Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

Originally posted on my blog, The Comics Cove, not too long ago...

I'll be upfront about the premise of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. It's an over-the-top, none too well thought out excuse for a dark fantasy action movie. Don't go into this expecting to see a good adaptation of a comic book hero. You'll be much better off if you go in expecting a so-so special effects action film with a flimsy pretense at being dark that just happens to be using the somewhat recognizable figure from the Marvel Comics pantheon of heroes.

Billed as a sequel to the 2007 film, also starring Cage, we find that time has not been kind to Johnny Blaze since he decided to use Ghost Rider to continue his personal vendetta against the Devil (played in this film with deadened, ineffectual scowls by Ciaran Hinds). Hiding out in Europe, Blaze is approached by a wine-loving, motorcycle riding man named Moreau (Idris Elba, playing his second Marvel movies character after Heimdall in last year's Thor), who seeks his help in tracking down and protecting a young boy name Danny, who is apparently intended as a vessel through which the Devil can attain his full powers on Earth--if he can be properly sacrificed and possessed. Agreeing so that he might be free of the curse of Ghost Rider, Blaze sets out to find and rescue the boy, who, along with his mother Nadya, is a target of the Devil's human agents.

After taking the boy from Carrigan, one of the Devil's men, he heads off to the men for whom Moreau works, a secluded order of monks. The Devil, meanwhile, does not intend to let Carrigan die, and turns him into Blackout, giving him power over darkness and decay so that he can compete with Ghost Rider on his level. Moreau, meanwhile, helps Blaze to overcome his curse and soon vanquishes Ghost Rider from his life. The monks wait until this is done before resolving to sacrifice the boy so that the Devil can't have him, leaving Moreau, Nadya and Blaze powerless to defend him. Blackout appears, murders the monks, and kidnaps Danny, setting the stage for the final conflict as the three heroes set out to rescue Danny and thwart Blackout along with the Devil's plans for the boy.

To be sure, there is a lot of material in this movie that will have you rolling your eyes in disgust, laughing out loud in derision, or shaking your head at the lack of logic. There are plenty of plot points that are unexplained or glossed over, character development moments that seem trite and contrived, and moments of over-the-top action or lunacy that will hurt your brain. But, in spite of all that--and, in some cases, directly because of that--I was thoroughly entertained, albeit in a trashy, guilty pleasures kind of way.

Be prepared to suspend disbelief--a lot. A vehicle crashes in spectacular, frame-bending fashion with a kid inside? No problem: he was wearing a seat belt! Ghost Rider banished from Blaze's body, even though the Devil is in possession of his soul? I mean, really, what's the explanation there? He made a deal with the Devil, and signed a contract, and the monks can erase that like some standard curse? Give me a break! And ever mind how that particular point is resolved--the pain to your faculties is simply not worth pondering. Just put your mind to the side, and enjoy the chases and action scenes like good little drones.

Where am I going?!?! I'm going craaaaaaaazy!!!!!!!!!!!

Nicolas Cage's inspired--and some might say inspiring--craziness is on display in its full glory in this film. There are at least two scenes where he involuntarily convulses, laughs at inappropriate times, and throws the full-on entirety of the histrionic book at the audience and his fellow actors--sometimes all at the same time. You can either shift uncomfortably in your seat, or sit back and laugh yourself silly at all the lunacy on display here (I chose the latter, and I stand by my decision). It's seriously hard to beat these scenes for pure entertainment value. A friend of mine said that Nicolas Cage isn't playing Ghost Rider, but the reverse: Ghost Rider is playing Nicolas Cage, to a tee. After you see the scenes I've described, it won't be hard to agree.

The action sequences are fun, though. Whenever Ghost Rider makes an appearance, you know there's going to be plenty of fun with flames, and this is used to amusing effect when he rides two different vehicles other than his flaming motorcycle at various times. The penance stare--one of Ghost Rider's trademarked abilities in the comics--is both underused and poorly explained in this film, which is a little sad. He does use fire, chains, and an extremely superhuman tolerance for pain to make up for it, and it makes for some alternately amusing and bad-ass moments in the story.

I'm laughing at my flaming skeleton hand, lady. And your injured kid. Funny, right? Stop looking at me like that!!!

Overall, if you're just dying to go see a comic book movie, this might hold you over while you wait for the real feasts for later this year--namely The Avengers, The Amazing Spider-Man, and The Dark Knight Rises. Don't go in expecting anything more than a mindless action flick with little more than aspirations of dark fantasy, though. If you can handle that, then this movie may well entertain you for a couple hours. If you're expecting a serious, "good" comic book movie, though, you'd best wait for the later stuff. I'm thinking this film stands a far less chance than they do of satisfying that particular appetite. Recommended, with reservations.

Johnny Blaze returns in and must help save a boy from the Devil, who Johnny has a grudge against. The movie has some cool momements like Ghost Rider's new look and bike, his demolition scene or his spitting bullets out of his mouth. He shows he's someone you don't want to messed with. In the movie Moreau seeks Johnny's help and will also offer him a deal with him to lift his curse. The only bad things in the movie is Nicolas Cage's actoring was good, but needed a little more and the ending was a little lame and I was expecting more, but it was cool. Overall, I'm giving it a 4/5 because it has more action, a bad ass Ghost Rider, and a good story for people to enjoy. This is better than the first and it also has Blackout and mentions Zarathos too. I enjoyed it and I think fans should see it for themselves. It has some stuff from the comics too.

This is the movie the first one should have been: crazy awesome and that is all that should have been from a Ghost Rider movie. This is a case where the sequel improves over the first bad movie. I was not looking forward for this movie because I had my share of bad movies from Neveldine/ Taylor before and obviously the first Ghost Rider was very boring, cliched movie. While this might be a dumb, action-packed, popcorn movie, Spirit of Vengeance manages to avoid most of the cliche traps that superheroes movies usually fall like Green Lantern.

This is very simple plot: years after the first movie, Johhny Blaze seeks to rid the Ghost Rider curse and with the help of warrior monk Moreau, he must protect Denny, a young boy destined to be the Anti-Christ from evil cult working for the devil. Thse movie plays like road movie a-la Mad Max than a superhero one (like the first one did) while it has great focus, its still pretty weak. But it for the sense of humor, has good action and I totally good movie.

Nicholas Cage is the best part of the movie. If he was not batshit insane in the first Ghost Rider, he is now in Spirit of Vengeance. When Mr. Cage is having the time of his life in the movie, the audience will have too because its so funny to have a complete nut for a hero than a bland, dull one. Also Idris Elba was awesome and funny as a French drunk warrior priest and could have stealed the whole movie if not for Nic Cage. Ciaran Hinds was way, way better than Peter Fonda as the Devil, being really creepy and menancing than bored and uninterested.

Thankfully, there is no romance in the story to speak of. Violante Placido plays the ravishing Nadya, Denny's mother and she is great support character who doesn't involve romantically with Johhny, she just happens to be beautiful and the Maccguffin's boy mother. This is a good thing in this movie's case that can't be bothered to slow the plot and action for the romance. If anything else, it happened between her and Blackout in the backstory and did not end well.

The thing I really, really liked in the movie was the Ghost Rider's effects. In the movie, he looked silly with the clean cut skull and clothes. In Spirit of Vengeance, his skull is burning black and his clothes are literally boiling you can see it, even if is CGI it looked really good.

This is a great action movie and one of the most crazy awesome superhero movies ever. It is a blast and that is exactly what wants to do. Go see it if you want a good time. :-)

  People are out to crucify this film, when really it's not that bad. It's perfect B movie goodness at it's best. I'm beginning to agree with the Angry Video Game Nerd when he reviewed Indiana Jones 4, the B-movie is dieing. Mainly because audiences now-a-days are so black and white. The film has got to be perfect, if even one thing is wrong (like the Nuke the Fridge) than it's total crap. Whatever happen to the kind of films where you just shut your brain off and enjoy it.

Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance from the beginning isn't trying to be anything more than harmless turn off your brain entertainment and it succeeded in doing so. Honestly what did people expect? It's from the guys who made Crank 1 and 2.

Let's look at the good and bad of this film.

THE GOOD

- Every action scene is entertaining and fun to watch. The Ghost Rider is a lot more scarier in this film and is portrayed as quite a freighting being. Big improvement over the first film. The villains also put up a bigger fight in this film.

- The special effects are also a huge improvement. Ghost Rider's charred skull and melting leather jacket is a huge improvement over the kinky spiked leather jacket, and fake CGI looking skull from the first film.

- Nick Cage hams it up big for this film, but the directors at least know how to make it work...somewhat....Instead of being Throw up in your mouth bad, it's just eye rolling bad. Honestly though, only two scenes made me roll my eyes and both are when Johnny Cage is trying to hold back from turning into the ghost rider.

- Idris Elba tries so hard to make this a better movie. He's probably the only actor who actually tried his hardest and his character is probably the most interesting of the side characters.

THE BAD

- While Idris Elba tries so hard to save this film, and Nick Cage is at least entertaining to laugh at in some scenes. The other actors are just....meh. Johnny Whitworth was decent but he didn't have a lot to do other than be the jerky bad guy. The kid and mother are stock characters at best. I'm getting kinda tired of the Devil always being portrayed as some kinda business man. So basically Nothing really good, but nothing really terrible. I just wish the characters were more interesting.

- Not much plot and what little plot there is basically just sets up for the next action scenes. Did anyone else think of this as Terminator 2 but with Ghost Rider instead of a T-800?

- While Nick Cage is somewhat entertaining, I still wish they went the full reboot route like The Incredible Hulk and hire a different actor. Someone who would have tried a bit harder like Idris Elba did with his role. In fact Johnny Whitworth would have made a more interesting Johnny Blaze than Blackout.
 
CONCLUSION 

The film is what it is and what it is...is mindless entertainment. It's a b-movie popcorn film and nothing more. It's not trying to win any awards it just wants to be fun and entertaining. I was having fun watching it with my friends and I was entertained...so....mission accomplished.

Now I do realize that I'm going against a major norm of society (the norm being to hate Nicolas Cage and every single one of his movies), but at this point I really don't care anymore. I loved the first Ghost Rider movie and guess what? I liked this film too. I enjoyed watching Nic Cage turning into burned up and batcrap crazy version of the Spirit of Vengeance. I definitely enjoyed the scene where Blaze interrogated a crime boss about the whereabouts of Carrigan (Johnny Whitworth) by threatening him with a transformation into the Rider and the subsequent transformation scene on his motorcycle. He does a very good job at acting like a guy whose trying to keep a destructive demon inside him from breaking free. The Ghost Rider (also played by Cage) definitely appeared to be a force to be reckoned with. His powers include an updated Penance Stare and chain attacks which both result in the bad guys getting torched and the ability to infuse anything he rides (whether it be a strip miner or a truck) with his power. I loved the Rider's new look as well. True to the words of the directors, the Ghost Rider does indeed look as if he crawled out of Hell. Idris Elba as the drunk warrior monk Moreau delivered wit and action to the film as well. I also enjoyed the humor in the movie as well from Blaze's one-liners to his demonstration of the Rider urinating fire to Carrigan (as the movie's version of Blackout) going through a lunch box and rotting every piece food he finds except a twinkie.

Speaking of Blackout, I stand by Neveldine and Taylor's decision to make Whitworth's Blackout an undead fiend with the power to rot anything he touches. Let's face it, does anybody think that a crazy vampire wannabe that can only create a field of darkness around people is going to last even a second against a flaming skulled biker demon that can make people burst into flame with his chain, spit out flaming bullets in rapid fire succession after having those bullets fired into his open mouth, and turn a strip miner into a flaming vehicle of destruction? I think that this version of Blackout managed to hold his own against the Rider pretty well even if it was for one part of the movie. And in a sense they do allow him to stay somewhat true to the comics by having him keep his ability create a field of darkness around his intended victim. In fact I found a few things in the movie that came from the comics: the Rider being known as Zarathos, the Rider being revealed as an angelic spirit instead of a demonic one (Daniel Way's 2006 run), and finally the Rider now having blue flame (a la Danny Ketch in Jason Aaron's run).

The plot , a favored complaint of many a critic who reviewed this movie, is a bare bones good guy stops bad guy story. I call shenanigans on this because this is a type of plot that all action/superhero movies follow no matter how many twists and turns there are (Spider-Man stops Green Goblin, Thor stops Loki, Batman stops Joker, etc.). What many of these critics refuse to understand is that Neveldine and Taylor meant for people to see the action of the movie, not the story. And as far as I'm concerned they only gave the movie bad reviews because they still have their panties in a bunch over Nic Cage playing Ghost Rider again. I feel that the reason that he chose to play the Rider again is because he felt he could do more with it and, at least in my opinion, he did. The reasons he does the kind of movies is because he said he enjoyed playing flawed characters. He's not afraid to do what he wants and he does so in the face of hate and condemnation of many critics and filmgoers. Like the title suggests, people really need to get over their sour grapes over Nic Cage.

Bottom line: I saw Spirit of Vengeance and I enjoyed it and if that's wrong, then I'll take my chances about not being right. Feel free to leave any hate comments if you think I should do otherwise.

I must admit that I went into theatre prepared to deeply dislike the movie after how many reviewers panned the movie. However, I was in for a surprise.

First off, it is by far NOT the best comic book movie out there and not the Ghost Rider movie I want to see by far...however:

In Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance we catch up to Johnny Blaze (Nic Cage) many years after the events of the first film. “The Rider” has apparently grown into an all-consuming force of nature that Blaze desperately tries to hold in check; until the presence of evil inevitably sets The Rider loose again, to feed on the souls of the guilty.

The Rider is presented with a full buffet of evildoers when a group of ruthless mercenaries storm a church in pursuit of a young boy named Danny Ketch (Fergus Riordan), who The Devil (Ciarán Hinds) intends to use as his human vessel. Blaze claims that The Rider is no savior, but when warrior monk Moreau (Idris Elba) promises to lift the curse from his soul as reward for saving Danny, The Ghost Rider is given new purpose, and an opportunity to be more than just a demon in the night.

I can best sum up Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance with a quote that a fellow audience member spoke as the end credits rolled: “This one makes the first one look real good.” There were plenty of people who disliked director Mark Steven Johnson’s somewhat tame adaptation of the Marvel Knights superhero – but Johnson at least made a fully-formed and structured cinematic tale. The same cannot be said for Crank directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor.

Spirit of Vengeance plays like an extreme sports video dressed as a superhero spoof. While the directing duo indeed create some impressive shots with their daredevil shooting style, those individual shots do not translate into impressive sequences, and on the whole, a lot of the action in the film isn’t even all that impressive. [Note: if you've seen the Ghost Rider 2 trailers, you've already seen everything this film has to offer.] When things aren’t rip-roaring at an ADD pace (which is almost never), the camera work looks about on par with what you would expect from an extreme sports video shot on handheld cameras – i.e., on the amateur side and never really “cinematic.”

With a list of screenwriters that includes Batman Begins and Dark Knight story man David S. Goyer, alongside TV writers Seth Hoffman (Prison Break, FlashForward) and Scott M. Gimple (The Walking Dead), one would expect that Spirit of Vengeance would at least offer some sweet action, thrills and a touch of compelling drama. Instead, what we get is one long chase sequence disguised as a story, punctuated by terrible dialogue and scene after scene where it feels like the actors improvised everything, rather than working from any kind of script.

To give an example: in one scene Blaze and Danny’s mother, Nadya (Violante Placido), interrogate a bad guy, and what we’re treated to is a “Crazy Nic Cage” homage, with Cage going on a manic tirade in his signature high pitched squeal, complete with cheap CGI conflation between his human and Ghost Rider faces. A joy to watch on YouTube, sure, but a waste of screen time when you’ve paid a high price for an entertaining 3D superhero flick. The treatment of the Rider is even worse, as Neveldine and Taylor leave the comic book source material behind, in favor of a Ghost Rider who is best described as being Michael Myers with a flaming head (i.e., a robotic killing machine).

Speaking of 3D: there are some nice moments for the format, but most of them involve ‘in your face’ antics like The Rider spitting back a stream of bullets, wreaking fiery havoc, or yes, pissing flames. The rest of the time, the format – combined with the directors’ frenetic shooting style – is more headache than enhancement. There are some animated segments throughout the film that offer some nice Gothic artistry, but they are spliced rather awkwardly with the live action.

The film offers almost no character development to speak of, and instead relishes in creating a handful of offbeat characters. Nic Cage is almost to the point of self-parody with his oddball screen persona; Idris Elba (usually a strong performer in any role) is resigned to stumbling around playing an overly happy cat-eyed drunken warrior (who does very little ass-kicking); and Ciarán Hinds is wasted (and confusing) in his portrayal of The Devil, who sounds like the only Texan in Romania. Christopher Lambert even has a brief appearance in the film… but still manages to look equally as ridiculous as his co-stars.

Johnny Whitworth channels all of his inner dirtbag to play the head mercenary who is transformed into iconic Ghost Rider villain, Blackout. The villain has some cool powers (creating localized eclipses and rotting living things), but the amateurish direction makes those powers come off as… well, amateurish in execution. Violante Placido tries to give her tortured mother character some depth and dramatic resonance, but whatever success her efforts yield feel wholly out of place in this film, which does not seem to be taking one iota of this character, story or mythos seriously, even for a second.

On the whole, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance plays like a film made by two directors mistakenly lifted out of their small niche lane of filmmaking, who don’t care all that much about the character, the source material, story – or really anything besides satisfying their own crude humor and action junkie impulses. Neveldine and Taylor deserve a bit of credit for at least trying something different – but ultimately, the material simply does not mesh with their filmmaking style.

Call it a failed experiment, call it the next Punisher: War Zone - and if you’re truly savvy about where you spend your money, you’ll call it future late-night cable movie viewing.

Here’s the trailer for Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (which just might be enough):

If you don't take my word for it.. take Jeremy Jahn's

Peeing on Hell Fire is pretty stupid