Ghost Rider - The Spirit of Vengeance Review

Odious /ˈoʊdiəs/ adjective – deserving or causing hatred; hateful; detestable. highly offensive; repugnant; disgusting. Remember this definition for later in the review.

I just watched the best Nicholas Cage movie ever. It was called The Rock. A greater “fish out of water” story has never been told. It’s also one of the best “Rise to the occasion” stories ever
told. Cage was at his best in this film. I like this Cage. I also liked him in the National Treasure movies. Cage plays a charming good guy very well and I wish he would take more roles like this but no. He prefers to play the ape-!$%# crazy guy with the lunatic smile. You know the one.

Harrison Ford has his pursed lips, finger raised towards you, intense face look. Tom Cruise has his frantic sprint look. Nick Cage has his “I’ve just lost my frick’n mind” look. I don’t like it. He’s better than this but whatever. That brings me to his latest film Ghost Rider – The Spirit of Vengeance. I liked the first one a bit. It was goofy, the special effects were ok, but it simply was what it was. It’s on the shelf next to Daredevil and Superman Returns. By which I mean just so-so comic book movies.

I had high expectations that this one would be better due to the better computer animation, but they ended up using that just to make the flaming skull look like Cage’s “I’ve just lost my frick’n mind” face. There were hundreds of other problems with this film but
the most offensive have to be when they messed with the original. For no apparent reason they changed the scene where he signs his soul over to the devil. I can’t understand why, but they did. In the original, his flaming bike destroyed every road he drove on, but not in this one. The original he couldn’t be “The Rider” during the day. No such qualms in this one. And where the heck is Eva Mendes? I’m sorry, I don’t care that her mustache is bigger than mine, I’m not looking at her face anyway. Her replacement in this movie, was no replacement at all. At least when they dropped Megan Fox from Transformers 3, they got someone even hotter. And where was the wise old sage character. Yes they retired Sam Elliot at the end of Ghost Rider 1, but they killed Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, yet he was still in the next two. In a movie about ghosts, demons, spirits, etc. and even named Ghost Rider, couldn’t Sam Elliot be in this one also?

Because of the reason’s stated above, this movie simply lacked depth. It was cheesy, boring and probably the most obnoxious movie I’ve ever sat through. This is only comparing it to the original movie. This movie actually made the first Ghost Rider look like an Academy Award Candidate (or at least a Golden Globe Candidate).

To sum up how I feel about this movie let me just say this: Ghost Rider – The Spirit of Vengeance is odious in every sense of that word and gets zero stars from me. I hope there isn’t another sequel. And Nick, please, please do another National Treasure movie. Stop doing these “B” movies. You’re better than that. You don’t see Tom Hanks doing Bachelor Party 2 do you? Alright then. Grow up and knock it off.