Marvel Movie Project #14: Spider-Man 3

It is hard to live up the greatness that was Spider-Man 2.  I get that.  And my anticipation for Spider-Man 3 was about as high as it could have been.  The Harry Osborn/Goblin story had been set up over the course of the previous two films.  It was destined to come to a head in this film, maybe even in the form of a second Green Goblin, or even the Hobgoblin.  Curt Conners had been a through line in both films, so the Lizard could certainly poke his leathery snout into things.  Pete was finally coming into his own as Spidey.  Spider-man 3 was building up to be great!

And then the dreaded word started circulating...Venom.  A fan favorite in great demand.  I get it.  But the story of Venom would require a trilogy all its own, it could certainly not be done in a single film.  The story of Venom is actually the story of the symbiote brought to Earth by Spidey by accident in the guise of a new costume.  The costume became "attached" to PP and his alter ego both emotionally and physically.  Living off the bodily chemicals that were in play while PP was Spider-Man, the symbiote would take control of Peter as he slept and made him patrol the city as Spider-Man.  Upon discovering this, Peter tried to rid himself of the symbiote which was desperately trying to bond to him permanent.  In the end Peter ascends a church tower and risks his life and hearing to drive the symbiote off under the pealing of the bells (the symbiote is vulnerable to sonics and fire).  Defeated, wounded, and rejected, the symbiote slinked to the floor of the cathedral where he happened to run into Eddie Brock, a journalist who's career had been discredited by Spider-Man and Peter Parker individually.  Sensing Brock's depression and anger, the symbiote offered him companionship and the ability to get revenge on those that wronged him (the symbiote had mimicked Spider-man's powers for so long that it had pretty much replicated them).  Together, the symbiote and Brock became Venom and set out to get revenge on the person who wronged them both: Spider-Man.  And the story goes on from there and is incredible.

But to have the emotional impact a story likes this can generate, you have to give it TIME.  You cannot rush emotional involvement.  You can evoke feeling (just watch the first ten minutes of UP.  You get all the feeling you want), but you will not get the commitment that a story like this deserves.  Ergo, the minute Venom enters the conversation, we are either looking at a 4 hour film or we are looking at a rush job.

Spider-Man 3 gives us the rush job.

To be fair, Spider-Man 3 is half of a good movie.  Exactly half of a good movie.  In watching the film again for this project, Aimee and I tracked the exact point where the movie goes wrong, horribly wrong, and that point comes almost exactly at the halfway point in the film.  The minute Sandman is wrongly injected into the death of Uncle Ben, the movie takes an irreparable turn for the worst.  Up to that moment, the Sandman is a well constructed, thoughtful character, perhaps better developed and introduced here than in the comics!  All of the Sandman stuff with Spider-man has the makings for a great film.  There is no reason to connect that very smart, very Spider-Man 2-esque, story to the origin story.  None.

I hate memes.

But like a series of dominoes, once that first one is tipped, the rest tumble and create one hell of a mess.  Once Sandman in injected into the origin, the movie descends into a tangled clump of cliches, sight gags, and mindless action.  Peter, our hero, the likeable, relatable everyman, becomes a prick who causes what any rational person would consider irreconcilable harm to his rather patient and understanding girlfriend for absolutely NO REASON AT ALL.  At this point we no longer have anyone to cheer for (except maybe Sandman).  Even after Peter wakes up and makes amends his offense was so great, it is hard to find him likeable again.

Then comes that horrible cliche moment when Venom meets Sandman and those dreaded words are uttered "You hate Spider-Man, I hate Spider-Man, let's team-up."  Ugh.  Just kill me now.  This takes the level of intelligence in the film down to Ace Ventura level and it is never to recover.

Now in Topher Grace's defense, he is likeable enough as Brock, but he is given so little to do that is worth doing, that his role is virtually throw-away.  He is fun as Peter's new rival at the newspaper, but once the Venom aspect is introduced he is swallowed up in goofy villain nonsense.  Sandman's character is equally devolved at this point and we are left with two half developed characters that are reduced to cardboard cut-outs about to be embroiled in some very senseless, over-the-top action.

Waitaminute.  What about Harry Osborn?  Oh he's in there, floating around the background waiting for his moment to shine.  A moment he will never get.   His character is given plenty of treatment, but the resolution of him deciding to be a hero instead of letting his need for revenge consume him is ultimately without much impact.  What wants to be a great, subtle character study is lost in a melange of super-hero beat-em-ups, which also occasionally steals material from the first Spider-Man movie.

Honestly, what Spider-Man 3 feels like is the foundation of a well made character drama playing out the story of Peter and Harry as it has been developed over the course of 3 movies, with the addition of a surprisingly touching Sandman story for good measure.  But somewhere along the line, Hollywood got involved and script doctors or producers started adding in things that had no place in the film.  Things like Venom, Gwen Stacy, and Peter the Prick's emo moment.

I enjoyed Spider-Man 3 up until the point of no return.  I thought it was going to deliver on its promise.  But everything after the point of no return is movie wasteland, devoid of substance and entertainment value.  Sadly, the second half of the film ruins everything that came before it and therefore Spider-Man 3 lives down here among the worst Marvel Movies.  True, it's closer to the best of the worst (which will be next week), but it's still not worth watching more than once.

Aimee's Take:

I agree with everything Stan had to say here, except I think Mary Jane is kind of a bitch in this movie. No, it doesn't give Peter free reign to be an unfettered douche-bag, but a lot of annoying drama could have been avoided if MJ had just looked preening Petey straight in the eye and said, "I know you are happy to be famous but I got fired from my acting job because they don't think I can sing!" I really doubt that Peter is going to react to that by carrying on like a self-involved jerk and later making out with the vapid copy of Gwen Stacy that somehow surfaces in this film for no reason.

The big problem here is that this movie reads like the last chance to get all the Spider-Man staples into a film before the budget runs out and no more films can be made. Venom, Gwen Stacy, the Alien Costume (which, by the way, almost NEVER MAKES SENSE WITHOUT SECRET WARS or Reed Richards!) and a hefty revisit to the origin story (Green Goblin and Uncle Ben's murder).

I object to pretty much all of it. And I wanted to like this film. I've never particularly cared for this iteration of MJ--she's kind of a wet blanket--but I genuinely liked the slow-burn friends-in-crisis dynamic that exists between Harry and Peter. I like Aunt May's frail but strong spirited presence. Problems exist with the entire series but on the whole, these are characters I love being portrayed in ways I really liked.

If you make Sandman Uncle Ben's murderer, you make Peter a murderer. Ok, maybe he didn't shoot Ben's presumed murderer in the head or anything, but he tracked down and intimidated a not-innocent-but-not-a-murderer-guy and directly led him to his death. Aunt May and I are horrified. This is not Daredevil!

If you jam Gwen Stacy into this movie only to make her a fashion model... well, what purpose does she serve that couldn't have been adequately met by just some random other girl? Hell, I'd like to suggest that an old chestnut like Liz Allen or Betty Brandt (already in the films, by the way) could fill in more appropriately. If you used Betty, you wouldn't have even needed to introduce a new character! MJ could be very jealous of someone who Peter might actually have a relationship with!

I could nitpick the end of this film to death, but really, what would be the point? The 80's/90's Batman franchise taught us why villain team-ups are a bad idea and there's no reason to point out that this film could have benefited enormously by learning from those mistakes.

We had great set up for two villains: Green Goblin (retread) and Lizard. We had set up for MJ and Peter to be fairly stable by now. This needed to be the long, slow culmination of two other movies. It needed to pay off. And it didn't. I think this was the most disappointing movie of my adult life.

It's not wholly awful, of course. Like Stan says up above--until the half-way mark, it's pretty damn awesome. I loved Sandman's character and everyone else was doing their thing pretty much how you'd like to see it happen. But it takes an ill-advised turn and never comes back. It's no one person's fault. The casting is very good; it's just like the second half was made by a committee that was tasked with fitting all these horrible plot points into an otherwise decent film. And that's why Spider-Man 3 is the worst of its series and only rates a spot half-way up the list.

The good news is, the list is only going to get better. We can hope.

Marvel Movie Project #17 Fantastic Four 2

This is the movie where the Silver Surfer comes to Earth for no reason, wastes all of our time, and then kills Galactus and leaves.  That's it.  I kid you not.  Look, you know by now I like to take the comic book source material and tell you where the movie went horribly wrong.  This won't take long.  The Silver Surfer CANNOT kill Galactus.  At least not out right.  The Surfer's power is literally a fraction of the World Eater's power cosmic.  It is that fact that creates the conflict of the Surfer's story.  He leads Galactus to Earth so the big guy can eat it, but then learns that Earth is full of people who are much like the home planet he left behind to save.  He must then enlist the help of the FF to save Earth and rebel against his master.

Does anything in this movie even remotely look like that?  No.  What we get is more of the same recycled crap from the first movie, even Doom comes back for absolutely NO reason, with some more interesting Special Effects.  Alba is still unbelievable as Sue, and she is a total bitch.  Reed is still a weak, mealy mouthed nerd who is marrying Sue because I think he is scared of her.  Ben is less pathetic this time around and Alicia is a welcome and likable female character in a movie with far too few.  Johnny, again, steals the show and creates the films only enjoyable moments.

The film is plagued by more forced family squabbles, but this time it is set against the tired device of having the four swap powers due to yet another freak accident, which only confuses an already overly complicated and needless plot.

The Special Effect, er Silver Surfer, looks really good and has the makings of being an interesting character, but he is given absolutely nothing to do, except show up, get captured and misunderstood and then released to go KILL GALACTUS, which he cannot do.  He is as cardboard as they come and it is too bad.

Perhaps the biggest flaw in this film is the lack of an actual villain.  Like I said before, Doom returns to menace everyone and do something, but what that might be is never clear.  Steal the surfer's power, steal Galactus's power, who can really tell.  His agenda is no more clear in this film than it was in the original.  Galactus is even less of a villain, and I get that he is cosmic-sized so he's hard to put into perspective, but he could at least be a credible threat.

I remember liking this movie a lot more when it came out, but I think, like the original, I was just excited to see the FF on the screen.  Johnny and Ben have some nice moments and overall, the story is somehow better than the original movie, but this is not a good movie.  It is far too confused and aimless and the performances are far too shallow to make this anything better than a moderately painless waste of a Saturday afternoon.  The movie is watchable, but only watchable.

 Aimee's Take:

This is more Fantastic Four in every sense. Sue is bitchy, Reed is boring, Johnny is perfect if overblown, and Thing is moody. They fight even more, you're left to wonder WHY Reed would ever marry someone who so clearly hates him. The Silver Surfer shows up and saves Sue for no reason. Doom appears for no reason. And then, the Silver Surfer kills Galactus. That's right. It's not unwatchable--I actually liked it in the theater, but unfortunately I was not able to locate whatever drugs I was smoking at that time for the repeat viewing. It is definitely better than FF and the rest of the schlock we've covered so far. But once again, it's entirely on the back of Johnny Storm played by Chris Evans. There's no way I could sit through another one of these things without stabbing Jessica Alba in the face with a pencil. I should point out that I actually love Ioan Gruffudd--although primarily for his work in the A&E Horatio Hornblower series that has nothing to do with trying to pair him up with a poorly-styled faux-blonde super bitch.

Honestly, there's not much to say. We're treading near interesting territory, because the next few movies actually have something incredibly likable if not loveable about it. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is neither bad nor good. It has likable moments but nothing to make the experience very worthwhile.

For this reason, I have elected to fill the rest of my "take" space with pictures of my dog. Enjoy!

Marvel Movie Project #21: Fantastic Four

I thought this movie was pretty good when it came out.  Not perfect, certainly weak in spots, but on the whole enjoyable.  Color me an optimist.  This movie is not good.  Not good at all.  I think where I was deluded was in the fact that the movie is very light, has fun moments, features "good enough" special effects, and is easily forgotten.  When you don't have many other super hero movies to compare it to, this makes for a good superhero film.

But see, therein lies the problem.  The Fantastic Four isn't a superhero story.  Heck, at its very best it wasn't superhero comic book either.  Oh sure they all have incredible powers, they go off into space and places like the Negative Zone, they battle incomprehensible bad guys like Galactus and Annihilus,  but at their core what makes the FF great, and likeable, and relatable is that they are a family and their story is a family drama.  They may not be your conventional family unit, but they are a group of people sharing a common bond and as a result of that bond, are confronting life's troubles together.  They do not always get along and they often quibble amongst themselves, but at the end of the day they are a unit.

The FF movie tries hard to get this notion across.  It tries too hard and in the worst possible ways.  Instead of allowing the actors to develop characters with chemistry, the film forces conflict upon individuals and then tells you that they are a family.  If the movie has to tell us they are a family then it is failing to do its job.  And if the movie fails to get the essence of the FF right, then all we are left with is a bad superhero movie.

And we are.  I'll not bore you with details, but I will ask you a couple of questions.  Why is Victor Von Doom part of the origin story?  He isn't part of it in the comics and it makes no sense for him to be part of it in the film.  As a matter of fact, him being part of the origin completely undermines the family concept entirely because if he is part of the origin, that makes him part of the family and therefore the story should become one of healing the family by bringing Von Doom back into the fold.  But that's not the story.  Instead that leads to my second question, why does Dr. Doom have lightning powers?  In the comics he has no powers, he is an evil, tyrannical Iron Man.  The End.  He is a dictator who dabbles in the arcane and builds armies of robots to do his bidding, some of which he makes in his own image.  Which leads me to my final question, if Dr. Doom is our villain, where oh where are the Doombots?  Exactly.

This movie honestly feels like it was written by about eight people, with maybe three of them having read one or two FF comics.  None of the characters are quite right, the plot is confusing and meandering, and the scripting is shallow at best.  Case in point, early on when the Four's powers are revealing themselves, we are treated to a comical scene where Johnny Storm (the only really likeable character and hands down the best performance in the film) discoves his powers.  Perfect.  That is exactly how it should be, and if executed well it can really set the tone for the film and his character.  But instead, this scene is executed by giving the same lame joke twice, each instance within about 15 seconds of each other and slapping some action in between hoping no one notices.  I kid you not.  The joke is funny once, mainly because of who Johnny is, but back to back it just comes across as poorly written.  "You're hot." "Thank you" is funny, and the way Chris Evans delivers the line is spot on.  It works.  But then, mere seconds later to have the same exchange: "You're on fire." "I know," is either bad editing or sloppy scripting.  It makes the characters look like they have already forgotten an exchange they just had.  Of course, I won't bother to go into the performance by the "actress" who portrays Johnny's nurse...

The Fantastic Four is not a superhero movie, it is a family drama with superhero dressing, but when you do not get the core right and you miss the mark with the dressing, all you are left with is a bucket of crap.  Fantastic Four isn't the worst comic book movie out there, clearly, but it certainly is symptomatic of what can go wrong when people try to make a movie based on a comic book, but fail to understand what makes the comic book appealing, and end up with a superhero movie instead, and a bad one at that.

Aimee's Take:

The five of you reading this know the drill by now: Stan takes the hard look, and I pick one thing I don't like and complain about it for a short time. Well, today, what I'm going to complain about is how the Invisible Girl/Woman was terribly miscast. 

I'm a big fan of the Invisible Woman. I only fairly recently discovered how nicely her character was allowed to develop in the 1980's. She dealt with all the problems a mundane woman might have, along with all the problems that stem from being the "team mom". Strong, and incredibly powerful, Susan Storm battles her own feelings of inadequacy as she recovers from a miscarriage, struggles to create a "normal" family environment for her son, and faces her husband's often aloof super-genius intellect. Sue is part of the glue that holds the Fantastic Four together--although it's not always easy to make that happen. During my favorite run, Thing is replaced by She-Hulk. The cast rotates fairly often, because, like any family, sometimes there is conflict, and sometimes people have to follow a different path than the one their families would make for them. Through most of this, Sue is a rock. She grapples with being both powerful and unappreciated. She grapples with being herself and being "normal". There is something about Sue that grabs me, as a woman. It wasn't always true of her character and it certainly hasn't always continued in her stories, but Sue is a tremendously accurate avatar for the average woman. 

 So by all means, let's make her the goddamn bitchiest character in the history of cinema. To say that her character is unsympathetic is an understatement. She is so unfeelingly fake and horrible, switching her "affections" from Victor to Reed, leaving everyone in the audience to wonder why EITHER of them would want anything to do with her.

She's too young, looking roughly three-four years younger than her kid brother, Johnny. This makes her ceaseless nagging mothering all the more annoying. (In reality, Jessica Alba IS older than Chris Evans--by a couple of months.) Reed isn't quite old enough by comparison to seem "fatherly" (believe me, this is an important component of their relationship, and a significant source of real familial conflict). Besides, with Alba in the role, Reed could be 65 years old--this Sue Storm is 100% right all the time, and if you disagree, she will ice you out. She's not just the team mom--she's the team dictator. 

Plus, there's the universal truth that goes: "An astonishingly beautiful girl with olive complected features will look one-hundred-percent convincing as a blond scientist of some kind." What, that's not a thing? Well, I'm not saying that Sue can't be beautiful, but she cannot be intimidating. She is the girl next door. I don't know why we had to have her dye her dark hair blond... it looks really, really unnatural and I see it as very unnecessary. Sue being blond is a very small detail and it has nothing to do with her character. Of all the things we could have gotten right--this is the thing we decided to stick to? 

I'm also not sure why we had to make Sue a scientist. It was ok to leave Johnny as...whatever the heck Johnny is. It was fine to have Ben be a lovable meathead type. So why do we have to have Sue be roughly as intelligent as Reed? You know, it's ok to have a female character who isn't "having it all"... I know that Sue gets a makeover in the "Ultimate" incarnation--but here's the thing. This movie follows, roughly, the original origin story. Why attempt to blend the two so unsuccessfully?

But enough about this. I want--no, need, need--to tell you about the most astoundingly insane cinema "fuck you" in the history of cold-hearted bitches. 

Ok, you may be familiar with the scene where Ben is on the bridge. There is a big special effects show down and all the team members show up and realize that, hey, we can use our powers as a team and to do things that are good. It's the FF "ah-ha". But, towards the end, Ben's fiance walks up to hand over the engagement ring, basically saying, "you're a big freak, I can't deal with you, I'm leaving," after presumably having witnessed this big event on TV.

Ok, first of all--this scene creates an ENORMOUS traffic jam. Traffic is backed up indefinitely. Probably for miles. Assuming that this woman saw only the first part of a news report (cluing her in to Ben's location), she would have likely hopped on a car or bus and been stuck for several hours trying to head in that general direction. I am left understanding, then, that this bitch WALKS the entire length of a police-blockaded traffic jam, just to say "fuck you" to Ben Grimm. 

If we are expected to believe that this woman's dedication to throwing this ring down--wordlessly--in front of her obviously distraught fiance is so great that she will go to such an extreme length, then I have news for Ben Grimm: she's not worth being upset over. She just saved you a lifetime of extreme bitchiness. Too bad you have to basically go home to Sue...

I'm not saying she shouldn't have a right to leave with the dramatic changes going on in her life. It's probably reasonable to say that she can't deal with her fiance becoming a rock monster, and that she shouldn't be blamed for her reaction. But she could have written a letter. I mean, Ben can't be that hard to find. She could go visit Reed and say, "Here's the ring, I can't face Ben, let him know this is about me, not him..." She could have called him on the phone, maybe. But instead, she decides to dump him on television, and she is willing to walk miles and duck police lines to do so. And she does so without so much as a "sorry about your luck". 

That, ladies and gents, is just nuts. 

I'd have to say, one reason this movies isn't on the very bottom (and it was, for a while) is because it contains the above scene. It's really quite amazing, once you work out what it really means. You won't see it the first time, it just kind of works. But when you really think about it--it's insane. It's the greatest, coldest break-up scene I've ever witnessed. Cinema gold. Unintentional, but entertaining.

Marvel Movie Ranking Project: #25 Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

We are not condoned by these people.

Electric Frankfurter's Official Marvel Movie List

There was a time when the Superman movies of the 1970's were all anyone could ever want from a super-hero movie.  And they were pretty good, for their time.  Then came 1989 and Tim Burton showed the world that super-hero movies could be so much more.  Burton's Batman ushered in a new era of super-hero movie that went beyond the cliches and silliness that gave us Bat Anti-Shark repellant. Sadly, as the era was born, so would it die.  All of the good work done by Burton was quickly undone by Joel Schumacher and his cornball train wreck that was Batman and Robin, which harkened back to that techno-color time of yore in all its goofiness.  All was not lost, however, because even as Rome was burning, a new generation of "comic book" movie was rising from the ashes.

One year after Batman and Robin put comic books back in the kiddie pool, Marvel decided to throw their hat into the ring with a risky venture based on a third tier character:  Blade.  While Blade didn't make quite the splash Batman did nearly a decade before, it did set the tone for a new age of super-hero film that would redefine the genre and prove that the subject matter transcended the spandex and beach ball breasts that had come to misrepresent it.  The following years would see movies featuring the best of the Marvel super-heroes including Spider-man, the X-men, and various Avengers as well as intelligently crafted non-Marvel films such as the much anticipated Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and a re-invented Batman franchise.  However, this period was most definitely the Marvel era of movies.

Being huge comic book nerds, myself perhaps more than Aimee, we have relished in the days of great movies based on some of our favorite super-heroes and as part of that relishment (my word, you are free to use it) there have resulted some very intense and sometimes heated debates about the hierarchy of how certain movies stack up against one another.  Eventually, those debates sparked a project and the fruit of that project you are about to be subjected to..I mean "read."

Over the course of the next 25 weeks the wife and I are going to tell you exactly how the Marvel movies of the past 14 years rank.  Over that period of time Marvel has released 25 major motion pictures based on characters from their comic books.  Many of them have been very good; many of them have been not so good, and some of them have been down right terrible.  We will begin our journey this week with the absolute worst of the worst and we will work our way to the very top sometime in August.

So if you love comic books and/or super-heroes and the movies that feature them, and if you really enjoy our snarky take on things, then you are in for a treat.  Each week Aimee and I will give our individual takes on the movies as we rank them and will also provide insight as to how we arrived at our rankings.  There have been a few spirited conversations over the course of our viewings as we have hashed out these rankings and those will most definitely reveal themselves as we make our way through the list.  We both have pretty strong opinions and we'd love to hear some of yours as well.  We'll also be offering you some of our insights into how we view the genre and where we see it going as we leave this era and head into a new future of comic book movies.

Join us will you as Electric Frankfurter brings you the Official Rankings of the Marvel Era of Movies.

#25 Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

Obviously this movie is bad, it's on the bottom of the list.  The only tragedy is that there are not more movies on this list so that Ghost Rider 2 could be ranked lower than 25.  It is that bad.  We won't even talk about the obvious mis-casting of Nicholas Cage as Johnny Blaze, we can save that for the original Ghost Rider and I promise you won't have to wait long for that discussion.  We won't have to talk about that because the movie is so bad you almost believe that Cage might have to save the film from the depths of boredom.  I'll spoil it for you: he doesn't.
You could almost make a case for this movie being watchable excepting for two very important flaws: one, the movie has no likable characters whatsoever, none, and two, the movie is dull.  One reviewer said that for a movie about a man who is regularly on fire you would expect it to be less boring.  I agree.  Ghost Rider himself shows up maybe 4 times in the entire film and for at least two of those appearances pretty much all he does is stand there and wait for the editor to edit him into action (I am not kidding).  Everything that does not include the Special Effect (because let's face it, that's all he is) is dry white toast.  Paper thin characters, uninspired villains, a meager plot that is barely explained along the way, and insufferable scripting all add up to 95 minutes of very arid film.  And this is a super hero action movie, people!!!  I'll give you the plot right now and spare you the time:  The devil is after his son so that he can transfer his essence into him that he may remain in the mortal world to work his ambiguous evil.  Ghost Rider is charged with protecting the boy (the son of the Devil).  The end.  Snore.  What is the end game?  What happens if GR succeeds?  What happens if he fails?  Who cares?  If he fails, then nothing changes and the Devil goes on walking amongst people, status quo.  If he succeeds then we have the son of the Devil walking around being the son of the Devil with no real purpose in life and always plagued by the fact that he is the son of the Devil.  Now, you tell me which conclusion I am looking for.  That's right, neither.

But hey, plot isn't everything, sometimes a great actor or character can help carry a film along (wait until we get to X-men Origins: Wolverine).  Maybe Ghost Rider2's redemption will come in the form of very interesting performances of very interesting characters.  That crunch is the sound of a saltine, because we are coming up dry again, kids.  The only character that I even wanted to see on screen, apart from the Special Effect, was the boy's (son of Devil's) mother, but only because she was kind of hot in that trashy goth way.  That alone is not enough to carry a movie my friend, not by a long shot.  I could scope out that kind of action in the lobby of the theater.

Everything else in the film is just a lesson in poor film-making. The editing is atrocious.  The directing is spastic and erratic at best, and not in an artsy way.  I was not kidding when I said Ghost Rider was literally edited into action in some of the sequences.  It feels like the director has no idea how to shoot a movie or what makes a good shot, sequence, or narrative.  The treatment of the character is a joke at best and shows that no one in the development of this film understands the source material.  Ghost Rider is the earthy incarnation of Zarathos, the Spirit of Vengeance.  His sole mission on earth is to resist his master's bidding and protect the innocent from harm.  Despite that, GR does very little protecting of innocents (we can go all day on whether the son of the Devil is inherently innocent, but this film does not deserve to be the launch point for what would be an intelligent debate) in this movie and for the most part just lusts after the souls of everyone he meets.  Where in the hell does that part come from?  What's worse, despite making it clear in the film that Ghost Rider = Zarathos, a demon, hence possession, Johnny Blaze is able to rid himself of his "powers" as Ghost Rider by spending the night in a cave (think Empire Strikes Back, Luke in Dagobah, only very, very stupid and uncool) and the Devil is able to give his "powers" back to him by breathing fire into his face. I could buy this if there was an explanation of how Zarathos' power was subdued by something in the cave and brought back by the fire breath.  I could also buy Zarathos being forced out via exorcism and then re-possessing Blaze by his wishing for it.  Instead, I think we are supposed to believe that sleeping in a cave and confessing your greatest fault somehow causes time to reverse and the contract you signed with the Devil to be unsigned.  Yeah, ok.

Look, you and I have already given this movie far more time than it should ever deserve.  Neither Aimee nor I had any problem whatsoever walking out of the theater and declaring this one of the worst movies we had ever seen, much less the worst Marvel movie of the Modern Era.  This movie is a real stinker and if you ever see it you only have yourself to blame.  In the hopes that I can convince you to spare yourself, I am going to close this critique with the only two things in Ghost Rider 2 worth looking at so you can just get it out of your system:

Aimee's Take: 

Ok, look. I like movies that are bad. Sometimes, it's nice to just take your mind off the hook and forget all your troubles. I like to ridicule movies. I am a child of the MST3K era. I can see the value in a movie that is so laughable you just have to enjoy it.

This is not that movie. This movie is so bad, it's like being punched in the face over and over again while your attacker says "Quit punching yourself!" Because, by purchasing a ticket to this mess, I am, indeed, punching myself.

We can save a lot of my basic problems about this characterization of Ghost Rider and the part being miscast by 45 years or so until we get to the franchise's earlier installment, because the problems haven't changed here. Instead, I will say that this movie, in 2d, made me dizzy and gave me a headache. It is all "shaky cam" and spinning and odd prismatic blue-screen cut-ins that make no sense at all. The plot is non-existent, the dialogue is beyond terrible (by comparison, George Lucas is a master of understanding human interaction and emotion), and the characters are unlikeable. By the end of the film, I realized I did not care one way or the other who won this meaningless fight. The devil seemed like he might be ok. On the other hand, I had already seen that Nic Cage was insane. 

This movie provided itself with two excuses to show Johnny Blaze's bare ass (thankfully, ONLY in comic illustration form) and two excuses to show Ghost Rider peeing fire. By the end, I had folded down three theater seats to lay down in, and for the first time in my entire life, I considered whipping out my cell phone to entertain myself. I really doubt the other four people in the theater would have minded. 

In the end, this film was boring, had very little to do with Ghost Rider at all, and felt like some kind of bizarre monument to bad film-making. As in, "Oh yeah? I'll show you--I'll go make the worst movie you've ever even conceived of. It will be so bad, it will make your children cry in shame and all who see it shall be scarred for ever, left to cling to the wreckage of their sad lives as they come to grips with the fact that they spent $14 to be here and the only thing salvageable about the entire experience is the fact that the concession stand allows you to butter your own popcorn." 

That's it.  Join us next week when I'll explain to you why you only need 5 minutes to make a good movie out of a trash pile.