On Monday, 19 February 2007 07:52:28 UTC, badth...@yahoo.com wrote:

In the new Ghost Rider movie, there's a scene where a woman waits at
dinner for a man who's very late. Because this is the modern, real
world, she checks her phone/Blackberry for messages from him. There
are none there. Her next action pretty much defines not just the
failure (in my opinion) of this film, but of many other films,
especially those based on fantasy material: she pulls a Magic 8 Ball
out of her purse. Not a miniature one that she may neurotically carry around, but a fully-sized Magic 8 Ball. In her purse. That scene
sums up why Ghost Rider sucks, why Daredevil sucked, why Fantastic
Four mostly sucked (Johnny was spot on perfect; Ben and Reed were
okay) and why most comic book movies suck and will continue to do so.
The person/people behind it simply have no respect for telling a
story, especially one based on a comic book. End spoiler space.

In a movie where you want your audience to invest in a hero who sells
his soul to The Devil to save his father, there simply is no place for
scene like the Magic 8 Ball. It belongs in nothing less than a Nake
Gun or Scary Movie type comedy. Even in your ordinary romantic comedy
it would be considered an over-the-top joke. It would never make it
in say, Bridget Jones's Diary. There's no equivilent of a Magic 8
Ball in any comic book adaptation that we consider good (X-Men, Batman Begins, etc), but check your lousy ones and you'll find plenty. No
one is claiming that you can establish too much *realism* in a movie
about someone riding a flaming motorcycle, but this doesn't work if
it's not *grounded* in reality, which means there are rules and you
simply can't dismiss them whenever you like "because it's a fantasy."
This is not only a lack of respect for the material, but the audience
as well. Simply put, to them "It's a silly movie anyway, so what's
the problem with more silliness?"

A good contrast for this film is The Crow. The Crow is what Ghost
Rider should have tried to be, a niftly little gothic fantasy action
film. After all, Ghost Rider is not light-hearted material. It's
about a man who sells his soul to the devil and finds himself cursed.
But despite it's even darker premise, The Crow still had more humor
than Ghost Rider without stooping to mocking itself. Nor did it
violate its own rules of character and of suspension of disbelief. As opposed to Ghost Rider where, after claiming Johnny Blaze in
accordance to the deal he signed, The Devil for some reason decides to
make him *another* deal which will allow Johnny to get his soul back,
simply for doing what he's already obligated to do! To add to the
illogic, when Johnny does what's required and The Devil offers to lift
the curse and Johnny refuses, spouting off one of the worse speeches
of heroic justice in recent memory. Um, how can you *refuse* to have
a curse lifted? Either The Devil lifts it or he doesn't. What you
want really doesn't apply. Except in bad movies like this. There's
an even worse scene where Johnny is arrested for murder because his
license plate is found near a murder scene. Yeah, that's it. No
evidence, no motive. Because the writer/director (and I use those
terms loosely) wants a jail cell scene, this is all it takes to be
arrested for murder in this movie (but then again, this is the same
guy who had Matt Murdock, a private attorney, prosecuting a rape case
in the first five minutes of Daredevil). Again, no one is asking for
gritty reality, but if you're going to play in reality, you have to
obey the rules of it, which this guy is either too lazy or lacking in
talent to do. A talented writer who cared about his audience could
put Johnny Blaze in jail and according to the rules of all that anyone
who's ever seen a Law & Order episode would know. He would never have
Satan offer Johnny a deal to be free because he knows IT VIOLATES THE CHARACTER OF FREAKING SATAN! And he would have Johnny not *choose* to
keep the curse, but to master it so that he's not at Satan's bidding.
But Mark Steven Johnson is not this guy and never will be.

And he sucks even on a basic visceral level, because even though the motorcycle riding scenes are nice to see, the other action scenes are
stiff and dull. Ghost Rider fights a Wind elemental on a skyscraper
an a water elemental underwater and whatever you just imagined is 10
times better than what we see onscreen.

But it's all summed up by that damn Magic 8 Ball.

To be fair, it's the only thing you ever remember about Roxanne. Other than the fact that in her first scene as an adult, her dress matches the colour of the environment she's standing in.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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