Movie Time: Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance

This week's movie is Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Sigh.

Drive Angrier 3D: On Fire Edition

This movie was a complete disappointment, since I really, really enjoy Nic Cage in basically everything. I would go see Space Ass, Starring Nicholas Cage. But this? This was awful and disappointing, to an extent that even Nic Cage didn't save it for me. My dad thought this was Drive Angry 2, i wish it were Drive Angry 2.

In a Nutshell
In this reboot of Ghost Rider, Johnny Blaze must save the antichrist from the devil or else... bad stuff will happen. Also Nic Cage is on fire and a skeleton. Thankfully, it doesn't prevent him from making crazy faces.

The Rant
Ooh boy, where to begin here? I guess I'll begin with the points from the movie I liked.

I liked the 3 or so animated featurettes for back story. They were really neat-looking and occasionally, a bit funny. They were a great way to pass back story, too, just narrated by Nic Cage with some moving comic book-style screens illustrating it, it was just so neat!

I also liked the scenes with the rider, the way he moved sometimes was just so nightmarish and pretty awesome, the CG work was pretty good and really sold the Rider as an evil demon-like entity. i just love how he moved and cackled and swung his chains like a madman, incinerating baddies. Those were neat scenes.

Lastly, there's a scene where Nic Cage drives a motorcycle really fast and spazzes out, making crazy faces. That was a highlight. Seriously. I think that says a lot about this movie.

And now, for a summary of the bad. I'll try to be concise because it's always better to focus on the good than the bad, but in this case, the bad vastly outweighs the good. Where to begin...

The main antagonist is completely silly-looking. It's like the people behind the movie didn't bother coming up with anything original and just stole their design for a bad guy off Stargate Atlantis. Seriously, the bad guy is a Wraith from Stargate Atlantis. Except he doesn't look as good.

The camera work. The shots were often weird, starting backwards then going forward again before panning, there was some shaky camera work at times, which is never pleasant in a 3d film. Speaking of which, the 3D was not mindblowing or, you know, necessary. At all. It wasn't noticeable, which is usally a good thing, but it wasn't really used except in a few scenes that were just silly. I did not feel like the extra money for 3D was well spent on my end, that's for sure.

Scenes were often extremely ridiculous, but not in a good way, because they were just loosely strung together. it felt kinda like those video games where you go from the Ice Stage to the Volcano Stage to the Graveyard Stage without any real transition. The movie starts with the kid escaping, then he gets caught, then he gets away, then he gets caught, then he gets saved, then he gets caught again. it's just a constant series of the kid changing hands.

There's a scene where a black Frenchman priest shoots up politicians who are actually satanists while reciting latin verses He's a one dimensional character and yet he shines the brightest in the film as far as characters go. He's black, French, a priest and he likes alcohol. Also he's an action priest because this is a superhero movie. That is the most well-developped character in the film, and he is still one-dimensional as hell.

Speaking of characters, so often the characters just act stupidly. It's annoying when The Devil is outwitted by a stunt jumper and his drunk priest friend. It's annoying when a movie teahces rules at one point only to break them overtly later on as if to say "Ha! You thought that think i said a few scenes back still holds? Wrong, sucker!" It's annoying when a movie relies on a Deus Ex Machina for a happy ending. And this game? It does these three things several times, and it's awful for it.

And finally a minor nitpick: The order of ancient monks tattooed English bible verses on their faces. They lived in Turkey and were Catholic monks...

The Score
This movie is terrible, it's not terrible enough to really be funny, it's just awful. it has a few neat scenes, but it's just completely ridiculous, especially since it tries to be a serious, heavy film about an anti hero. I give this movie one crazy Nic Cage face out of 5.

Not the funniest face from that scene, but the only one I could find.