 from United States
26 April 2012
Until now, I thought Daredevil was the worst movie I had ever seen. Then I watched Ghost Rider. The connection: Mark Steven Johnson wrote both screenplays. I'm angry because this guy keeps taking these comic books and ruining them on the big screen (compare Sam Raimi and Mark Steven Johnson and you'll understand my point).
I'm a professional writer with a life-long passion for comic books, and I can tell you that, when done properly, comic books are written tightly. They should keep you on the edge of your seat. Unfortunately, Ghost Rider is incredibly slow. It actually made me angry to see any semblance of good, tight writing ignored and replaced with stunts and special effects.
Ugh. Don't waste your time with this one. I hope Marvel and DC don't give this guy access to any other titles in the catalog.
