Review of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011) by Brian F — 17 Feb 2015

I personally hated Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. A shame, really, considering I actually enjoyed the first one despite that movie not being too well-received. If the first movie was bad, than this one is even worse.

It's NOTHING like the first film at all. It actually makes that one look like The Dark Knight in comparison. In reality, this film is not actually a sequel. It's more of a reboot, since it seems to retcon many things from the first film.

The only real connection to the first movie is Nic Cage playing Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider again. It retells the origin story, which is pretty much the same one as in the first movie, but the rest of that movie's events never seemed to happen.

There's no mention of them whatsoever. None of the characters from the first movie come back or are even mentioned either, with the obvious exception of Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider, as well as Mephistopheles who is going by the name Roarke in this film, for whatever reason.

Instead of being portrayed by Peter Fonda as in the first film, he is portrayed here by Ciaran Hinds. With the name change and the change in actors, he might as well be a completely different "devil".

I enjoyed Peter's Fonda's portrayel a lot more and the villain Blackout, played by Johnny Whitworth, didn't seem quite as menacing as Blackheart from the first film. There is also a huge change in tone.

While the first one had more of a gothic tone and tried to take itself somewhat seriously, this one is completely over-the-top (in a bad way), downright bizarre at times, and doesn't take itself seriously at all.

The plot is rather amature and uninteresting, wth the characters having no development and seemed pretty uninteresting themselves. You can tell the directors were focusing more on visuals and action rather than on characters and plot.

In that respect, they succeed. The movie does have some rather cool action scenes, which is probably the only thing stopping me from giving it just one star. Although, most of them were shown in the trailer anyway.

In my opinion, everything about the first Ghost Rider was done better. Ghost Rider looked cooler, the hellcycle looked cooler, the plot was better, the characters were more interesting, the action scenes were more creative, Ghost Rider's Penance Stare was done better, and even the score was more interesting to listen to.

I felt like the score for this movie just got lost. I didn't really remember it. You don't need to have seen the first Ghost Rider to get this one, but if you have seen the first and you weren't a fan of it, odds are you're not going to like this one either.

If anything, you might appreciate the first movie just a little bit more now. I definitely do not recommend this one.