A Bad Feeling About This: Ghost Rider

I'm going to see Ghost Rider tonight. I can't help it. When confronted with terrible, chilling cold and hundreds of miles of interstate highways closed due to abandoned vehicles, I need speed and fire to course correct. To get those on the big screen this weekend, one can't see, say, Norbit. Which is kind of blessing in disguise.

Like most thinking people, I think Ghost Rider will be bad, but I don't have the attachment to Johnny Blaze that I do to, say, Daredevil, so I have very few little riding on the film's success. Mark Steven Johnson is obviously a fan of the character, as is Nic Cage, but I have serious reservations about Cage's ability to play action and/or melodrama without over-emoting to the point of silliness while still somehow coming off as wooden. Cage is basically the human equivalent of the uncanny valley.

I don't care about acting if I'm going to see a Ghost Rider movie, though. I care about awesome. And I think that they can pull awesome off if they hit a few key beats.

1. Ghost Rider needs to bike kick someone.

2. That clip I've seen where he's going so fast that he blows the traffic cop over? It's kind of lame, yeah, but the saving grace of that scene would be the cop's radar gun topping out at 666.

3. Really. Bike kick.

4. Please be better than Spawn, the only other superhero movie with a motorcycles that I can think of. (Batman Forever? They never made a movie called that....)

I'll report tonight. Pray for me.