Photo 28
Flame on! Blazing past a review-free opening, GHOST RIDER raced to the #1 spot at the box office:

Sony’s Marvel comic adaptation “Ghost Rider” revved an estimated $44.5 million over the first three days of the extended President’s Day frame, easily taking No. 1 at the domestic B.O. and becoming the biggest opening of the year so far.

Studio was estimating Sunday morning that the pic could roll to $51 million over four days, which would make it the biggest President’s Day opening ever, surpassing Adam Sandler comedy “50 First Dates,” (which hit $45.1 million over four days in 2004).

The PG-13 “Ghost Rider” played 3,619 locations as the frame’s widest new release. Pic stars Nicolas Cage as supernatural cyclist Johnny Blaze, and numbers could conceivably spell a new franchise for the studio, though Sony brass wouldn’t comment on that possibility.


As reviews have trickled out, Rotten Tomatoes has the film rated at a mere 25% positive, but…well, it’s Ghost Rider, ya know.

1 COMMENT

  1. I saw it. It was okay…. well, once you get beyond some of the dialog…

    Ghost Rider: “You’re going down.”
    Black Heart: “I don’t think so.”

    This is a good case of right place, right time. Ghost Rider, with little competition in the action genre, easily rolls into #1. Good for Bonehead! Sure it could have been better – but it’s not a total washout. The special effects are nice, though they FULLY take over the scene. It’s like calling in the stunt double. Cage walks in, cocks arm back, then director yells “CUT!” then the CGI double takes over. Then Cage is staggering to his feet in the next scene. Sure we’ve seen that before, but never so blatantly obvious.

    It is nice they kept close *enough* to the original storyline. Based on the promotion and adverts I was under the impression Cage/Blaze sold his soul for other reasons.

    Check it out if you’ve got free time, but it’s nothing I’d personally line up for in the snow and rain. That’s why god invented NetFlix.

  4. It doesn’t matter what the rating is at Rotten Tomatoes.

    We all need to go see this movie so they will make more comic book movies.

  5. I’ve heard this from others, but I don’t get the mentality that we, as a comicbook community, NEED to go see this movie so as to guarantee that more of them get made.

    I don’t want to support bad movies, because the only thing that guarantees is that these middling mountain dew-fueled crapfests get made.

    Admittedly I’ve yet to see this movie, but I heard the same things when Fantastic Four came out. “It’s fun, It’s a good popcorn flick….”. When I finally gave the movie a chance and watched it I was appalled. THIS was a movie largely accepted by the internet comic community. It was awful. It had a chance to be ‘The Incredibles’ only to about snowboarding and lame jokes.

    When we set the bar this low we continue to get fed tripe. And as a result kinda dumbs up the public perception of the comicbook medium as a whole. Plus this MSJ director guy is running the Preacher show which, quite frankly, scares me.

  6. Just came back from seeing GR and was pleasantly surprised that it was exactly what I was expecting from a movie about a guy with a flaming skull on a motorcycle, starring Nicolas Cage: a couple of hours of campy, entertaining movie fluff. Why anyone would expect Batman Begins or Unbreakable from such a ridiculous concept is beyond me, so many of the negative reviews and comments are pretty pointless.

  7. we need to go see this to help * poor * hollywood and to encourage them to make more BAD comic book movies?!? who needs ANY comic book movies, good or bad anywho. stay at home and read the good comic books.

  8. Saw this Saturday night and was really disappointed. No, I was not expecting high art. What I expected was at least to be entertained. It’s largest crime, like FANTASTIC FOUR, was not that it was awful, because it wasn’t; it was just BORING. Bad dialogue, bad acting, a completely incomprehensible plot, where there was any to speak of. You’d have hoped that Mark Steven Johnson would have learned from the mistakes he made with DAREDEVIL, but no, just more of the same lackluster polished turds. And allow me to add that I have no investment in the character of Ghost Rider, and I hardly know his story, so this is not a geek purist thing. I don’t expect everything to be SPIDER-MAN awesome, but someone qualified to make something more than a framework for special effects would be sufficient.

  9. Well, I for one have huge investment in Ghost Rider. I was a big fan of both versions (though I had to buy the first volume in back issues back in the day).

    Both GR’s have a certain magic in them. I won’t geek out too badly on here, but fyi to everyone that there were actually two entirely different Ghost Rider’s in the marvelverse.

    Anyway, both had ways that the two different curses made their characters interesting, and this movie failed to get interested in any of those things. So the character really had nothing to it and
    on top of that
    the dialogue and plotting was so awful.
    awful awful awful
    that it really just made my friend and I squirm.

    Terrible movie. Nothing to recommend it. It’s like ELEKTRA all over again.

    People shouldn’t be allowed to direct these movies unless they are a fan. Not to make sure that we have fanboy accuracy, but because it’s important for a director to understand what about the characters have given them traction over the years.

    And his skull was too small. It looked disproportional (even if it might have been technically accurate).