Is it just me, or has Nicholas Cage rarely looked so good?
That was irony, by the way. The above recently released stills are, of course, from Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (US-2012; dir. Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor), which I’m rather looking forward to. Why? Well, not because the first one was great — though most critics hated it, I thought it was okay, but only about a 6/10 — and not because Cage successfully nailed the role of Johnny Blaze in it — he didn’t, going from looking somewhere between bewildered and emotionally disconnected. But because I really like the comicbook character of the Ghost Rider, which, in its best incarnations, is a powerfully iconic figure, visually and thematically potent. I really hope Cage and friends get their act together this time in order to up the ante on the first. Sure, Cage makes a lot of dud films, but occasionally something sparks in his performance and he manages to flame on, metaphorically and not just via CGI. Maybe this will be one of those occasions.
