Ghost Rider
Reviewed by Edward Larsen Terkelsen

USA, PG-13, 114m, 2007
Directed by Mark Steven Johnson. Stars Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Peter Fonda, et al.

Movies and graphic novels tell stories in a very like manner, so why marriages between the two mediums seldom work out is a question that should confound even Dr. Phil. Though a few comic book movies have transcended their origins (Batman Begins, Superman), most others either unquestioningly tag on their source material (Sin City, Spider-Man) or foolishly abandon their roots all together (Catwoman, The Punisher). Still, every now and again a comic book movie comes along that forgoes pretension and observes the simple saddle-stitched fun of a young (mostly American) male’s preferred reading material. Tim Story’s Fantastic Four would be a good example. (The only way it could have been truer to “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” was if there had been word balloons floating over the characters’ heads.) And I think Ghost Rider also fits into this category. For better or worse, it taps into the spirit of one of Marvel Comic’s most absurd second-tier superheroes—so much so that I kept half-expecting some Roy Lichtenstein-style “Pow!” and “Zap!” graphics to pop up on the screen during the movie’s action sequences. 

Superhero movies have seen a big revival of late, what with popular costumed crime-fighters like the X-Men and Spider-Man becoming reliable tent poles for their respective studios. I just can’t figure out why it took so long for a colossally popular comic book icon like ol’ Web-Head to sling his sticky mesh across the silver screen. (Too bad the first installment of the gazillion-dollar-grossing franchise was such a lackluster affair. You’d have thought an idiosyncratic talent like Sam Raimi could’ve pumped some life into the musty yarn.) Was the long absence of superheroes in the multiplex due to pre-CGI SPFX artists not having the stuff to pull off stunts like a leotard-clad extra-terrestrial leaping tall buildings in a single bound, or a big-brained scientist transforming into a monosyllabic, muscle-bound ogre? Wait a sec… Those tricks were carried out long before Hollywood looked to the Mac as its great salvation; the pixel-heads that have since taken over the industry have nothing on old school effects wizards like John P. Fulton and Douglas Trumbull. (Even if their effects didn’t always come off, you still had fun in wondering how they did it. But that sense of wonder has gone glimmering since the studio honchos gave Hal fucking 9000 carte blanche to run the effects department.)  The in-camera effects in Richard Donner’s Superman were far more convincing than the computer-generated tricks that made up Bryan Singer’s bloodless Superman Returns, and a hearing-impaired body-builder painted green in the ‘70s television series “The Incredible Hulk” made for a far more sympathetic monster than the animated Shrek look-alike that Ang Lee gave us in Hulk. Well, whatever the reason behind Hollywood’s initial reluctance to pull from the comic book catalog, the studios have recently gone hog-wild in exploiting DC and Marvel’s A-list roster of heroes (Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Hulk, et al), leaving fans clamoring for big-screen treatments of even the publishers’ less-than-stellar B-list characters. This brings us to Ghost Rider, a pretty silly character even by Marvel’s standards. But I think most of us can agree that the guy looks pretty cool. After all, his flaming skull has been permanently inked on many a bicep in the white trash community.

The character of Ghost Rider was reworked several times before he was stripped to the bone and outfitted in a black leather jumpsuit (modeled after the one Elvis wore in his ’67 comeback TV special) for Marvel Comics in 1972. He first appeared in Magazine Enterprises’ western comic Tim Holt (inspired by the cowboy movie star of the same name) circa 1949. Created by writer Ray Krank and artist Dick Ayers, this earliest of Ghost Riders was the secret identity of federal marshal Rex Fury. (His previous assumed role was the Calico Kid, a nomadic gunslinger with a Chinese sidekick named Sing Song.) Dressed in a white ensemble (fashioned from phosphorous so he’d glow in the dark), Ghost Rider would patrol the Old West atop his white horse, Specter, and take down outlaws (and the occasional werewolf) with a mean crack of his bullwhip.  He went on to be prominently featured in magazine enterprises’ A-1 Comics, but after the implementation of the Comics Code Authority in 1954, Ghost Rider’s horror-themed adventures were suspended. Alas, Magazine Enterprises went belly-up in 1958, and after the trademark on Ghost Rider lapsed in 1967, Ayers joined the folks at Marvel in re-launching the character in a new, more kid-friendly series. The defanged strips ran for just under a year before Ghost Rider was reassigned to the anthology series Western Gunfighters. Eventually, the character’s moniker was changed to Night Rider after Marvel’s supernatural Ghost Rider blazed his “Hell Cycle” into comic book stores. (Night Rider would continue galloping through the Deadlands, though his name was hurriedly changed to Phantom Rider when it was discovered that his previous handle was sometimes used to refer to members of the Ku Klux Klan.) First appearing in 1972 in Marvel Spotlight (which also introduced the likes of Spider-Woman and Werewolf by Night), the Ghost Rider that we all know and love today was conceived by writers Roy Thomas and Gary Friedrich and artist Mike Ploog. (Ploog is best known for his work on Man-Thing and the stunning Monster of Frankenstein series.) When I was a barefoot boy with cheek of tan, Ghost Rider was my favorite Marvel character after the Hulk. Like the Green Goliath, G.R. wasn’t your usual caped do-gooder; he was an anti-heroic monster. And as kid weaned on Universal creeps like Dracula and the Wolf-Man, I really dug monsters.  

Some find Ghost Rider’s back-story to be the stuff of a dim-witted high schooler’s pot-induced daydream, but you can’t expect Goethe when your protagonist has a flaming skull for a head. According to the comics, our hero, Johnny Blaze, was born to Barton Blaze and Naomi Kale. He spent his formative years in a traveling circus where his parents starred in a motorcycle stunt show with Craig “Crash” Simpson. But poor Johnny was orphaned after his moms took off and his daddy perished in a stunt. “Crash” and his wife, Mona, adopted Johnny, and in time made him part of the show. But soon “Crash” became stricken with a terminal illness. In order to spare his adopted father from the Grim Reaper’s scythe, Johnny turned to the black arts with the hope of striking a deal with Satan. But Johnny must’ve miffed the incantation (à la Bruce “Don’t Call Me Ash” Campbell in Army of Darkness) for he unwittingly called up a demon named Mephisto instead. Johnny pledged eternal servitude to the fiend, so freeing “Crash” from his death sentence. But the poor old bastard wound up buying the farm anyway after he blew a stunt that involved taking his bike over 22 cars. This didn’t absolve Johnny of his debt to Mephisto; he would remain the demon’s bitch. (A deal’s a deal, I guess, even if it’s made with a shitbird from the lowest depth of Hades.) Johnny’s soul, however, was safe from Mephisto’s meat hooks. You see, the love that Johnny’s stepsister, Roxanne, felt for him was so deep that it kept Mephisto at bay. But Mephisto had the last laugh by uniting Johnny’s soul with the sprite of vengeance, Zanathos. From there on out, Johnny would transform every night into Ghost Rider, a blazing skeleton who’d tool around back alleys on a flame-engulfed motorcycle and smite naughty-heads with a chain of hellfire. It’s never made much sense to me as to why a demonic entity would provide powers for a mortal to go off and fight evil with. I mean, how in the hell could Hell benefit from that?  

Ghost Rider was retired in 1983 due to lackluster sales, but in time fanboy wistfulness compelled the resurrection of Hell’s skiptracer, so he was given another go at the comic book racks in 1990. This time the curse of the Ghost Rider was inflicted upon Daniel Ketch, who was eventually revealed to be Johnny’s long-lost half-brother. A couple more takes on the Ghost Rider legend followed the retirement of the Ketch series, affording the makers of the new Ghost Rider movie a wealth of canon to draw from. They’ve taken some of the more inspired bits from the myriad volumes and worked them into a script that plugs at least a few of the original story’s holes.  

Ghost Rider’s feature film debut generated some negative buzz before its release on account of its studio not pre-screening it for critics. I’m not sure what the filmmakers were worried about; it’s a fun movie. Directed by Mark Steven Johnson, Ghost Rider stays pretty faithful to the origin of its titular anti-hero as outlined in Marvel’s first supernatural Ghost Rider series. As with any initial installment in a potential franchise, there’s a bit of exposition to slog through before we can start having some fun. For the sake of time (and clarity), the story here has been abridged and smartened up: Young Johnny Blaze (Matt Long) and his father, Barton Blaze (Brett Cullen), are a hit on the carnival circuit with their motorcycle stunt show. But Johnny wants more out of life than leaping through rings of fire, so he’s thinking of splitting the scene with his inamorata, Roxanne (Raquel Alessi). His plan is delayed, though, when he accidentally learns his father is dying from cancer. (It’s suggested pop smoked one too many fags, following a new trend in Hollywood pictures [that includes another comic book-based flick, Constantine] to de-glamorize smoking.) One dark and stormy night, a well-dressed Mephistopheles (Captain America himself, Peter Fonda) sashays onto the fairgrounds, and offers to restore Barton’s health in exchange for Johnny’s soul. Johnny signs on the contract’s dotted line with his own blood, and his father is spared from the “Big C.” But as the kindly narrator of Babe: Pig in the City taught us, “fate turns on a dime, dear ones,” and Barton joins the angels after the Devil directs a routine stunt to go horribly awry. Despondent, Johnny hits the road, leaving behind the carnival and Roxanne. But the Devil is waiting for him down the road to remind him that he can’t outrun his obligations. One day he’ll be calling on Johnny to pay his debt.  

We jump forward to the present day. A much older Johnny (played by Nicolas Cage, managing to look much younger with the help of an artfully positioned hairpiece) is now a renowned motorcycle daredevil, routinely playing fast and loose with his life (which is actually being watched over by a certain dark lord looking to protect his investment) in the name of topping his last big death-defying stunt. (His latest involves leaping a half-dozen Black Hawk helicopters with their blades a-spinning.) Johnny’s childhood honey, Roxanne, has grown up (and how) into a television reporter (played by Cuban-American beauty Eva Mendes), and she’s now after her old flame (tee hee) for an interview. Mephistopheles has shown back up in Johnny’s life, too, and he’s wanting to cash in his chips. But the devious SOB proposes to release Johnny’s soul if he performs a few tasks for him under the alias of Ghost Rider. It seems the Devil’s renegade pride and joy, Blackheart (Wes Bentley), has taken up with three elemental demons, and they’re all out to track down a contract that the Devil’s former Ghost Rider stole and hid away. That contract has a lease on a thousand wicked souls, so whoever possesses it can wield a force more evil than a Hollywood mogul. Naturally, Old Scratch wants Blackheart stopped before he can snag the contract and use it to bring on the End of Days and make the world over into the new Hell. Or something like that. So, Johnny is off to do the Devil’s bidding, but he also uses his newfound powers to clean the streets of its assorted sickies.  

When the sun turns in for the night and/or when the presence of evil looms, Johnny falls into smoky convulsions and mutates into his skeletal double. (The animation here of Ghost Rider’s signature fiery skull was modeled after X-rays of Cage’s own dome, but the actor doesn’t come through the effect, and he’s missed.) The uncanny bounty hunter races his flaming chopper through the city’s garbage-strewn mean streets (and sometimes up and down buildings), seeking out sinners to thrash. The fights aren’t as inventive as you’d like, but even more disappointing is that Ghost Rider isn’t given any good one-liners to snarl at the bad guys. I wanted to hear some of the groan-inducing puns Arnold Schwarzenegger and Clint Eastwood used to torture their adversaries with. (Remember in Commando when Arnie thrust a pipe into the chest of a Freddy Mercury look-alike and said, “Let off a little steam”? Ah, ‘twas pure poetry.) Ghost Rider isn’t a sadistic avenger like Darkman or Toxie; his mission is to make the wicked see the error of their ways. One effective method is to use the “Care Bear Stare,” er, I mean the “Penance Stare,” which forces the subject to bear all the distress he’s caused his victims. Ghost Rider, his black eye sockets flickering with the agony of Hell, will point a bony digit at this or that creep and roar, “You: guilty!”  Sure, taking down a purse-snatcher or a pederast is no more of a test of our hero’s might than asking Superman to pull Frisky the Cat out of an old oak tree, but Ghost Rider is saving his most potent cans of whoop-ass for Blackhearts’s demonic posse: Gressil, Abigor and Wallow. 

After being banished from Heaven, Gressil and his evil brethren fell into the Earth so hard that they merged with its elements. Gressil did Pig Pen one better by actually turning into dirt, Abigor found himself commanding all the powers of the Anemoi, and Wallow made a big splash by becoming one with the universal solvent. Now, you’d think any one of these guys could give Ghostie a run for his money, but he dispatches of them without breaking a sweat. (Although that in itself would be quite a trick seeing how he has no skin and thus no pores.)  Blackheart proves a little more challenging, though fans of the comic book might be disappointed to see him changed from a red-eyed, spine-covered beast to a sneering punk in a dirty Matrix-style duster. Still, this stripped-down Blackheart can whip up some pretty nasty displays of evil.  

As Johnny Blaze, Nic Cage is back to aping The King, though the impression has become less broad since Wild at Heart. An admitted comic book fan (he borrowed his own showbiz surname from Luke Cage and named his son Kal-El), Cage doesn’t approach Ghost Rider as just another paycheck; he’s as committed to the character of Johnny Blaze as anything else he’s played. Although some of his peers might feel this product is beneath him, I’m happy that Cage has finally made his comic book movie. He was tapped to play Superman for director Tim Burton, but the project fell apart for a number of reasons. (Both parties were fully compensated, though.) I think Cage’s off-beat style is better suited to Ghost Rider than the Man of Steel anyhow; it’s hard to imagine the actor taking on the buttoned-up demeanor of Clark Kent or the Christ-like dimensions of Kent’s alter-ego. But Cage’s outlaw allure is right in step with a chain-wielding biker, so seeing his hound dog mug replaced by a CGI death’s-head in Ghost Rider’s big action scenes feels like a bit of a gyp. I realize that it would’ve been difficult to render all this craziness on the screen before the advent of CGI, but stop-motion animation or even puppetry might’ve given Ghost Rider a more comical dimension. (Think Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy.) Still, the SPFX on display have a slight cheesiness about them, adding to the picture’s appropriately cartoonish milieu. 

It may have struck the filmmakers as an inspired move when they cast Peter Fonda to play Mephistopheles, but he’s really not right for the role. I can see Hank’s firstborn as, say, a free-wheeling hippy, but as the king of the underworld he leaves a little to be desired. I’m not sure how he passed the screen test (if he even had one); he’s neither menacing nor seductive. (Check out Robert De Niro in Angel Heart or Al Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate to see how it should be done.) Other cast members fare a bit better, particularly Eva Mendes. She first caught my eye as the girlfriend to Denzel Washington’s scummy copper in Training Day, but Ghost Rider shows that she’s a bona fide actress that can juggle comedy and drama with the best of them. (The director, though, seems more interested in her cleavage.) Sam Elliot is also on hand as the Caretaker, aka Carter Slade, a sort of homage to the aforementioned Phantom Rider. Actually, the Caretaker was introduced in the 1990 Ghost Rider series, and his leathery appearance was, ironically, based upon Sam Elliot. (Mind, the Caretaker and Carter Slade are not the same character in the Marvel Comics universe.) The Caretaker watches over an old graveyard, and when he’s not breaking up earth or spitting tobacco, he’s giving advice to Johnny. Elliot also serves as the movie’s narrator, his gravely “Beef, It’s What’s for Dinner” voice lending a nice cowpoke quality to the dusty Sergio Leone meets Hammer Films proceedings. 

Johnson seems to have a real affection for comic books (he also directed Daredevil), but his approach here is largely nondescript, by-the-numbers. On the upside, if Ghost Rider becomes a franchise, the filmmakers can take what worked in this installment and build upon it in the sequel. (Tim Burton improved upon Batman with Batman Returns, and Sam Raimi finally did that wall-crawling menace justice in Spider-Man 2, but Johnson just might top them both as he has a much stronger jumping off point.) Still, what we do get in Ghost Rider is just the right stuff to wile away a rainy afternoon. Just don’t go expecting high art. This is fast food cinema. You wouldn’t go to McDonald’s and ask for a filet mignon, so you shouldn’t go to Ghost Rider looking for Faust.  

May 15, 2007 

Ó Copyright 2007 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.