You should know by now that Tom and I are super obsessed with movies, the worse the better. I mean, this is the whole point of this little blog thing, to explain ourselves to those in our lives that just can't understand why. Well, we aren't the only ones who enjoy bad movies, MST3K is proof of that. Many of our friends feel the same way too. Today's post is the first of hopefully many guest posts by one of our movie loving friends, Chris Martinez. Sometimes we have the same opinion when it comes to movies, but when we disagree, we love to debate them (usually over a few pints at our favorite local bar, McGeary's). I personally haven't seen the film that Chris was nice enough to review for us, but he makes it seem very interesting. So, without further ado, I give you our first ever guest post by the great Monsignor Martinez.
I Made A Deal With the
Devil,
and All I Got Was This
Stupid Leather Jacket
Back in the 70's, Marvel
updated the character to fit with the times.
The new Ghost Rider was Johnny Blaze, an Evil Knievel type stunt showman
who jumped motorcycles in a traveling show and was possibly the dumbest named
fictional character ever (I'm willing to bet that his real name is like
Mortimer Blazinokowski or something equally awkward sounding). When a loved one of Johnny's becomes ill, he
decides to strike a deal with the Devil to save their life, because clearly
Johnny did his research and saw the infinitely long list of people who have
done this and had everything work out perfectly, with no complications or
shenanigans from the Devil what-so-ever.
In return for the favor, Johnny agrees to become the Devil's personal
bounty hunter. The Devil screws Johnny
over (shocking right? Never saw that
coming.), by permanently bonding him with Zarathos, a demon who digs
revenge. Whenever an innocent person is
harmed and Johnny is nearby, he forcefully transforms into the flaming-skulled,
leather clad, chain wielding S&M dominatrix...er, excuse me, I mean Ghost
Rider, complete with a super cool accessory motorcycle with fiery wheels. Although one has to wonder why the Devil
would want to help innocent people so badly, but whatever. It was the 70's and I'm sure the artists and
writers in the Marvel bullpen at the time were laying down lines of coke like
Ghost Rider's bike laying down fire on the highway, so plot was probably
secondary to everything else. Later on
in the 90's, Marvel brought back Ghost Rider again, this time with NYPD office
Dan Ketch taking over the mantle.
On to Spirit
of Vengeance: After the events of
the first film, Johnny is distraught over having to bear the curse of being the
Devil's bitch, so he runs away to Eastern Europe to be alone so he can whine
and cry in peace (after all, he is played by Nic Cage, so there's bound to be
some somber emoting at some point).
The very first scene of the movie is a short action set piece that I'm
sure the writers and directors would refer to as an homage to the opening of a
James Bond movie. In this scene we are
introduced to Moreau, a bad-ass, gun-toting, wine swilling, French, biker,
priest (I was so close to being able to type that sentence without
laughing. Also, you know Moreau is
French, because he speeeeks wiz zees OUUUTTTRRRAAAGGEOUS French accent.) Moreau is played by Idris Elba, who is better
known as Charles Minor on the American version of The Office, or for the
twelve comic geeks that actually saw it, Roque from the movie The Losers (yes,
I am one of those twelve geeks).
Moreau
is meeting with some super mysterious and mystical monks, to discuss Danny, a boy
that the monks have been guarding. Danny
has some sort of extremely mysterious and mystical powers and because of that
he is being sought by an enigmatically mysterious and mystical man named
Rourke, who just also happens to be the Devil.
Rourke is played by Ciaran Hinds, who gave a great performance as Julius
Caesar in HBO's Rome.
Rourke needs Danny in order to complete a
strangely mysterious and mystical dark ritual.
Moreau is told by the monks that a deeply mysterious and mystical
prophecy states that an immensely mysterious and mystical protector will guard
the boy. Coincidentally, Johnny/Ghost
Rider is that protector and Moreau must locate him. Unfortunately, Rourke had ordered some
generic stock bad guys off of the internet and they end up getting delivered
right in the middle of the meeting (Mention this blog post during checkout at
www.stockgoons.com and get 50% off your first batch of henchmen!!! Offer not valid for purchases of Mole Men.). In the ensuing chaos, Sphinx Boy (because he's terribly
mysterious... and mystical!) and his mom grab a car and try to escape, causing
the generic baddies to chase after them, thus causing Moreau to hop on his bike
and chase after the bad guys. During the
ensuing car chase, we find out that in addition to being a bad-ass, gun-toting,
wine swilling, French, biker, priest, Moreau must be some kind of sharpshooter
because right after he wrecks his chopper, while he's still in mid-air mind
you, hurtling towards certain death, instead of screaming “HELP, HELP, I'M
GOING TO DIE!!!!” while simultaneously pissing and shitting himself, he manages
to shoot out the tires of the bad guys ride.
Danny and his mom get away, Moreau goes sailing off towards what is
certain to be his doom and BAM! We're
hit with the opening credits. Half-assed
James Bondery at it's finest.
Surprise,
surprise, it turns out Moreau doesn't die and he eventually ends up locating
Johnny. In a scene that in no way,
absolutely proves that this movie is nothing more than a vanity project for Nic
Cage, during Johnny and Moreau's first meeting, 90lb emo teen girl Cage manages
to slap around a much larger and far more physically intimidating Elba like Moe
and Curly from the 3 Stooges. As far as
the plot of the rest of the movie... there really isn't one. Moreau gets Johnny to come with him by
promising to bring him to someone who can rid him of Ghost Rider's curse and
then the movie devolves into a string of action set pieces and by the end of it
all, you're actually ready to make your own deal with the Devil just to make it
stop. In I guess what you could call a
sub-plot, our intrepid heroes actually spend a great deal of time trying to
keep Ghost Rider away from Danny's mom, because she is some sort of Gypsy pick
pocket or something and Ghost Rider doesn't care how bad of a criminal you are,
he still wants to kill you. The
prophetic, dreadfully mysterious and mystical hero that has been sworn to
protect Danny is preoccupied with killing his mom; what a shitty prophecy! They actually make a point of saying he'd
even kill someone for illegally downloading a movie, as if movie pirates
worldwide would hear this and actually be scared for their life because they
think Ghost Rider is going to nab them selling bootleg DVD's out of the trunk
of their car.
So how about
the action sequences? I'm willing to
admit that they look good for the most part.
The special effects are good but not great, and there are some really
cool looking shots. The directors, Mark
Neveldine and Brain Taylor (best known for bringing us other screen gems as Jonah
Hex and the series of Crank movies with Jason Statham) are known for
using innovative ideas to capture unique shots.
Several of the motorcycle scenes were filmed while the cameraman was
being towed at a high speed while on roller blades. So while the action scenes look good, looks
will only get you so far. The action
scenes in the movie lack any depth or substance, they're just a series of shots
of Ghost Rider looking cool, but not really fighting anyone. In the awkwardly paced first major “fight”
scene, Ghost Rider chases down the assemblage of generic thugs as they are
closing in on Danny and his mom. Ghost
Rider jumps his hell bike into the middle of the scene and just when you think
you're about to see some ass kicking, Ghost Rider hops off the motorcycle and
he..... Ugh...... I swear to Christ, HE DANCES LIKE MICHAEL
FUCKING JACKSON ON TOP OF A CAR OUTSIDE OF A COURTHOUSE!!!!! It's not a full out Thriller routine, but he
does a quick couple of moves that end up with a Tony Manero-like fist in the
air. If you put a disco ball behind him,
it would have looked like the cover of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack
album. It was at this point that a part
of me died and I gave up hope on ever enjoying the rest of the movie. What the fuck did I just see??? What? Why???
I think I'm starting to miss Ben Affleck as Daredevil. He does something similar later on, but he
ends up crossing his chest with his arms.
I half expected him to turn his head and cough Three Amigos style.
When the
“fight” actually starts, Ghost Rider grabs the nearest generic baddie and
proceed to hit him with Ghost Rider's signature move: the Penance Stare. This ability allows Ghost Rider to make his
enemies feel all of the pain and suffering that they have caused in their lives
all at once and basically reduces them to a soul-less catatonic, husk of a
human being. This sounds WAAYYY cooler
than it actually looks because it pretty much just amounts to him staring at
this generic thug for a long time. A
really long time. A really, really long
time. I'm going to look away......Is he
still doing it? He's STILL doing
it?!?! Is he....Is going to kiss
him??? He's still doing it. For some reason, this shot seemed
uncomfortably long. Hell, for all I
know, he's still staring at this poor asshole somewhere right now as I'm
writing this. Finally Ghost Rider drops
what's left of the thug and instead of fighting any of the rest of the
villains, he pulls out his chain, whips it in a circle around his head and all
the baddies disintegrate into a cloud of ash and brimstone. Every “fight” scene in the movie goes this
way and it just seems like a cheap way to get around choreographing any fight
sequences. Ghost Rider has mastered the
art of fighting without fighting, but in a way that leaves the audience feeling
unentertained and a little ripped off.
We're watching the birth of a new genre of film courtesy of the CGI age:
The Inaction Movie.
With stars
like Cage, Hinds and Elba, surely the acting has to be good, right? Not so much.
Nicholas Cage is more Nicholas Cagey than ever. He's completely aware that he's playing a
parody of himself and he just doesn't give a shit about that. In the scenes where Cage is playing Johnny
(Cage also played the CGI model of Ghost Rider ), he comes off strikingly
similar to Ben Stiller's character in Mystery Men, Mr. Furious. He keeps telling people about all the rage
and fury that he's holding in. In a few
scenes where Johnny comically tries to surpress the transformation into Ghost
Rider, it so reminded me of Mr. Furious rapidly squeezing a stress ball, while
muttering “Rage...subsiding...pulse...slowing down...” that I laughed out
loud. The fact that Cage is perma-clad
in black leather really seals the deal on that comparison. As for Hinds, it's not one of his best
performances. Halfway through the
“story”, Hinds uses his Devil mojo to transform the head of his generic goon
squad, played by Johnny Whitworth (I have no freaking clue what this guy was in
before this movie and quite frankly his INCREDIBLY ANNOYING screen presence is
justification for me to not expend the energy to look him up on IMDB) into D
level Marvel Comics villain Blackout.
Blackout's abilities are being an albino, having vampire fangs but
possible not being a vampire, turning off lights and making stuff rot
(including this movie). After the
transformation, the Devil is such a bad-ass that he apparently has a stroke,
and Hinds spends the rest of the movie talking out of the corner of his mouth
and slipping in and out of a Dick Clark impression. Showing up for an extended cameo, presumably
because he had some bills to pay or wanted to earn some cash for a vacation to
Hawaii or something, is Christopher Lambert of the Highlander series of
movies. Lambert plays one of the monks
(not the original mysterious and mystical monks, a completely separate set of
monks, because apparently the monk budget on this movie was sky high) who will
help Johnny ditch the Ghost Rider for good.
The movie
tries to insert some comedy into the story a few times, but honestly,
everything else about this movie is unintentionally funnier than these jokey
attempts. A moment of hilarity ensues
when Blackout tries to use his power to make a Twinkie rot. Another one of the movie's knee slapping gags
is a recurring joke about Ghost Rider being able to pee like a blow torch. Because of that gag, we're treated to not
one, but two cut-away scenes of Ghost Rider urinating fire.
At a few
points in the movie, the story breaks away to animated asides which fill in
various plot holes and back stories; because as I'm sure you know, all the best
film makers have to stop their stories in order to spoon feed vital information
to the audience instead of doing that naturally the progression of the story or
character development, or bothering to make sure the story made sense in the
first place. This sloppy story telling
is the thing that bothered me the most about this movie. I love watching great action sequences, gunfights,
stuff blowing up, and fight scenes; but without something tying all of that
together in a sensical manner, no matter how good or polished it may look, it's
still going to be a crap movie.
Being as big
a fan of comics and comic book movies as I am, it really pains me to be so
negative about this movie. I really
wanted to like it, but that just wasn't going to happen. In my younger comic geek days (as opposed to
the much older, much geekier ones I'm living now), I was a big fan of the
grittier, less campy, 90's Ghost Rider.
Dan Ketch was the Ghost Rider I knew, and at that point Johnny Blaze had
been relegated to side-kick status (yet still seemed cooler than he ever did as
Ghost Rider), but it would have been nice to see Johnny's story done well on
the screen. About three months from now,
if you have a dollar to burn at your local RedBox by seeing yet another kooky,
over the top performance from Nicholas Cage or if you just want to Mystery
Science Theater the living shit out of it and yell stuff at the screen, then
pick up Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
(Sadly I was robbed of the MST3K experience, as despite the fact
that I saw it during opening weekend, the theater was completely empty). Otherwise don't bother. Unfortunately I don't think I'll ever get to
see Dan Ketch tearing through the streets of New York as Ghost Rider because
I'm almost certain that this will be the final nail in the coffin of the Ghost
Rider film franchise.
I don't know about you, but I loved Chris' review. I even laughed out loud a few times at his descriptions. I hope the readers of this blog will agree with me on this, I hope Chris continues to write guest reviews!
