Hello and welcome to my web log. Today I watched Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011). Please excuse my prolonged absence from your inbox.

2011 also saw the release of Drive Angry (see newsletter #14) which I mention because both movies feature Nic Cage playing someone who received supernatural powers from the devil, has a cool ride, and must now rescue a child from a satanic ritual. The primary differences between these two movies, as best as I can remember, is that one is set in Louisiana and the other Romania. If for some reason you had to watch one of these films, I would recommend the other.

An introductory voice-over explains that Nic Cage’s character, Johnny Blaze, was a stunt performer before he sold his soul to the devil and now he has anxiety attacks that turn him into a hungry skeleton on fire. After an hour of fight scenes and chase scenes approximating a plot, Idris Elba gives Nic Cage Communion, curing him of being a skeleton on fire sometimes. A child with demon powers reverses this so Nic Cage can again be a skeleton on fire and attack the Devil’s friend: a goth who makes people moldy. At one point it is implied that Nic Cage, as the skeleton on fire, previously pissed on the Devil’s face.

I do feel a certain nostalgia watching this film, not for the film itself which I like most people had never seen but for a time when comic book movies were merely schlock for a captured audience like the parallel entertainment industry for Evangelical Christians and not the primary cultural output. I find myself wondering if Nic Cage regretted stepping away from the franchise when he did and soon wondering instead if there would have been a place for him in that awful machinery.