Rating: 1.5 Stars
The following review contains spoilers.
Overview:
In the mid-80s, teen carnie Johnny Blaze makes a deal with the Devil to cure his father’s cancer, but the very next day his father dies in a terrible carnival accident anyway. Darn you, the Devil, and your tricky ways! Now 20-years later Johnny is a world-famous motorcycle stunt rider, which as you all know was still a very popular thing you could totally be in 2007, but the Devil has come calling once again to see that Johnny pays him what he’s owed.
It seems the Devil’s son, Blackheart, has come to Earth seeking a special soul contract (for an entire small town, and that’s apparently a lot of souls, though I assume there are millions if not billions in Hell already), which will give him the power to make a new Hell (on Earth?) and step out from his father’s shadow. To assist him, he’s recruited three demons with the elemental powers of earth, water, and air (because Ghost Rider is fire, get it?). The Devil needs Johnny to become the newest Ghost Rider and defeat Blackheart before he gets what he’s after and overthrows his papa.
Meanwhile, Johnny has recently come back into contact with his girlfriend from 20 years ago, Roxanne, who is now a sports reporter (or just a regular reporter who also covers motorcycle stunt shows?). They both seem to want to get back together but with his powers and all the demon stuff always going on around him, he must stay away from her to keep her safe (he doesn’t).
Best Parts:
Nicholas Cage’s Johnny Blaze is basically just a bundle of random quirky behaviors, but sometimes I liked it? Like he doesn’t drink alcohol, but he does drink jelly beans out of a martini glass that he swirls around like he’s aerating it or something. He’s obsessed with the music of the Carpenters and he mentions several times that he watches “a lot” of TV, and we at one point see him dying laughing while watching a monkey perform karate. It doesn’t totally work but maybe it could have, if they’d gone shamelessly head-on into the goofiness of what he apparently wanted to do, 1966 Batman style.
Sam Elliott is basically just doing his thing as the Caretaker, but he’s good at what he does, and he’s entertaining when he’s on screen.
Unlike the young Nicholas Cage stand-in, the actress who plays young Eva Mendes looks exactly like Eva Mendes. So that’s at least kind of impressive?
Worst Parts:
I’m not big into heavy metal iconography, but even I don’t understand how they took the story of a biker with a flaming skull head that works for the Devil and made it so lame.
The story is just so generic and by-the-numbers that it’s instantly forgettable. You can essentially see every beat of the story coming before it comes because it feels like something we’ve all seen a hundred times before.
A lot of the actions don’t even really flow or make logical sense, and seem to be included because someone thought this was the type of thing that’d happen next and forgot to write a reason for it to happen. Like we see Roxanne getting upset about Johnny missing their date before he’s even been activated by the Devil. Like why did he apparently not even leave his apartment until well after he was supposed to meet her? Or the scene where the Caretaker goes on “one last ride” as the old west Ghost Rider only to literally vanish right before they confronted the bad guys. Like you’ve been saving the last use of your power for decades or longer just so you could do… literally nothing with it?
Charitably I think Wes Bentley’s Blackheart is maybe supposed to come across as a pathetic, spoiled brat? But regardless of what they’re aiming for, it doesn’t land at all.
The movie ends with the Devil agreeing to release Johnny Blaze from their contract and give him his soul back (seems nice of him, actually) and Johnny refusing, saying he wants to stay being the Ghost Rider so he can actually fight the Devil, and then the Devil gets real mad. Nothing about this scene is good or makes any sense.
Superhero Movies Ranked 