 🍿🍿🍿 | 🎙️ EPISODE 580: 10.20.22 Starting in 2020, I decided to watch & review the entire Nicolas Cage filmography in alphabetical order. This is 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 – Chapter 28. Like an idiot, I thought it was very neat that the two Cage entries for October in my alphabetical dissection of were about a serial killer and a bad-ass motorcycle rider with a flaming skull head. "What perfect serendipity!" I thought (like an idiot). "This will be perfect for my month full of spooky movie reviews!" I'm not sure I was fully aware that this film, Ghost Rider, was a comic book movie, but when I saw that Marvel production bumper it was confirmed. And it was all downhill from there. |
The movie begins with a young Pete Buttigieg doing a fancy motorcycle stunt at the carnival with his papa...
This is Johnny Blaze (lol), a younger version of Cage's character. One day, Peter Fonda aka THE DEVIL shows up and offers to buy his soul because he is so good at riding motorcycles or something...
In exchange for his soul, the devil cures his daddy of cancer. And the next morning they have a Varsity Blues "I don't want your life" moment...
Even though he just cured him of cancer, the devil (always acting super devilish as is his M.O.) kills hid daddy anyway. Oh no...
He sort of explains why he kills his daddy then he does a CGI fire thing to Johnny Blaze and disappears...
Flash-forward a decade or two and Johnny Blaze is all grown up and Cage now. Still doing the motorcycle stunt thing, only bigger and better...
I generally hate all things motorcycles and that goes for this as well, but the unreal stunt aspect of it is sort of cool. Also, I guess his thing is that he can't die because of the deal he made with the devil? That and an extreme adoration for late period classic rock. On the tour bus after the stunt, he converses with his crew manager, the great Donal Logue about how "lucky" he is...
Then another villain shows up, one of Satan's demon children played by the creepy neighbor teen from American Beauty, the one who films the plastic bag? You know the kid. But he ain't a kid anymore. He goes to a biker bar and kills everybody...
Listen. This thing is so boring that a lot of the backstory just zipped right over my head. He's supposed to be Peter Fonda's son or something? And he's not technically a "fallen dark angel" so he can be hurt in the real world (and Fonda can't, or vice versa maybe?)?? Who cares. All you need to know is that defeating this guy is the favor that Peter Fonda said he'd be asking for at some point. And also Cage loves eating jelly beans out of a martini glass for no reason...
Cage isn't really phoning it in but it's not the most inspired performance of his. After his unimpeachable run of big action and smaller, headier affairs in the 90s, this was part of his mid 00s to 2010s transitionary period where he starred in a couple franchises (this one and the National Treasure movies) as well a flurry of action films with increasingly dwindling budgets and R.T. scores. It's not quite the VOD Hell that the 2010s would morph into, but it's spiritually the beginning of that era in my opinion.
Anyway, the demon kid from American Beauty is named "Black Heart" and he summons up some demon friends from the ether: a stone demon, a wind demon and just the wettest damn water demon you've ever seen...
Outside the biker bar, Fonda and Black Heart have an incredibly rushed and stupid expo dump of a conversation. Try making sense of this gobbledygook...
Over in a dressing room before the next big football field motorcycle stunt, Cage is listening to The Carpenters and guzzling coffee straight from the pot...
Eva Mendes, Cage's high school sweetheart, shows up as a news reporter and he derails the interview. It's just a horrible scene, meant to be cute, but just excruciating to watch. Cage's very bad haircut is on full display...
He does the next stunt, subbing in army helicopters with their blades spinning for the trucks he was gonna jump over. He nails it...
I loathe the look of this. So flat and bright. Cage tracks down Eva Mendes on the highway, almost causes a huge pileup, then asks her out to dinner for some "I-talian" food...
Unfortunately, his dinner plans get messed up when the devil shows up and reminds him that he's under contract and tasks him with killing Black Heart before magically making his motorcycle go freaking nuts...
Then he does the cartoon fire skull thing for the first time and truly becomes the "Ghost Rider"...
He immediately does battle with Black Heart and his crew and he takes down one of his demon friends. The special FX suck but the writing is way worse...
Now he can summon his motorcycle like a dog and he makes it a little more bad-ass looking with some magic too. It all looks like a fucking cartoon. He can only do the fire skull magic trick at night and it eventually wears off as he goes to see his dad's grave site. We're introduced to Sam Elliott and his endless cowboy schtick...
Sam tells him he's the ghost rider. Hey, that's the title! "This day's been coming since you made that deal," he says. He knows all about it somehow (pretty convenient). He tells Cage about the "penance stare," something that all riders have which allows them to inflict the collective pain of a bad guy's victims back inside the bad guy. A pre-fame Rebel Wilson has a little comic relief cameo as "dumb metal girl talking to news lady"...
On a side note, this has to easily be the most chiseled Cage ever? Right? Also not sure at all what's he's doing here...
He continues to read old religious texts to try and understand what the hell is happening. I guess this is for the viewers' sake too, though does anyone really care? He's learning to harness is powers or something. He explains the situation to Eva Mendes as his horrifically bad haircut continues to crack me up. It sucks I have to watch the sequel to this soon. Should I push it back??? Not sure I can stomach back-to-back Ghost Rider movies in this series. He gets interrogated by some horrible cop actors about the weird biker bar murders the American Beauty kid did. So he skull fire heads in the prison lock-up and goes ham on the other inmates...
Cut to Black Heart dude in church. Didn't Sam Elliot say they couldn't go in churches like ten minutes ago? The visuals are cool (for cartoons) but it's amazing how joyless it still feels. Maybe it's not that amazing and this is just the Marvel template showing its dumb ass before the true beginning of the modern M.C.U. I don't even feel like I should keep pulling clips for this. Once you've seen the cartoon fire skull dude in action, you kind of catch the drift. He's going to mow down this guy's wet demon henchmen, then defeat America Beauty kid and the probably have some final showdown with Peter Fonda. I've never been more pissed to have started the extended version of a film even though this is only about fifteen minutes longer.
Anyway, let's soldier on and finish this damn thing. After a night of crazy demon fighting action, he returns to Sam Elliott at the cemetery. There's some plot about a town called San Ver-somrthing or other and I just don't care. Eva Mendes runs into Donal Logue and they are both looking for Cage. There's a minor fuck-up/continuity error here because Cage said that everyone knows his secret but now these two are acting like nobody knows? How are we supposed to give a shit about any of this stupid lore and other garbage if they can't get simple stuff like this right?
The wet demon and Black Heart visit Sam Elliot. Something about "new hell (on earth)" and how he has all Peter Fonda's strengths and none of his weaknesses (so he can walk on church grounds, etc. who cares). He turns people into corpses like breathing air, but only leaves Sam Elliot with a kick in the head. Convenient! Donal Logue dies...
Stupid Cage, thinking his "penance stare" was gonna work on him. What was the point of reading all those books, loser. There's something about a contract or deed for the hell city and Sam Elliot had it hidden in his shovel. They decide they're gonna ride together to deliver it and Sam Elliot is a skull fire guy too but has a magic horse instead of a motorcycle. More cartoon time! ...
This was probably nice for the actors. They only had to film like half a movie and then a little heavily distorted voiceover. Black Heart has taken Eva Mendes hostage in the hell town. He asks wet demon to slow Cage down and I'm sure that will work. This being the official wettest demon ever, they do an underwater fight. And cage wins easily of course...
This spooky town is hell on earth so it is, naturally, very spooky. He finds black demon boy with Eva Mendes and all the other henchmen are dead. They do battle, Cage throws fireballs. The sun starts to come up which means he's gonna change back soon. So he gets the contract and I guess it allows him to eat up all these black demon souls that are being released because of it. This is making him even more more powerful and his name is "Legion" now and they do yet another title drop before their final showdown...
Lol that a shotgun has ANY effect on that dude. But Eva Mendes starts blasting him too and then throws the shotgun back to Cage and it turns magic for a second and really fucks him up what...
Also, where did Sam Elliot go again?! Fucking bailed on them! Because Legion is made up of all the old human souls now, Cage can do the penance stare thing and it's a total super sized version of it and it kills him, I guess. Eva Mendes and Cage have a Beauty and the Beast moment...
Peter Fonda shows up, saying he's free now. But Cage says he's gonna keep the curse and use it against evil because they have to make a sequel to this if the box office is good enough and that's what happens in the comics. Then Fonda and what was left of Black Heart/Legion evaporate in blue dust. Sam Elliot does some epilogue narration over a flashback of Cage and Eva Mendes as teen lovebirds and we get one more good look at Cage's terrible haircut before it turns into the fire skull. Roll credits. Not good! Boring and lifeless and I can't believe I have to review the sequel next! Fuck!! Fuck me!!!
THE VERDICT: 3 CAGES OUT OF 10 • CLICK HERE for all 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 Chapters + Ongoing Rankings.
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 579 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 581 ⫸
⫷ EPISODE 579 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 581 ⫸
Ghost Rider is a 2007 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. The film was written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson, known for helming 2003's Daredevil previously, and stars Nicolas Cage as Johnny Blaze / Ghost Rider, with Eva Mendes, Wes Bentley, Sam Elliott, Donal Logue, Matt Long, and Peter Fonda in supporting roles. It was released on November 4, 2007.
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