Ghost Rider

The special effects are good.
That's about all the good I can say about this debacle of a comic book film franchise has. It is not enough that writer / director Mark Steven Johnson ruined DAREDEVIL, but to ruin another comic book that was decent GHOST RIDER is inexcusable. The main reason this film fails on many levels reflects weak script, unoriginal, and derivative products. From here there was nowhere to go but down.
The script plays like a bad problem of Tales Of The GHOST RIDER not even good enough to be featured in the main title. Do not get me wrong, all the plot points that Syd Field describes in his famous books are all here, so you can at least make a movie with a plot and direction. The fault lies in the translation to the screen where the dialogue falls flat and the actors come off as two-dimensional and the plot is something resembling a story I've seen it somewhere or heard somewhere before or ... well, you get the picture.
It is an uninspired mess. Nicolas Cage is channeling something between a traditional cowboy and Elvis Presley, if he has been consistent, he would have worked, but Cage is a cowboy in one screen then Elvis in the next and it comes off as laughable (much like his performance in CON AIR).
Neither Peter Fonda, Eva Mendes, nor have anything to do and both have seen better days and appear as they are "slumming" here (although there is a good chance they do this movie thinking it would be "cool"). The greatest atrocity goes to Wes Bentley Blackheart Ghost Rider nemesis. In the comic book Ghost Rider Blackheart is what The Joker is Batman, but in this film, he emerges as a second rate Poison Ivy (Batman & Robin). Bentley himself has never fallen short of potential on display in his escape success American Beauty, but it's never been so low. His performance Blackheart makes Sharon Stone in Catwoman Oscar worthy. His henchmen of the hidden, all easily forgettable, do nothing for his defense.
The only thing remotely decent about the movie are the special effects on screen when they bring the celebrity headed Ghost Rider to life. For years someone has tried to get this film made, but the special effects were simply not available at the time, but now they are like the main character is brought to life seamlessly. I was appalled by how the story was wrong regarding how the SFX were, but it's a Hollywood movie and as such they do not want anything original or that could actually be both entertaining and well. They want to bend to the lowest common denominator.
Thus, the only people who will really appreciate this film is ten to sixteen years ... and anyone else who thinks that just because it's a cartoon of different standards should be held in his favor.