Review of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011) by Thewolfsage — 07 Feb 2014

This is, quite simply, the worst movie I have ever seen in a theater. No exaggeration, no hyperbole, this is literally the worst thing my eyes have ever been forced to watch in all its unholy non-glory. The writing is so unbelievably terrible, and the "acting" is even worse. First of all, Nic Cage is at his finest - and by finest, I mean he takes things way the hell over the top. Not emotionally, no, that would actually be kind of cool; he goes his usual over the top weirdness. To make matters worse, even when Cage is nowhere to be seen and it's the (surprisingly awesome) CGI, it gets even stranger and yet far, far lamer somehow. The highlights of Ghost Rider's evil-fighting spree include pissing fire and instead of giving people the penance stare he, I kid you not, just sort of picks them up by the throat and waggles his head back and forth in front of them for several seconds at a time. No pain, no soul-burning, no evil-slaying, he just kind of stares at them like he's trying to seduce them with his flaming eye sockets.

The writing is the worst of it though. In addition to said fire-pee and lame soul-staring, they spend the entire movie building up how much he hates the power and wants to be rid of it (despite the fact that he declared his eternal vigilance at the end of the first movie), and then immediately after he gets rid of it, he has to get his powers back because - surprise surprise - bad stuff happens when the hero stops being a hero. I know this is the formula for every superhero movie's sequel, but come on guys; there was no emotion, no build up, no nothing. At least nothing that didn't feel like the writers were shoving the characters along down their poorly written paths for no apparent reason. He goes from accepting his fate and taking vengeance on the devil to a whiny, non-emotional yet somehow over-emotional wreck who wants nothing more than to cast his badassery away, to once again donning the mantle of Ghost Rider in the span of an hour and a half movie with no real reasons ever given for ANY of his emotions.

The backup cast also brings little, if indeed anything, to the show. The characters are poorly introduced - if they even get much of an introduction at all - and most if not all of them seem incredibly lame. The entire monk society that has been protecting the vessel for a demon's eventual return to keep said return from happening is pretty much worthless at doing their jobs the second Ghost Rider becomes involved, the demon that is returning is "too weak because he's so far from hell without a proper vessel", and the rest of the enemies are pretty much normal humans, with a few exceptions later in the movie. And despite this meaning that Ghost Rider is basically the only supernatural creature... he still completely fails to come off as a badass. At least the first movie made it clear that the Ghost Rider was not to be trifled with by anyone, even the (admittedly lame) Devil himself.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance was the first, and I pray only, movie I have ever wanted to walk out on in the middle of the showing. Had I not been on a date it would've surely been the first that I actually did. And to think I wondered why Stan Lee never made a cameo.