Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011)'s comments

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kurozuya

this was essentially the visual and thematic experience of being punched in the gut by someone dressed up as the angel of death, who is maybe also on fire.....yeah.
...i kinda loved it?

8 years 1 month ago

There is one brilliant detail in GR2 that I will praise, and that is the choice of bike for GR. The Yamaha V-Max monster machine, glorious and brutal as if from hell itself.

There is also one unforgivable sin above all others in this pile of bovine excrement of a movie, and that is the SOUND of the aforementioned bike.. it is replaced with sounds from several other different engines and I screamed my throat raw over this horrible crime. The V-Max has a great sound and it is beyond worthless that they couldn't sample it properly and use it.
I will hate you forever for this, Hollywood.

Can you tell I ride a V-Max myself? :)

A bad script does not a good movie make. Some lines were so unbelievably corny that I choked on my popcorn. Delivered by a tired and uninspired Cage, the script dies silently and prays the special effects will carry the burden instead. The effects are good, yep. Beautiful fire, and lots of it! But when the effects take up so much room... you just know something is wrong.

Then again we have the 'new and improved' GR, complete with nervous ticks and "cool" oneliners. Head-bobbing dance? Roadkill? OMFG.
Cage looks old, worn and bloated. The guy should retire before he becomes a jok-- uh, right... Too late, I guess.
Whatever was decent with the first movie has been diluted and lost in the sequel, giving way to over-the-top special effects.

Am I sorry I watched it? Not really.
Would I recommend it to anyone? Not really.

DanielRoffle: do tell where you saw Dominic West, I missed him both in the movie and the credits :)

11 years 9 months ago

Maxahlia

Well, at least the poster is cool. The movie needs some Ritalin though. Way too many tricks and cheap effects and not enough... well, anything else really. Also, the script was bad.

9 years 11 months ago

ChrisReynolds

Perfunctory film-making, just as bad as the first Ghost Rider. More the quality I'd expect from a Direct to video release than a Sony-backed Marvel superhero film starring Nicolas Cage, Idris Elba and Ciaran Hinds. The plot is dull, containing nothing suprising or interesting, and is terribly written into the bargain, with underdeveloped characters delivering dreadful lines.
In its defence, it is watchable and occasionally a faintly amusing or bizarre scene will occur to relieve the tedium.

11 years 2 months ago

kaiizel

This was terrible.

11 years 4 months ago

Dirrtygirl

didn't like the first one, didn't like this one either.

11 years 9 months ago

chunkylefunga

If you are reading this do not watch this movie, consider the hour and a half a just saved you a birthday present.

11 years 10 months ago

BeasleyOnFilm

Achingly dull. Makes 90 mins feel like twice that. There are some good CRAZY CAGE moments though, but it's mostly just bloody stupid.

12 years 1 month ago

mi-16evil

A pure un-adulterated guilty pleasure for me. I guess I was just in the right mood because I thought this was a blast. Don't get me wrong, it was atrocious but I had a dumb gleeful smile the whole time.

Still I'd follow the advice of the other commentators and skip it. I'm in the rare minority of people who love completely trashy Nic Cage movies.

12 years 1 month ago

Lohman

Not recommended at all, for an action/hero movie I found this one really boring.

12 years 2 months ago

DeathShrike

How can a movie be 96 minutes long, be about a guy on fire, and feel like an eternity?

12 years 2 months ago

Blocho

quote:
Back when I was 12, I had this camp counselor named Shabi Szalabi who was a part-time poet and full-time Hungarian nationalist. He was also a huge Ghost Rider fan and shared all his comics with us kids in the cabin. Last I heard, Shabi was working at the greyhound racing track in Reseda, but I was thinking of him when I took the role in the first movie. I didn't feel like I got the character quite right in that one, so in between Ghost Rider 1 and Ghost Rider 2, I decided to lose tens of millions of dollars to shaky investment schemes, unwise real estate holdings, and just plain stupidity. Also the IRS owns part of my soul now. I needed that sort of edgy financial desperation in order to access the edgy existential desperation of the Rider.

2 years 7 months ago

Mrtrick

Neveldine and Taylor are certainly directors with a mastery of manic storytelling, as evidenced by their madcap Crank series, but a little of that energy goes a long way in Ghost Rider. Combined with and incredibly basic script, complete with paper thin characters and plotting, and an insane eagerness to get to the finish line, we get a film that doesn’t live up to it’s stronger elements.
And there are a few strong elements. The Ghost Rider himself looks more badass then ever. Little effects like the bubbling leather of his jacket add a tactile quality to this fiend from hell. It’s a far superior look to the original film. And the mania that drags down the rest of the film, actually serves the Rider sequences quite well, (even if I found the fact that all these evil henchman aren’t immediately running away in terror, straining to credulity.)
Some will scoff at Cage’s gonzo performance, but he’s never less than entertaining. Actually I found his physical interpretation of the Rider himself to be quite effective, presenting a more distinct separation from Johnny Blaze. Heck, even Idris Elba seems to be trying to match Cage in scene chewing glory. And everyone else is just doing the best they can with lackluster storytelling and banal dialogue.
In the end, it was all a bit of a let down, but not one without it’s fun moments.. And Well, at least we got an appearance by Christopher Lambert, as a sword wielding, tattoo faced Monk..underutilized as he was. Next time they try this tale, I’m hoping we get a Logan-esque R rated horror show, instead of this watered down version

4 years 7 months ago

Zeltaebar

Arg! Once again I have to sit through stupid, hand-held shaky-cam as a substitute for proper action choreography. The music is generic, there are HUGE logical flaws in the plotting, there is clumsy exposition and of course there is an old and tired Nicolas Cage phoning in another paycheck. So sad.

6 years 9 months ago

Siskoid

I gave the first Ghost Rider a generally lukewarm review. I liked the gags, stunts and effects, and Sam Elliott a whole lot, but Nick Cage never convinced me he was Johnny Blaze, and a lot of the performances left me cold. Still, I thought Mark Steven Johnson understood what the character was about in making a supernatural western. In the second film, Spirit of Vengeance, the directing team that brought us the Crank movies can't make the same claim. They've re-imagined the Devil as an Eastern European mob boss, which makes Blaze and the ciphers that help him just another team of all-purpose action heroes despite the supernatural elements. The Rider himself is presented as more of shambling monster, and the curse feels like a Hulk story. Having a lot of Ghost Rider action take place in bright daylight is just bizarre, though it does give the film its own look. As do some fun cutaways, but given the story is about birthing the anti-Christ, it plays havoc with the tone. And I can't say the powers are too consistent - sometimes things happen just to make a gag possible. The Rider flaming up different vehicles is cool though. And what's up with killing off Anthony Head in the first minute? Where's Buffy when you need her? Ok, so that sounds like a pretty negative review, but I have to stress that I didn't hate it. It just felt like it had a rather slight action story and if you filed the numbers off, it could star Chris Chelios or Triple X instead. Good effects, and I like the resolution and many of the bits, but it's fluff that doesn't take itself seriously. The first film was just as uninvolving, but a deeper and better thought-out story.

8 years 10 months ago