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Hey, Wes Bentley! Remember that time you were in that good movie where your character get off on filming plastic bags floating in the wind? And do you remember how it won the Best Picture Oscar that year? That must have been crazy, right? I mean, before that, all you’d really done in mainstream Hollywood was play a rapist in “Beloved.” Then there you were, Hollywood’s newest “It” boy. People must have been lining up around the block to hand you their scripts. Remind me again, though, what were your next few movies? Let’s see, you did that snowy Western movie that no one saw. Then you did that horror movie with Eliza Dushku that no one saw. Then you did that epic war movie that no one saw. Then you did that soccer movie that no one saw (which happened to costar the obnoxious eldest “Home Improvement” kid). Is that it? Did I leave anything out? Remind me, why do I still remember your name?

Perhaps I remember because after years of scraping the bottom with crap like “The Claim,” “Soul Survivors” and “The Four Feathers,” you finally managed to crawl back into a major motion picture destined to be No. 1 at the box office. I just wish you would have picked a better movie than “Ghost Rider,” the film version of a B-grade Marvel comic character, that’s assuredly going to make quite a few worst of the year lists in 10 months. And yes, Wes, I think this is one movie that you’re going to wish that no one saw.

Bentley’s saving grace, however, is that his character, the villainous Blackheart, is little more than an afterthought. The movie is more concerned with trying to make its title character look as badass as possible. He is a flaming skeleton that rides a flaming motorcycle, after all. But while much credit is owed to the special effects team for making him look cool, the effect is completely ruined by the hollow acting of Nicolas Cage. When not set of fire, Cage plays Johnny Blaze, a motorcycle stunt man with a pension for death defying stunts that often result in him surviving horrific accidents that should leave him splattered across his landing ramps. Johnny is comforted, perhaps, by the knowledge that he simply can’t die — the devil owns his soul. As a teenager, Johnny makes a deal with Mephistopheles (played by a slumming Peter Fonda) that will cost Johnny his soul in exchange for his dad to be cured of cancer.

When Blackheart reemerges from hell to collect a contract worth a fortune in tainted souls, Mephistopheles returns to cash in on his deal with Johnny: at night, in the presence of evil, Johnny will become the Ghost Rider, a creature tasked with collecting souls for the devil. One assumes that this is the moment that signifies the end of the beginning and sets the stage for an action-packed second act, but you’d only be half right. It’s clearly the start of the middle section, but it can hardly be described as thrilling. The action sequences largely consist of either Blackheart easily dispatching motorcycle thugs in a dive bar or Ghost Rider battling Blackheart’s useless three minions in single smackdowns that are embarrassingly trotted out simply to give Ghost Rider something to do in between his origin and his climatic showdown with Blackheart.

Maybe it’s simply a consequence of having no soul, but I’m pretty sure that Johnny Blaze is the least compelling super hero ever committed to screen, and it doesn’t help that Cage seems to be taking a nap through approximately 90 percent of his role. The only time that Cage gives Johnny any resemblance of humanity is when he’s watching monkey videos and listening to the Carpenters (“You’re stepping on Karen,” he tells an employee played by far-too-talented-for-this-schlock Donal Logue in the film’s most clever line). While it’s arguable that a soulless demon shouldn’t have humanity anyway, we’re clearly meant to sympathize with Johnny when he’s attempting to rekindle his feelings for childhood love Roxie (Eva Mendes), who is included here simply to fulfill this comic book movie’s requisite amount of damsel in distress and sassy female reporter. These two have about as much on-screen chemistry as you’d expect from a 1983 Honda Civic and a spayed chinchilla. Faring better, though, is Sam Elliott as a mysterious man known the Caretaker, although that may be because he’s little more than a glorified narrator. He’s the guy that seems to know far too much for just a casual observer, but Elliott’s definitely got the voice to at least make the Ghost Rider origin seem more compelling than the watered down version writer/director Mark Steven Johnson has tried to get away with.

I think Johnson, who’s already done the Marvel comics thing with 2003’s disappointing “Daredevil,” is just in over his head with this picture, often getting buried in the beloved mythology that’s sustained a character like Ghost Rider for so many years. Having been a fan of Marvel for years, I can at least sympathize with Johnson for getting what was destined to be a doomed task. Unlike other filmed characters like Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider has never had an iconic villain or even much of a love interest. He’s attempting to create a believable narrative from a character that’s mostly just a gothic badass, and, well, these movies just don’t tend to work like that. Still, being a fan, I think I at least deserve the right to nitpick the stupid, unnecessary changes that are simply going to antagonize the existing fanbase. Why, for instance, did Johnson change the name of classic comic villain Mephisto? Sorry Mark, I think that sympathy is gone. While “Ghost Rider” isn’t quite an abomination to God, it might be one to Stan Lee, the god of Marvel Comics, and in this case, that might just be worse.

I hear Marvel Comics is also toying with the idea of doing movies for Ant-Man, Iron Fist and Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu. I think those may be the only three Marvel characters that I’d less like to see in a major motion picture. Well, maybe I’d rather see an Ant-Man movie. After all, he can shrink really small. I smell Oscar!

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originally posted: 08/21/07 02:01:20
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