Ghost Rider

Let me state something for the record. I am a Marvel zombie. I was one of the few people who bothered to list the high points of Fantastic Four. I preferred X-Men 3 over Superman. When it comes to comic books and comic-based movies, even though I no longer buy comic books, I still have an inordinate preference towards Marvel (though I still didn't bother with Elektra, The Punisher or the Man-Thing TV movie).

That said, I found Ghost Rider to be a terrible movie. I actually enjoyed myself laughing at how awful it was (more than at their numerous jokes) so fortunately I didn't waste my money, in a strange sense.

I was one of the few people happy to see Marvel Comics' hero Daredevil on the big screen, though I wasn't at all happy with Ben Affleck's performance, or the fact that the story didn't seem to make any sense beyond explaining how he got blinded and got his superpowers at the same time.

The fact that the writer/director of Daredevil, Mark Steven Johnson, was taking on another b-list Marvel hero, Ghost Rider, made me extremely leery of the film. I was assuaged a little by the early trailers featuring some stunning visual effects (particularly his flaming head), but when Sony made the decision to not screen the movie for critics that was a pretty big red alert for me.

Still, I went to see it, even after it had been almost universally panned by critics. After all, it now boasts Nicolas Cage's career-best opening, so I figured maybe the reviewers were just being the uptight, pretentious gits they often are.

Having seen it, I can now say that most of them were right on the money.

Holy cow, this movie was a stinker. Obviously, screenwriter (and director) Johnson wasn't taking the material seriously at all, and while there's nothing wrong with that, per se, it could have been done so much better. It was written as an action-comedy/western with a very slight touch of horror, but that didn't mean it had to be written so badly. The producers may have done well to drop David S. Goyer's script (as his last Blade movie was not only terrible, but a box-office failure as well), but if they had wanted decently-penned action comedy they should have picked up action-adventure go-to-guys Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, the writers of The Mask of Zorro and more significantly The Pirates of the Caribbean. Johnson's script was horrendous, with some of the most bloodcurdling lines I've heard since the "romantic" dialogue in the Star Wars prequels.

My wife didn't hate it, excusing its nightmarish narrative (and I don't mean that in a horror/gothic sense) by saying "well it's a comic book movie" thereby showing her disdain for the genre in general. See, this movie was okay to people who don't like comic books, which is a sad statement indeed.

I won't even bother summarizing it or going into plot points or anything beyond saying that it's about some stunt cyclist who made a deal with the devil (Peter Fonda), because the story was just so poorly structured even my barest description of it may expose all the holes, and I don't want to go through that again.

To be fair to Sony (though Sony should have been fair to us by giving us a real script), there are a couple of gems in this movie. I found myself feeling bad at how spectacular the effect of Nicolas Cage's head being digitally replaced with a flaming skull was; it was such a gripping visual for such a bad movie. All of the special effects related to the Rider himself were absolutely topnotch, which couldn't have been easy considering how unwieldy fire effects can be. At least they got this right; too bad they didn't focus on the story first. Also, Peter Fonda as Mephistopheles was, in a word, cool. I loved the way he played the devil; it's kind of like the way Morgan Freeman played God in Bruce Almighty, in that I could actually imagine the devil looking and talking just like him. Also, I did laugh at some of their jokes, though it was either do that or cry.

I like my comic-book movies the way I like my comics, tightly-scripted, with the right amount of humor, drama, pathos, and hard-hitting action. Give me the Spider-man films, the first two X-Men films or Batman Begins. Give me V for Vendetta or 300. Hell, give me the first two Blade films! Don't give me idiocy like this!

Memo to Marvel films: please, PLEASE do not inflict Mark Steven Johnson on any more of your characters.