Superhero Media: Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance

Whilst people are still disregarding my opinion on the first Ghost Rider, because I dared to enjoy it, I may as well get some nice things down about Spirit of Vengeance, it's not like I have a huge readership anyway. Nic Cage is good again, acting a little more unhinged in human form, and the motion-capture for Ghost Rider has a haunting marionette quality to it that would have been a better approach in the first film. Johnny Blaze's life is on the skids once he tried to work with the Rider in the first film (kind of, we'll cover that later) and now he wanders the back-waters of Eastern Europe, trying to keep ahead of the law and drink himself to death. I guess Ghost Rider decided to leave Las Vegas at some point? These are the jokes people. The film opens with an ancient order of monks being attacked by mercenaries and Idris Elba helps a young woman and her son escape. Losing the fleeing civilians, Idris is forced to seek out the one man who can track evil best, Johnny Blaze. 

There's a plot about Mephisto wanting to get the boy, because he's a vessel for evil on Earth and apparently he needs to walk the Earth in a flesh suit in this version. Again, he's not called Mephisto, but I honestly can't remember what the character was named, so I'm going to keep calling him by his comic book name. Idris Elba (who is French for some reason) convinces Blaze to help him by promising to remove the Ghost Rider from him with Christian Magic and then there's a huge dump of Ghost Rider deep-cut lore for some reason, which I guess is pretty nice to see, but derails the film somewhat. The effects are better in Spirit of Vengeance, in that the team works around their limitations and lack of budget, rather than putting all of the CGI front and centre. Ghost Rider and Blaze are wearing the same clothes, but they get burned and blackened and the same happens with the motorcycle, meaning a lot more is done with practical effects, which always looks better. There's a great fight scene where Ghost Rider jumps into a mining rig, lighting the whole thing up with hellfire and tearing up a small army of goons. 

As well as Mephisto, Ghost Rider has to fight, of all people, Blackout. Don't worry if you don't know who that is, I only know him from background shots in The New Avengers and the companion Handbook article. Aside from his origin, they stay pretty close to how the character looks and works in the comics, which I felt was a nice touch. After separating himself from Ghost Rider, Blaze has to let the demon back in to save the boy and he rides off at the end of the film pretty much back where he started, but more at peace with his calling as an infernal hero. Spirit of Vengeance is fine. It's a perfectly fine film. Some parts make it better, some worse, but overall, it maintained my interest and I didn't feel like I wasted my time at all. Once again, I'm excited to see how Ghost Rider hits the big screen in the MCU, hopefully with a better team behind the film.