Who up in this sandbox is going to see Ghost Rider?

Those are my new Nicholas Cage movie baseline requirements.

Your expectations are too high.

oh hell no

Over in NRO ville, of all places:

The good news is: It’s really, really bad. The movie was directed by Mark Steven Johnson, the same guy who gave us the laughable Ben Affleck Daredevil, so there was really never much chance that it would be any good. My hope was that it might be bad enough to get some B-movie jollies and a few good laughs. In that respect—and in absolutely no other—it’s a complete success.

Johnson has totally outdone himself; Daredevil at least had a pulpy comic book charm. You couldn’t exactly enjoy it, but you could feel sorry for it. Ghost Rider, on the other hand, is spectacularly awful. It reaches awesome new heights of flaming-skull badness. If Daredevil was a sympathy date, Ghost Rider is a full-fledged disaster of epic proportions that can only be experienced as an extended exercise in unintentional hilarity.

You know it’s bad when the first scene after the prologue is a tender moment between two teenage lovers that might be more at home in third rate Dawson’s Creek ripoff. For those who may have forgotten, this is a movie about a guy with a flaming skull for a head who wears a spiked leather jacket, zooms around town on a gigantic flaming motorcycle made of bones, and is literally the Devil’s bounty hunter. Clearly the filmmakers aren’t aware of one of the most important rules in Hollywood: Movies about vigilante bikers with flaming skulls for heads do not need tender moments.

Not that the flaming skull parts are any better. You’d think a biker/Devil’s bounty hunter with a flaming skull would be able to do some pretty cool stuff, but his main power is—get this—he stares at people. And makes them sorry they did bad stuff. Presumably the first thing they think of is agreeing to appear in this movie.

Seriously. A stare? What kind of a hardcore super power is that? Couldn’t he have super flame strength or flame flight or flaming claws or a couple of flaming swords or a flaming machine gun arm or something, anything, cooler than a...stare? What’s next: Mean Man, with his punishing arsenal of disapproving looks?

'stache appeal

It's even the same hairstyle as Road House, WTF!

Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Peter Fonda, Wes Bentley, Donal Logue, and Sam Elliott

"Flaming Telepaths"?

xpost

HE'S PUSHING THE ENVELOPE

What was something you really wanted in this character, considering how involved you were in the production?

Nicolas Cage: “It’s a deeply personal character and I was trying to find a new way of presenting how he would keep dark spirits at bay. I didn’t want him being a heavy drinker or a chain smoker. I wanted him eating jellybeans so he wouldn’t invite the devils in. I wanted him listening to Karen Carpenter to help him relax so he wouldn’t allow the devil with satanic Goth rock or something. Or, he’s watching chimpanzees do karate instead of The Exorcist. And, all three of those things I was doing in my own life. I was eating jellybeans out of a martini glass and listening to Karen Carpenter and on the Internet watching chimps do karate. And I thought, ‘Well this is funny, let’s put it in the movie.’ But it’s also true.”

Can you talk about the skull x-rays?

Nicolas Cage: “Yeah, we did all that. They grafted my skull so I guess it is me, which is kind of wild. But what I really love about this character is that we’re all him. We all have human skulls, right? You’ve got one, I’ve got one, and we’ve all got one and yet we look at it and we go, ‘That’s scary.’ And then after a little while you go, ‘Wait a minute. That’s beautiful. He’s human and he’s a total bad ass.’ He’s fighting the dark forces, but he’s human. It’s pretty neat.”

How rare for an actor to go so deeply inside himself for the sake of a character.

And Forest Whitaker was the co-star. I had not known that previously.

I'm kinda hoping that, since he's a big geek & all, Nic gets cast as The Comedian in the Watchmen flick, just so he can get shot & fall out of a skyscraper.

TS: F. Murray Abraham vs. Ben Kingsley

weird - Rifftrax is run by my in-laws! I had no idea there was such a huge audience for that stuff (neither did they, apparently)

The hell? You mean the folks behind Legacy Films?

I had no idea there was such a huge audience for that stuff (neither did they, apparently)

The MSTies are always jonesing. I should know. (I figure Legacy must be raking in some good coin given the relatively low overhead.)

You do raise a good point.

I want to slap the few folks that actually applauded when it was over, tho. Get one set of standards plz.

I remember when they were filming it too, around where I work. At one point there was a black van with SWAT painted on the side as a prop. I never saw Cage himself tho.

I did see Anthony Stuart Head the other day though! But thats another story.

anyway just saw this, kind of in love with sam elliott, but thats it.

just trying to keep the sandbox clean

like washing the windows before the hurricane