Turns out, our worst fears about the devil and hell were correct.

The road to hell is paved with middle managers. 

And it seems Lucifer himself is the one who is pushing the corporate politics and turning the wheels on the Peter Principle to its most eeevillll and absurd conclusions. Institutionalized incompetence–the 10th circle of Dante’s Inferno. At least that’s what we learn in Ghost Rider (2007), Nicolas Cage’s first (and perhaps only) foray into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (Wait, there is a sequel. Scratch that!) 

Ghost Rider, which is loosely based on the comic book of the same name, is the story of Johnny Blaze (Cage) a motorcycle stuntman who makes an ill-advised career move and signs on with the devil, a.k.a. Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda) a greasy cane carrying bolo tie kind of guy, who enlists Johnny as his next soul doc courier of sorts. In this questionably important role of Ghost Rider, one’s soul is forfeit (i.e. classic Faustian deal) but your payment is you get to make a wish (Tayler Swift front row seats?!?), live a long life on earth, and X-games moto-jump more semi-trucks than Evol Knieval, without breaking a bone or a sweat.. 

Unfortunately, these Hades provided corporate benefits come with a cost: you are required to have a burning skull for a head, talk like Rob Zombie, and ride around town on a badass motorcycle that attracts all the po-po cause of the fire spewing from its wheels. The main job responsibilities however, are just low-level escrow stuff: secure the needed paperwork with the proper signatures attached, i.e. evil soul contracts. 

So that the devil can…legally (but why?) acquire the said souls… 

Thus increasing his topline growth on demon power and unfettered evil. 

Or something of that nature.

The problem with the Ghost Rider gig (historically speaking) is that it doesn’t pay all that well. GR’s don’t really like their boss all that much (why would they?), nor their work peers–elemental demons who pretend to be highly important middle managers advising the C-suite of Satan.

Naturally, the Ghost Riders, past and present, tend to question whether they will be valued long-term by the company, and they are frustrated by their limited career growth opportunities. Such is the case in Ghost Rider. Realizing that he probably should have stayed at his last company and that HR is not going to help him out of this current contract, Blaze chooses the next best option. He unionizes with the OG of Ghost Riders (played by the always awesome Sam Elliott) and uses the little leverage they both have to stick it to the Man. In this case the leverage was a very important soul contract with many, many (many!) horrible souls who have signed the NDR and binding agreement to the P.O.D. (Prince of Darkness).

In the end, Johnny outsmarts Blackheart (Mephistopheles’ demonic son) on a technicality, and banishes him using his trademarked Penance Stare. Then Johnny decides to go it alone, as an independent contractor, rips up his NDR, and spits in the face (figuratively speaking) of his oppressive old boss, POD. 

A couple reasons you may want to watch this movie

• Even though the movie was made in 2007, the CGI isn’t horrible. It holds up pretty well. The lost souls were somewhat Harry Potter Dementor-inspired I think, but overall I didn’t get too distracted by the special effects and all the fire was pretty fire IMHO. 
• Nicolas Cage, true to form, gets weird in this one too. Rather than drink alcohol, Cage felt that Johnny would be more controlled and concerned about his future (after selling his soul to the devil), so he obviously decided that Johnny Blaze would be the type of super hero who unwinds by drink/eating yellow and red jelly beans from a martini glass, listening to Karen Carpenter songs, and watching Discovery-channel nature docs about howler monkeys and ninja chimpanzees. If it wasn’t Cage, you wouldn’t believe it was possible.

• Ghost Rider kind of sits in that indestructible killer anti-hero camp (e.g. Jason, Freddie, Michael Myers), except rather than killing horny teens, he kills demons. (It actually reminded me of another movie, based on a comic book, I saw recently but from this same time frame,Keanu Reeve’s Constantine.) What’s not to love about Ghost Rider taking his motorcycle on the top of the water, or using his long chain to rope a helicopter, or hypnotically sucking his adversaries into the sockets of his eye-holes where they must forever watch the torment they have caused the innocent? I mean, what’s *not* to love here?
• Eva Mendes plays Johnny’s high school sweetheart, Roxanne Simpson. Remember her? It’s weird how actresses / actors come and go in the collective consciousness, and then fade quickly into obscurity. Except Nicolas Cage, of course. He is the constant.
• Sam Elliott’s narrative voice and facial hair. Nuff said.

A couple reasons you likely don’t want to watch this movie.

• It’s not great. Feels like one of those movies you pause three or four times while watching, to calculate how much play time is actually left. I wasn’t really drawn in, nor did I care (all that much) what happened to Johnny Blaze. (Sigh. And. There’s. A. Sequel.) 
• You’ve heard the saying, “this meeting could have been an email”...well, “this movie could have been a video game.” And it probably was and is. It felt like a video game from the storyline perspective and the graphics perspective. Ghost Rider drives his motorcycle right up the side of a skyscraper and onto the top of arch of a bridge. Video game-to-movie adaptations rarely draw me in (other than Last of Us which was superb) and this film failed in the same way. Not enough depth, character development, humor or MCU-charm that would come later with The Avengers chronology. 
• No one wants to watch a fantasy movie about middle managers vying for corporate dominance. The office rules were inscrutable to me. Why did Satan need a contract to claim these evil souls? Why couldn’t he just go to the source and get it himself? If he’s so strong, why enlist a courier at all? What ethereal governing body acts as court of appeals if there is litigation. After Mephistopheles first attempt failed at enlisting a Ghost Rider, why not create a subservient Wormwood to manage all his NDRs and escrow duties? If you are even entertaining these questions, you are already bored, I imagine. Thus, this is a good reason to skip Ghost Rider and watch The Vampire’s Kiss, Pig, or Bringing Out the Dead instead.  

First for Nicolas Cage as Johnny Blaze

• Jumping a line of semi trucks Evol Knieval-style
• Making a pact with the devil
• Donning a cowboy hat
• Drinking directly from a coffee pot
• Maniacally transforming his head into a burning skull 
• Killing a carnal beast with a fiery chain
• Whistling for his motorbike (like a cowboy to horse)
• Lassoing a helicopter
• Riding a flaming motorcycle on the top of a body of water (like Jesus)

Recurrences

• Motorcycle riding (The Wicker Man)
• Channelling Bizarro Elvis with southern accent (Wild at Heart)
• Sporting a cane (Sonny)
• Freaking himself out in front of a mirror (Face/Off)

Quotable: Top Six Ghost Riderisms

“You can’t live in fear. You can’t live in fear.” 

“You know alcohol gives me nightmares.”

“Do you believe people get second chances?” 

“Sorry, all out of mercy!” 

“I feel a LoT better nOW that I kNoW I’m the devil’s bounty hunter.” 

“I’m going to own this curse and I’m going to use it against you…Fighting fire with fire.” 

Conclusion:

Against reason, I’ll probably go ahead and watch the Ghost Rider sequel, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011), in the next week. Even though it’s technically out of chronological order for the WATC(H) this one is very fresh in my mind right now, so it makes some sense to watch’em sequentially. 

But you’ll have to wait a while for this sequel’s exciting blog post perhaps for many weeks. Like all middle management–it’s a life and death struggle against the slow passage of time, and the erosion of spirit that comes with the mundane, pointlessness of soulless admin work. 

Never fear…you’ll get through it. There’s better Cage ahead, my friends. Remember: You can’t live in fear.