Cynical Nation

All right, I'll admit it. As soon as I saw the first previews for Ghost Rider I knew it was probably going to suck. Still, the fond nostalgia of childhood comic book memories kept urging me to go anyway. Besides, any movie in which Nicolas Cage rides a badass motorcycle with a flaming skeleton head can't be all bad, right?

Well, now I'm leaning toward staying home.

You know it’s bad when the first scene after the prologue is a tender moment between two teenage lovers that might be more at home in third rate Dawson’s Creek ripoff. For those who may have forgotten, this is a movie about a guy with a flaming skull for a head who wears a spiked leather jacket, zooms around town on a gigantic flaming motorcycle made of bones, and is literally the Devil’s bounty hunter. Clearly the filmmakers aren’t aware of one of the most important rules in Hollywood: Movies about vigilante bikers with flaming skulls for heads do not need tender moments.

Not that the flaming skull parts are any better. You’d think a biker/Devil’s bounty hunter with a flaming skull would be able to do some pretty cool stuff, but his main power is -- get this -- he stares at people. And makes them sorry they did bad stuff. Presumably the first thing they think of is agreeing to appear in this movie.

The first Spider-Man movie finally convinced me that yes, Hollywood finally can do justice to my comic book heroes by giving them a decent big-screen treatment. Everything since, except for the excellent Batman Begins, has shown me they usually don't.

For those of you too young, old, or culturally deprived to remember, here is the legacy they are befouling.

(All right, he was a bizarre, third-string superhero even back in the 70s, but still.)