DVD's & Popcorn: Ghost Rider

Friday night found Tim and I out and about with some friends eating steak, visiting and going to Ghost Rider. It was, needless to say, a good time. The movie was another Marvel Comic come to life, and while the movie was good (and WIDE OPEN for a sequel) I think that maybe it missed it's mark.

The premise is that as a teenager Johnny Blaze (Nicholas Cage) sold his soul to the devil to save his father from cancer. After getting double-crossed, Blaze grows into a celebrated yet eccentric, daredevil who is waiting for the Devil to collect on their bargain...that he become the Ghost Rider when the Devil needs him most. Unfortunately the Devil calls on him just as he is rekindling his relationship with his long time love Roxanne (Eva Mendez). In order to regain his soul the Ghost Rider must hunt down the Devil's son Blackheart and fill a century old contract of 1000 souls.

The movie and plot had the potential to really focus on the premise that Blaze's reasoning to sell his soul gave him more power than the Devil could anticipate. And it does briefly touch on that, but there could have been a much stronger morality to the whole movie. Mostly we see Blaze trying to protect Roxanne at first from himself and later from Blackheart, which would have been ok if Roxanne was even slightly more interesting that a one dimensional set of boobs. There is usually very little that is positive to say about the female roles in comic book based movies, but this time the entire point of having a female lead seemed to be that they needed a bit of cleavage to help advance the plot...which was completely unnecessary since the plot would have advanced very well without her. But if that's the worst part of the film, then it's not too bad. Nicholas Cage does a great job as Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider and the too small role for Sam Elliott as the "Caretaker" pulled everything in beautifully. The graphics were great and the conflict between The Rider, Mephistopheles and Blackheart made for a fine action flick and a fun way to spend a Friday night.

Also, leave before the credits really get going to avoid the catastrophic techno remake of Johnny Cash's classic Ghost Rider in the Sky...yes techno-remake. It's as bad as it sounds.