There's nothing wrong with building a shared universe, of course, as years of storytelling have proven, but after more than a decade of MCU continuity, there's also something to be said for self-contained fun. There's a gleeful embrace of that premise, along with a sense that each film could be the last, and a complete lack of concern for how a fictional universe might be assembled around these ideas. For better or worse, the Ghost Rider films are.well, that. He then rides around the world fighting rogue demons and battling his own personal agonies, all while looking like a living Halloween decoration. These are movies about a motorcycle stuntman who's given a dark power to enact vengeance throughout the world, along with a hellish bike and that signature skull for a face. Well, sometimes they don't, but when these two movies are really cooking, they succeed by embracing the sheer pulpy power of their source material. Built on the sheer visual power of a guy in a leather jacket with a flaming skull for a head, these films arrived just as superhero movies were changing for what feels like forever, and yet all these years later, they still play like their own wild ride. Though they weren't exactly greeted with widespread critical acclaim upon their release, and very often gain attention now thanks to the presence of star Nicolas Cage, these films exist in our present-day superhero landscape as an interesting bridge between the world that was and the world that is.
Which brings me to 2007's Ghost Rider and its 2011 sequel, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. We're used to it now, but at the time it was a fascinating and sometimes frustrating thing to watch, and it was made all the more fascinating by the continued existence of standalone comic book adventures that existed completely outside of the new era that was about to launch.
#Ghostreader voices movie#
Within just a couple of years, the whole landscape would change, and shared universes would become the driving force of superhero cinema, so much so that even relatively self-contained movie universes would do their best to expand and adapt to the new model.
RELATED: Remembering the time Nicolas Cage channeled voodoo for Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance was sticking with what worked, namely more Batman movies. Meanwhile, the newly empowered Marvel Studios was off working on films that starred B-and-C-list heroes like Iron Man, and Warner Bros. The boom of the early 2000s that gave us Spider-Man and X-Men wasn't over exactly, but it did feel like it was maybe losing steam. In retrospect, 2007 was a really interesting time to release a new superhero film based on a character never previously adapted for the big screen.
0 kommentar(er)
