Ghost Rider 2.8 of 5

Not really a missed opportunity…just misplaced trust. Mark Steven Johnson’s first jump into comic books was the ‘very good’ Daredevil. He loved the character and it showed. Here he kept the flash’¦but the overall cheesiness of the character and Nick Cage and the ‘˜otherworldly’™ features of the bad guys just made it seem like a mismatch. The flashback part of the story was good…the pact’¦the decision…but when tragedy stuck’¦I didn’t feel anything. And that’s how the rest of the film faired’¦no feeling. Sam Elliot was good and narrated through the story well. The jumps and stunts (albeit all phony) were visually good and dynamically exciting. But the story was about the minions of hell fighting for power and using Ghost Rider for the task. So it came off like a unfunny version of Little Nicky (wait’¦that wasn’t funny either). The fights seemed to simple’¦Bad guys were dispatched by barley lifting a finger. The two times Ghost rider dealt with living, the scenes showed great promise (arrested before a turn to GR and dealing with a rapist) but the rest became just too’¦’¦Constantine’¦without the coolness. So the misplaced trust was with Mark Steven Johnson’s inability to ground the character’¦a feat he pulled off with Daredevil.