Cody Hamman revs up some Film Appreciation for 2007's Ghost Rider.
March 13, 1990 was a life-altering day for me. That’s when, after seven years, Marvel Comics re-launched their Ghost Rider title with issue #1 of a new a volume, beginning a series that saw the mantle of the supernaturally-powered, flame-headed, motorcycle-riding hero being passed from the person who was inhabited by a different version of the entity in the previous volume (Johnny Blaze) to a new person (Danny Ketch).
I was six years old at the time. I had never heard of Ghost Rider before I saw Ghost Rider #1 sitting on the spinning rack at a local grocery store (my favorite grocery store, a place called Cardinal, which would be closed and bulldozed just a year and a half later). Since I was already a horror fan at that point, I was instantly drawn to the cover image of a skull-faced character with a flaming head. My mom bought the comic book for me. I had been reading comics for years, but that was the moment I became a comic book collector. Ghost Rider had an eight-year, 93-issue run, and I collected every one of those issues. The character became the number one comic book hero in my life – and while the Danny Ketch version of the character was my primary focus, I also branched out into the Johnny Blaze era, eventually collecting every issue of that run as well. I wasn’t unfamiliar with Blaze, though, because he was still around in the Ketch era – not turning into Ghost Rider, but sporting a shotgun that could blast out an endless supply of hellfire.
That volume of Ghost Rider was a major hit at first, and rightfully so. For the first 25 issues, I feel that writer Howard Mackie achieved something close to perfection, and the artwork by Mark Texeira was incredible. It looked like Hollywood was going to strike while the iron was hot and get a movie adaptation into production quickly. There was already talk of a Ghost Rider movie in 1992... but fans would have to wait for the project to take a decade-long journey through development hell before they’d have the chance to see the movie. By the time the movie was released in 2007, of course, Ghost Rider Mania of the early ‘90s was long over.
Although there was an earlier version of Ghost Rider in comic book history, that was an Old West gunfighter who wore a phosphorescent white costume. The flame-headed, motorcycle-riding version of the character was created by writer Gary Friedrich and artist Mike Ploog in 1972, in reaction to two things that were popular in entertainment then: the motorcycle stunts performed by Evel Knievel, and the fact that devil-themed movies were popular, with Rosemary’s Baby and The Devil Rides Out already in the world and The Exorcist and The Omen to follow.
Written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson, the 2007 movie focuses on the Johnny Blaze version of the character and starts off with a fairly good telling of his origin story. The teenage Johnny (Matt Long) and his father Barton (Brett Cullen) are motorcycle stunt performers in a carnival, and Johnny is in a relationship with Roxanne Simpson (Raquel Alessi), the daughter of a fellow carnival worker. Since Roxanne’s father doesn’t approve of their relationship, Johnny and Roxanne are planning to run off together – but before they can, Johnny learns that his dad has terminal lung cancer. That’s when a strange man called Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda; a great bit of casting, giving his Easy Rider and Race with the Devil past) walks into the carnival in the middle of the night and offers Johnny a deal: his father will be cured of his cancer, and Johnny gives up his soul in return. To save his dad, Johnny takes the deal. Barton is cured... then immediately dies during a stunt performance. Johnny gave up his soul for nothing, and he knows Mephisto is coming for him some day.
This is a smart simplification of the origin. In the comics, Barton did die in a stunt accident, but that was in the background. After his father’s death, Johnny was taken in by the Simpson family – and patriarch Crash Simpson was another motorcycle stunt performer. After Mrs. Simpson was killed in an accident, Johnny swore to her that he would never ride in the stunt show. Not knowing that Johnny made this promise, Crash came to think of him as a coward. When Crash was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Johnny turned to the books he had been reading on Satanism and promised his soul in exchange for Crash’s health. Crash was cured, then died in a stunt. And when Johnny started performing motorcycle stunts after her father’s death, Roxanne was appalled. The movie version condenses the whole thing while making it more palatable to a wide audience: Johnny wasn’t studying Satanism in the movie and looking to sell his soul, Mephisto just showed up.
Nicolas Cage takes over the Johnny role after we jump ahead twenty years, and he took the sort of eccentric approach to the character that you would expect. Although he has built a successful career out of risking his life performing motorcycle stunts, he’s constantly trying to prove to himself that it’s his skill keeping him alive, not the luck of the devil. When he’s not on his cycle, he prefers candy over alcohol, watches animal documentaries, and listens to The Carpenters. Things that keep a person calm and clear-minded. He lives in fear of bringing Mephisto back into his life. But if Mephisto didn’t come back, we wouldn’t have a movie or a Ghost Rider.
A prologue told us that every generation has a Ghost Rider, some damned soul who’s cursed to ride the earth, collecting on the devil’s deals. In a nod to the Old West version of Ghost Rider, we see that there was an Old West flame-headed Ghost Rider, riding on horseback. That was Texas Ranger Carter Slade – and when Mephisto sent him to a place called San Venganza to collect a contract worth a thousand evil souls, Slade stole the contract and outran the devil.
Now, Mephisto’s son Blackheart (Wes Bentley) has come to earth in search of that contract, because apparently it’s powerful enough to unleash Hell on our world. The movie version of Blackheart is a bit disappointing, because this character is usually depicted as a monstrous creature in the comics, not as a handsome, pale guy... and, unfortunately, Johnson gave Bentley some really cheesy dialogue to speak and scenes to play out.
Mephisto aside, the villains truly are the weakest point of the movie. Blackheart is a cheeseball, and he’s aided in his endeavor by three elemental demons / fallen angels called the Hidden: Gressil (Laurence Breuls), who has earth-based powers; Abigor (Mathew Wilkinson), who has wind-based powers; and Wallow (Daniel Frederiksen), who has water-based powers. Wallow is the name of a demonic character from the comics, but there he didn’t have water powers, he was able to “induce and feed upon human misery.” In the movie, Wallow, Gressil, and Abigor are so weak and pathetic, they might as well not have been in it at all. They are no match for Ghost Rider, who just shows up and easily defeats them, one by one. There are many demonic characters from the source material who would have been much more fun to watch than this group of dweebs.
Mephisto has no power over Blackheart in this world. To thwart his son’s plans, he turns Johnny into the latest iteration of Ghost Rider, promising he’ll return Johnny’s soul if he destroys Blackheart. The presentation of Ghost Rider here is a mix of the Blaze and Ketch versions of the character from the comics. While the character is a bit of an off-kilter monster, like the Blaze version, he also exists to avenge the innocent and punish the wicked, like the Ketch version... and his appearance also evolves through the film to make him look more and more like the Ketch version. The Ketch Ghost Rider had an ability called the penance stare, which forces an evildoer to experience all the pain they’ve caused. To see all the wrong they’ve ever done and turn it against them. To sear the soul of the wicked. Johnny’s Ghost Rider is able to do that in the movie, although the fact that he seems to turn their eyeballs into charcoal in the process is unnecessary and lame.
While Johnny is struggling with the fact that he now occasionally turns into a flame-headed monster, he’s also dealing with seeing Roxanne for the first time in years. Eva Mendes plays the character as an adult, with Roxanne now being a reporter who comes back into Johnny’s life seeking an interview. He attempts to rekindle their relationship, but there’s a bit too much going on in his life at the moment for him to really be able to put an effort into winning her back.
Represented by Captain Jack Dolan (David Roberts), who’s named in reference to Captain Arthur Dolan from the comics (the father of Danny Ketch’s girlfriend Stacy), the authorities don’t take well to having a flaming biker riding around in their city, driving over water and going up the sides of buildings, so Ghost Rider has to get the cops off his back long enough to focus on the demons he’s supposed to eliminate.
It’s tough being a Ghost Rider. Luckily for Johnny, the previous Ghost Rider is living in his city. Sam Elliott graces the film with his awesome presence to play the tobacco-spitting Caretaker, a cemetery worker who also happens to be Carter Slade, and therefore has all the information Johnny could hope to receive on how to function as a Ghost Rider. Slade has the ability to turn into Ghost Rider one more time himself... but it’s a bit of a letdown that he doesn’t use that ability to get involved in an action sequence. The old and new Ghost Riders just take a ride through the desert together so Slade can guide Johnny to San Venganza.
San Venganza is where the climactic confrontation between Johnny and Blackheart takes place with the fate of the world – and, more importantly, Roxanne – hanging in the balance. This isn’t a dazzling action sequence, but at least it’s better than the other, underwhelming “Ghost Rider vs. a villain” scenes in the movie. And Johnny gets his hellfire shotgun!
Ghost Rider had a decent run at the box office, making $229 million on a budget that was around $110 million. The movie doesn’t have a very good reputation, but I’ve always enjoyed it, even if it isn’t quite the Ghost Rider movie I had been hoping for. A lot of it I find to be quite acceptable, with some things getting to the “really good” range – the origin story, most of Cage’s silly antics, Sam Elliott as Caretaker / Carter Slade. The Roxanne stuff is okay. It’s very cool that they got Peter Fonda to play Mephisto. But there is some severe cheesiness to endure, the movie has an overly glossy, candy-coated look at times, and the Hidden are ridiculously weak.
By the way, the Wikipedia breakdown of the movie claims that Ghost Rider kills human criminals in the film, along with the demonic characters he takes down. If I thought he was killing people, like the criminals he gets locked in a cell with at one point, that would be a major strike against the movie. Ghost Rider only kills demons, not humans. My read is that those criminals only get knocked out, and the Wikipedia writer was overreacting to the same degree of some “body count” videos I’ve watched on YouTube that claim Tom Cruise / Ethan Hunt is killing somebody every time he punches someone in a Mission: Impossible movie. Knockouts are not kills.
Ghost Rider has its issues, but it provided a solid foundation. It’s a fun movie that could have been the first step in a cool franchise, if the right issues were tweaked the right way going into a sequel. Unfortunately, the sequel we got is a movie I don’t like very much at all... but that’s a write-up for another time. For now, we focus on Ghost Rider 2007, which I mostly enjoyed when I caught it in the theatre – and which inspired me to spend a lot of money, buying more Ghost Rider comic books and filling in the gaps in my collection (like issues of other books Ghost Rider crossed over into).
It didn't mean a whole lot to the world, but this movie was a major event for me.
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