The Bad
The Story:For a retelling, the overall story was fine, if you didn’t know anything about the Ghost Rider comic. It was effective enough, but there were huge changes in the origin, characters, and who the Ghost Rider really is. The basics are there, a young Johnny Blaze sells his soul to Mephisto to save the life of a loved one and in turn becomes the Ghost Rider, but there the similarities start to waver.
In the comics, the man he saves is actually Roxanne’s father, who adopts Johnny after his father and mother die. When Mephisto goes to claim Johnny’s soul, he is fused with the demon Zarathos, a rival of Mephisto, and this is how he becomes the Ghost Rider, not just as being a bounty hunter for the devil. I guess they felt this would muddle down the story a bit, but the battle between Zarathos and Blaze for control was always a huge part of the Ghost Rider story. Maybe they will come back to this plot line if there is another film, but I imagine many fans will have problems with this.
This was one of the parts that really bugged me a lot. In the comics, Johnny Blaze is a whiskey guzzling, death defying, and foul mouthed tough guy, who is down on his luck and looking for a way to rid himself of this terrifying curse. In the movie, Johnny Blaze eats jelly beans out of a martini glass, watches a ton of television, and doesn’t drink because he gets nightmares. The death defying was still there, but I felt that hard edge was greatly missing from the character.
Cheesy Lines:
This has almost become an expected part of comic book movies, and I wish it wasn’t. When I found out that director Mark Steven Johnson was going for a gothic western, I was hoping that this story would be a bit darker, but I imagine they were trying to appeal to a much larger audience. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but you can often miss the mark for everyone when you try to appeal to too many people. I could handle a few bone head remarks here and there, especially from the Sam Elliot character, as there is reason for him using that kind of remark, but terms like, “…get it through your thick skull…” and “…lets clear the air…” got to be a bit tiring. Fortunately, they didn’t go overboard as in Batman and Robin or Daredevil did.
Bottom Line
As a whole, the movie was pretty good. I was frustrated with what I felt was unnecessary changes in the comic characters and origins. I realize there will probably always be changes in the characters to update them for the screen and make it a bit more appealing, but sometimes I feel that it could easily be a win-win situation for the movie companies, both in pleasing the comic fans with the great work that the comic creators did, and still tell a tale that will appeal to others as well.The Ghost Rider movie was a decent action horror film that although tried to play it safe with it’s PG-13 rating, still had some interesting and dark material. I wish they would have gone further with it, however as I fell this would maybe have taken this decent film and made it something to remember.
For the latest in comic book movies, Ghost Rider fares pretty well. There are definitely worse films out there, but there are also many better ones as well. In the end I would recommend you seeing the Ghost Rider film, but be warned that it is not the Ghost Rider you may be familiar with.
