One of the first things I always look for in a movie based on comic books, is how true they are to the original concept of the character. It has been a while since I have read any Ghost Rider stuff, so I had to brush up on my Ghost Rider lore over on Wikipedia. From what I have read there, it looks like they combined elements of Johnny Blaze and the Danny Ketch (the one that I am most familiar with) origins and powers for this movie. In my opinion, they seemed to be pretty true to the Ghost Rider character in this film. To me that is pretty important in a movie like this, as the movies that stray too far away from the comic book roots do not do very well in the box office in the last few years. A great example of a success would be the Spider-Man movies. The first one especially was very close to the original character, almost exactly in fact, to what Stan Lee wrote all those years ago. We all know how well that movie did. Then you take the movie Catwoman, which failed horribly. Now I never watched this movie, but I read and saw enough trailers to know that the only thing similar to the character in that movie to the one in the comics was the name. If you look at other movies based on comic book characters, you can really see the pattern. These characters have been around for decades for a reason, you really don’t need to radically change them for a comic book movie to be successful. I just wish the movie studios would just realize that.
With that said, on to the review.
The movie started out great in the beginning. I liked how much time they spent showing the young Johnny Blaze and how he ended up selling his soul to Mephistopheles. Adding that much detail in the backstory went a long way to get you emotionally involved with Blaze. Setting up the prerequisite love interest here was good too. I am not sure that would have worked in the plot any other way, and I thought it was a nice touch. Everything went along smoothly in this movie for me until Eva Mendes showed up as Blaze’s long lost love, then things started to go downhill.
The first scene I saw Mendes in was almost funny. I think she fell into that trap that most actors/actresses fall into when they are in a movie based on a comic book. They get the mind set “comics are for kids, so I don’t need to be serious”. The only other movie that I remember Mendes being in was Hitch, so I don’t know if she was trying to act so silly on purpose, or if this is what the director wanted for this role. If she was acting like that on purpose, then she seriously overacted in very seen she was in. It was almost painful. If not, then she is either not a very good actress, or the director is an idiot. Of course it is possible that they only hired her for her looks, which would explain why they overdid her cleavage every chance they got. Now don’t get me wrong, I LIKE cleavage and Mendes is pretty damn nice on the eyes. It was just getting a little bit silly in my opinion.
Nicholas Cage did a great job in this role when he was not in a scene with Mendes, it was like her overacting sucked the talent out of every scene she was in and made the other actors silly too.
Mendes’s acting aside; I thought Cage was pretty good in this film. He portrayed the Ghost Rider transformation well enough that I believed he really was in a lot of pain. I did have a problem with his hair however, it didn’t look real enough to me and he looked like he was using one of William Shatner’s old tupes from the ‘60’s. Was it just me, or did they CGI a ripped body on Cage during that scene that he was looking through the mirror? I sure looked fake to me.
Overall, I liked this movie, despite the problems I had with it. They stayed true to the Ghost Rider character but changed it just enough that the movie was entertaining.