What’s this all about?
Nicolas Cage, one of Hollywood’s biggest names, and most famous comic-book nerds, gets his chance to headline a movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in Ghost Rider, the story of a guy who accidentally makes a pact with Satan, and becomes a ridiculous skeleton puppet, for some reason.
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you wrote a high-budget movie script based on an afternoon watching an 8-year-old play with action figures? I haven’t, but if I had, I suspect this film would be very close to the result of that experiment. The “powers” and abilities of major cast members change seemingly without reason beyond plot convenience, characters do things that make little sense in context of the story, and after fighting the main bad guy, the heroes then have to fight that bad guy’s dad.
It’s a hot mess. Hang on.
Who is Nick in this one?
Nick plays the adult version of “Johnny Blaze,” a world-famous motorcycle daredevil who made a pact with the devil in his youth. This causes him to transform into a “Ghost Rider,” a seemingly indestructible flaming skeleton who sort of fights crime, but not really.
Nick spends most of the movie trying to look intense, or genuinely looking perplexed. I have a hard time understanding how an actor with such a well-known love of comic books could read the script for this movie and not see it as an absolute travesty, but then, I’m making the assumption that Nick can read. I kid. I’m almost certain that Nick can read.
Who else is in this one?
Sam Elliott (Roadhouse) plays an unnamed grave digger who explains Nick’s situation to him, and later fights alongside him, revealing himself to also be a “Ghost Rider” who can only transform one more time, for reasons that are never explained at all. Sam Elliott only plays one character in movies, and he plays it here.
Eva Mendes (Hitch) plays “Roxanne,” Nick’s love interest. She exists to have things explained to her as a proxy for the viewer, and to be held hostage. Her performance is bland. Her character is pointless.
Did you see that?
Sam Elliott really sets the stage for this movie in the introductory voiceover, in which he explains the history of the “Ghost Riders,” who were employed by the devil, to run errands, I guess. One particular “Ghost Rider,” for some reason, is sent to retrieve some sort of contract that will bring about hell on Earth. Instead, he takes the contract and runs away. We hear Sam’s unmistakable gravelly voice dramatically explain, “He did something no one had ever done before. He outran the devil.”
We then see the “Ghost Rider” riding a horse away from the devil, who makes no effort to pursue.
Can you really “outrun” someone who isn’t chasing you? The devil doesn’t seem to really react at all. He’s as unimpressed as I was with this movie. In the first 90 seconds of the film, we’re shown that there will be a lot of dramatic nonsense for no reason. The rest of the film delivers on this promise. -Michael
The entire movie is full of examples of things that just don’t make any sense. Like when Nick’s father dies. I’m fairly sure we were supposed to think the Devil caused his father to have an accident doing a stunt, but we saw the stunt. He clearly and purposely layed down his bike. It wasn’t anywhere close to convincing to be an accident. It’s like the stunt rider thought they would edit out his altering the bike, but they forgot. Maybe that’s the problem they forgot a lot of post production work, or the editing team just gave up. They knew there was no way to make this movie make sense. -Sarah
What were Nick’s best parts?
Look. This movie is terrible. I talk a lot of shit about Nicolas Cage movies, but this one is genuinely bad, from start to finish. The acting is terrible. The writing is terrible. The directing is terrible. The special effects are terrible.
This movie makes Face/Off look like Citizen Kane.
Picking a “best” scene is virtually impossible.
But, since I made the rules, here we go.
After Nick’s first cringe-worthy transformation into “Ghost Rider” and back, he wakes up in a graveyard, understandably confused. Sam Elliott is conveniently nearby to explain some of what has happened to Nick, in the most obfuscated way possible.
During this scene Nick seems desperately confused, which makes sense, and he portrays it well. I was similarly confused during the scene, and, in fact, most of the film. -Michael
I agree. There really isn’t a good scene to tell about. I’m going to go with the scene where Nick is trying to get a date with his old girlfriend by riding his motorcycle next to her van as she tries to drive away. He’s on the driver’s side and thus needs to occasionally swerve to avoid hitting oncoming traffic. I can’t really say Nick did a particularly good job at this interaction, but he didn’t do a bad job either. – Sarah
What were Nick’s worst parts?
Every minute of this movie is a travesty. That said, a scene in which Nick, fresh from doing some motorcycle stunt jumps, returns to his loft, which contains a large collection of motorcycles, a giant pile of occult books, a TV that only seems to show monkey-themed content, and a speaker system which only plays The Carpenters. Followed by one of his roadies, Nick does a petulant, pouty routine when the roadie voices concern about an upcoming stunt.
Like a toddler, Nick refuses to engage in the adult conversation, instead, fiddling with the TV, stereo, and everything else. It’s a stupid scene with no point, as the stunt at issue never happens (or at least isn’t shown). -Michael
There is this one scene where Nick had his shirt off and was covered in baby oil like he was supper sweaty and decided to try and spook or scare himself in his mirror. It had absolutely no point. Was he practicing scaring other people? Did he think he could scare himself? And at the same time, why was he sticking his chest out? Just ridiculous. -Sarah
How was the movie?
Have I mentioned that this movie is bad? I think I may have at least implied it.
At any rate, this movie is wall-to-wall nonsense. Noteworthy scenes include one in which Nick, a world-famous motorcycle stuntman, jumps 300 feet on a motorcycle over some buses, and upon landing, drives immediately out of the arena and onto the highway, where he pursues Eva Mendes’ news van. When he catches up to her, he does ridiculous motorcycle stunts beside her moving van on the highway. When she fails to be impressed by this, he stops his motorcycle in front of the van on the highway, forcing it, and all other traffic to stop. All of the other drivers do the natural thing that you do when you have to unexpectedly stop on the highway due to a motorcycle blocking the road. They all run out of their vehicles to get Nick’s autograph.
Later in the film, the police investigate the string of bizarre killings committed by Ghost Rider. They figure out that it’s Nick (he’s world famous, after all) and track him to the roof of a building, where they watch him transform into a flaming skeleton and fight a demon. After that, the cops arrest him and put him in a public jail cell (where he predictably kills everyone) without further investigation. That’s some good police work, boys.
This movie is so stupid that it was genuinely difficult for me to pay attention.
This movie made about $100 million in profit, doubling its budget. I weep for the future of humanity. -Michael
This movie was bad. I didn’t expect it to be as bad as it was. It had a decent cast and decent budget. But it was bad. -Sarah
Yeah, but did you like it?
This is the worst Nicolas Cage movie that we’ve watched so far. And we watched that movie that he directed about a guy whose Mom taught him to be the best male prostitute in the world. -Michael
I never want to see it again. -Sarah
Where can I watch it?
You can rent it on Amazon Prime. You can also snort drain cleaner. Don’t do either of these things.
Leave a Reply