Ghost Rider - A Review

So, once again last night, I found myself unable to sleep, and Ghost Rider happened to be on.

I was never a Ghost Rider fan - certainly a fan of Mark Texeira (ever since Psi-Force) and I loved the thick-inked style he brought to the title - but not a big fan of the character or story. As Dave Sim (or one of his readers) has mentioned before, the 1970s were awash in Satanic comics and characters - particularly Marvel. We can point to all sorts of sociological factors and ideas - Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible; KISS, Judas Priest, and the emergence of leather-clad heavy metal; the horrors of Vietnam; the damning effects of disco on a nation of relative innocents - but I don't think anyone really knows why this was the case, it just was. In the 1970s, Satanism sold a slew o' comics and Ghost Rider was one of them.

The story is your basic Faustian tale: Johnny Blaze was a carnival stuntman (ala Evel Knievel) who sold his soul to the Devil to save his father's life. The Devil betrayed him and Johnny embarked on a career of increasingly more dangerous stunts - all of which he survived because the Devil helped him - which made him legendary. One day, the Devil came to stake his claim and turned Johnny Blaze into his bounty hunter, sending him to traipse about the world on his souped-up hog to collect Evil souls.

The title went largely unnoticed, though it had a respectable run, and in the 1990s, amidst the popularity of such titles as Sandman and Hellblazer, Marvel revived it. It was a smash-hit, but also a fad; one of those comics that was already "worth" twice its cover price before it hit the shelves every month and can now be had for much less. But, again, Mark Texeira's work on the title is legendary, so if you were into comics around that time, you know the character and story. So I figured I'd check it out at 3:00 in the AM.

Nicholas Cage is the perfect Johnny Blaze: he favors him physically, he has the intensity, and he came to the role with a feel for the character, having been a big comics fan in his earlier days. Eva Mendes also gives a startlingly sincere turn as GH's girlyfriend. Given what the writers had to work with, the dialogue flows and if you can suspend your disbelief, it's actually quite well-written. The problem is that the story is shit and the CGI is too, so only a child could manage to suspend his disbelief.

It's unfair to call the movie "clichèd," because the story itself is a melange of clichès: it is your basic superhero origin transposed over your basic beat-the-Devil story. No one knows exactly why Satanism came into vogue in the 70s, but I do believe it had to do with the whole Satanic Church thing that LaVey was doing, and the whole rebellion thing the Vietnam War sparked. Regardless, plenty of other mythologies and ideologies have been plumbed for comics gold, so why not the Judaeo-Christian mythology? After all, in the end, Ghost Rider becomes more of an avenging angel than a willing devil, using his Satanic powers for Good instead of Evil.

Still, while no fan of the titles, the movie is good for a single viewing, so long as you go in not expecting much. If you like the story, pick up the 1990s title and then move to the original for completeness. Well-directed, well-acted, fairly-written, but the CGI destroys it as it does with all movies. Besides, the story is a bust.

* In researching this, I found out that there was a Ghost Rider title from the 1950s. I am assuming this was the original title, with the horseback Ghost Rider. I do not know his story or origin and I really didn't have the time to look it up.

© C Harris Lynn, 2008