Skulldrudgery
A review of the laughable dark fantasy Ghost Rider
By Robert Newton

GHOST RIDER
Starring Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes and Sam Elliott; Written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson; 114 minutes; Rated PG-13 [for horror violence and disturbing images]

There is a Stephen King story called “The Jaunt” in which a man, after having been the first human to be teleported, materializes at Point B and utters madly, “It’s eternity in there!” This cryptic catchphrase can also serve as a four-word review of the clumsy and obvious comic book adaptation Ghost Rider starring Nicolas Cage as a showy motorcyclist who sells his soul and ends up being the Devil’s fire-coiffed, Hell Harley-riding gofer.

Oy, where to start? Producer Avi Arad’s gluttonous binging on Marvel Comics’ back catalog — with over a dozen properties in development over the next couple years — has netted another dud. Say the word “subtext” to this guy, and he’ll probably think you’re speaking of a novel about a submarine as he segues into how he is producing an adaptation of the third-tier Marvel title Sub-Mariner. Couple that with comic book maniac Nicolas Cage’s blind love for the title’s dark mythos and DareDevil director Mark Steven Johnson’s lack of any kind of vision other than how cool the special effects are going to look and the result is this cruddy assault.

The subtlest thing about this movie is the casting of Peter Fonda as Mephistopholes. The four people under the age of 25 who know that Fonda was the star of the 1969 counterculture classic Easy Rider will delight in this touch; everyone else will lament how obvious the character itself is and long for the low-key, egg-eating symbolism of Louis Cyphre (Robert DeNiro) in Angel Heart. It makes you want to shout at the Devil and tell him that he needs to get a better press agent. The rest of the show is awkward and plodding, horribly acted and without any kind of real feeling. Even the third animated Spawn movie, itself a Ghost Rider imitator, had more depth than this flashy debacle.

It seems that lately, Cage makes a Ghost Rider for every World Trade Center, a Wicker Man for every Lord Of War. This midlife identity crisis needs to happen off-screen, else the Oscar winner’s legacy will be one of schizophrenic mediocrity. He is better than this, and if we didn’t spend $50 million on such mega-marketed piffle during its opening weekend, our powerful apathy would serve as the kind of consumer intervention that monumentally bad ideas like this need to halt them before they can hatch and franchise their soulless ee-vil.•••