Overview: When the motorcyclist Johnny Blaze finds that his father Barton Blaze has a terminal cancer, he accepts a pact with the Mephistopheles, giving his soul for the health of his beloved father. But the devil deceives him, and Barton dies in a motorcycle accident during an exhibition. Johnny leaves the carnival, his town, his friends and his girlfriend Roxanne. Years later Johnny Blaze becomes a famous motorcyclist, who risks his life in his shows, and he meets Roxanne again, now a TV reporter. However, Mephistopheles proposes Johnny to release his contract if he become the "Ghost Rider" and defeat his evil son Blackheart, who wants to possess one thousand evil souls and transform hell on earth.

DVD Verdict: Mark Steven Johnson (from a pure fan boy point of view) should not be allowed to touch another Marvel franchise. He has contributed to the three worst recent Marvel films ever, 'Daredevil,' 'Elektra,' and now 'Ghost Rider.' You would think studio execs would get a damn clue and realize the guy can’t direct, write, and should be relegated to second unit director. Harsh? Perhaps, but this guy sucks at what he does, plain and simple!

I wanted so bad to like this film. I have a lot of friends who said the movie looked horrible, one in particular who had warned me “Dude this movie is going to blow, let’s watch something else”. Why I didn’t adhere to that advice is still beyond me. 'Ghost Rider' does everything wrong, and I mean everything. It’s horribly directed, written, poorly paced, sub par CG, and the editing is astonishingly bad. The acting was vomit inducing trash, there were so many WTF moments in this film. I consider Nicolas Cage a pretty competent actor, and I enjoy most of his films.

It boggles my mind what compelled Cage to take this role. It had to be money, please Nic say it was money because it sure as hell couldn’t have been the script. We all know why Eva Mendez was in the movie. The actress is stunning and serves as a marvelous distraction from the shit you’re being subjected to.

The character of 'Ghost Rider' himself seem like a really cool character. I never really read the comics, but I know people who have. Most of them say the character has enormous back story, and that the comic itself is pretty decent. Well this film adaptation apparently dropped the ball somewhere. The movie makes it very difficult to like Johnny Blaze. I mean they paint this supposed “bounty hunter for the devil” to be a complete pansy.

Blaze passes time by eating jelly beans out of martini glasses, listening to Karen Carpenter, and watching nature videos that feature monkeys. I wish I could say I was joking, but this is all in the film. The character has virtually no depth or development, and is very unlikable.

The performances were crap all across the board. This isn’t to say that all the actors completely sucked, after all they had a pretty lousy script to work with. Most of the dialog between characters consists of one liners, most of which don’t make any sense in the context of the situation. Cage did his best to salvage something out of a character that should kick ass, but fails miserably. Mendez has always been a talentless broad, but my God she is beautiful. One thing Johnson did right was waste half the film on gratuitous cleavage shots, which are breathtaking by the way.

The action sequences are equally boring, which surprised the hell out of me. I was really expecting to at least enjoy the action, and I was very wrong. There are no spiderman-like epic battles. Most of them are very short lived, bogged down by cliche bravado infused dialog instead of fighting each other and blowing sh*t up. I won’t get into how incredibly lame the villains are it but it’s basically a band of Hot Topic goth kids who want to play God.

So, as comic book movies go, this delivers pretty much everything you could expect from a film about a guy with a flaming skull for a head! That said, there are some great support roles from the always-reliable Sam Elliott (as The Caretaker) and one enjoyably camp performance from Fonda! But, and believe me, if you want to waste 100 minutes of your life; or want to see how not to make a film, check this out! Otherwise watch something else, anything else will do! This is a Widescreen Presentation (2.40:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the Special Features of:

Never-Before-Seen Footage
Comentary with Producer Gary Foster
Commentary with Writer/Director Mark Steven Johnson and Visual Effects Supervisor Kevin Mack
3 Making-of Documentaries: Spirit of Vengeance, Spirit of Adventure, Spirit of Execution
Sin & Salvation: Featurettes Chronicling 40 Years of Ghost Rider Comic Book History
Animatics