Well, one of the reasons I set up this blog was to alert people, specifically my friends but hey there may be someone else out there reading this, to the lastest and best Sci-Fi esque content, and give you my opinion of it.
Recently I went to see the latest comic book adaptation, the new film Ghost Rider starring Nicholas Cage. While not the best film in it's genre Ghost Rider does succeed and is highly watchable without having any of the dull cliches or weaknesses that occur in many films of the same genre. Most of these films are either true works of genius or are absolutely terrible, and whilst I wouldn't necessarily put Ghost rider up amongst the best it certainly manages to reach a very rare middle ground of being, while not as spectacular as it could, a good, enjoyable film.
My friend and I went to see it mid day during the week so we ended up being the only ones there! This worked really well for us, since we could talk without disturbing people, we got the best seats in the house, plus since it was just us they skipped the trailers and went straight on to the film!
So what's it about? Johnny Blaze is a motorcycle stuntman who is tricked by Mephistopholes (essentially the devil) into becoming his bounty hunter, the Ghost Rider. At night he is transformed into a flaming skeleton who seeks out the evil and sends them back to the devil's control (i.e. hell) His task is to find the contract of (somewhere) and claim all the souls from that place, which the previous Ghost Rider failed to do. At the same time he has to stop Blackheart, the devil's own son, and his minions from obtaining the contract for his own power. And, of course he has to try and save himself from the curse...oh yeah and there's a pretty girl he likes and he has to try and win her heart while he's at it!!
While somewhat vague in it's intentions, Ghost Rider succeeds because of this spiritual element to it that seperates it from previous adaptations. Normally films that have vague religious tones and decide to vastly misinterperet portions of scripture (such as the atrocity that is known as The Da vinci code) to create a 'cool' story really irritate me. While this film did have it's moments, such as when a demon says "Call me Legion, for we are many" which made me roll my eyes, it did stay at least vaguely consistent throughout.
The devil was superbly acted and did at least seem to have some limitations on his power, which made him a better character. But what worked in this film was that it wasn't pretending to be anything. It was a film about a comic book character called Ghost Rider who battles fictional demons in a fictional world, the film didn't pretend to be anything else and this made it consistent and watchable for me and I would reccommend it to others.
I'm not going to be so pretentious as to give it a star rating or anything like that, but I will say that it was good and worth paying to go to see.
I'll try and post up links to the up and coming SF releases soon, since TMNT's just around the corner
No comments:
Post a Comment