The universe really did not want me to see Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Plans to see it with friends fell apart left and right for various reasons. Things nearly fell apart again on Saturday, but I overcame the atrocious weather, a car that may be on its last legs, a killer headache, and sore throat brought on by an encroaching sinus infection, and finally got to see the number one movie I was excited for this year!

AND IT WAS FUCKING METAL.
 

No, seriously. I haven’t had so much fun in a theater in a long time. I can’t get over how awesome it was. Neveldine and Taylor bring their skull-busting cinematic style that they established with Crank and Nicolas Cage comes along for the ride in one of my favorite performances ever.

I’ll admit to knowing next to nothing about the comics and I never saw the first movie either. For this one, they kind of seem to lean on the Bruce Banner/Hulk dichotomy, with Johnny Blaze living in an abandoned building, away from society, struggling to keep at bay the demon that’s possessed him, that turns him into our titular character. “Am I going to regret this? Bringing you here with me?” “…Yeah, probably.” As a result, he kind of sucks at communicating with other people (hilariously), is okay with stealing painkillers from a hospital, and is constantly two steps away from catching fire and sucking out souls left and right. This leads to some of the greatest Nicolas Cage freakouts EVER, with Death From Above 1979 playing in the background during one fantastic scene.
 

And when he does inevitably lose his shit and transform? Things get surprisingly bizarre. You’ve probably seen interviews with Cage where he talks about his methods for playing the Rider, the swaying like a cobra, the makeup and contacts, and you probably thought, “man, he’s weird,” but IT WORKS. When the Rider is on screen, it’s surreal. He is not human. He’s unpredictable. He’s not a superhero at all, more like some beast from a horror movie. It’s like his mere presence bends the rules of reality around him, like a grisly hallucination. No one really knows how to react when he shows up and starts screaming in their faces, and it’s just gnarly.

I had this weird worry that somehow this movie would neuter Neveldine/Taylor through studio interference or something, like how they stepped down from directing Jonah Hex because the studio kept getting in the way and screwing with their screenplay. I was also worried that, being PG-13, the movie would be too, er, “safe” or something. I’m happy to say that this is not true, that their balls are on display just as much as in the Crank movies and Gamer. The Rider pisses fire, vomits bullets, incinerates people with his chains and the big villain, Blackheart, decomposes anything and everything he lays his hands on, and that includes a rather large number of people. The camera work is fantastic, and setting the movie in Turkey leads to some amazing visuals. There are also a few fantastic animated segments providing back story for characters that I wish more comic books looked like. I never pulled my eyes from the screen at any point.

So yeah, 2012 is off to a good start. The only other films I really want to see this year are Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie and Prometheus, and I kind of doubt either of those two will be as batshit crazy and awesome as Ghost Rider was. Man, now I want to go watch it again…

[Brett]