听 Recent advances in CGI meant that Ghost Rider, a motorcyle-riding vigilante with a flaming skull, finally hit the big screen in 2007. With Nicolas Cage donning the biker leather, it was deemed "entertaining enough," but not quite the monster hit Marvel honcho Avi Arad had been looking for. It just about kept its fiery head above water at the box office, scoring $115m against a $110m budget.
Spectre Spectacular
It was the "iconic image" of Ghost Rider that Arad reckoned would put bums on seats. He says as much in a three-part Making Of documentary, and director Mark Steven Johnson (Daredevil) echoes the sentiment, but adds that there was something missing from the original screenplay (penned by an eager college graduate). His rewritten draft, turning the Ghost Rider from a mere do-gooder into a bounty hunter, finally got the studio execs to dip into their purses. Cage was then quick to jump on board because, as an eight-year-old, he was an avid fan of the comics. Even then, says the star, he imagined himself in the role.
When the cameras got rolling in Melbourne, Australia, it's the stunt riders who are revealed as the true stars of this movie. Shea Adams is especially talented/foolhardy, as he gears up to perform an Evil Knievel-style jump through fire. A reel of animatic storyboards reveals how this, and a few other key stunts, were choreographed.
Of course, there was a line that even Adams wouldn't cross, and that's where the computer geeks take over. The final part of the documentary takes a fly-on-the-wall look at post-production, where lots of people sit in a dark room and make fire by rubbing a few pixels together. The oft-forgotten foley artists (those who record the sound effects) also get a look-in, jumping up and down in sandpits and such.
Blazing A Trail
Effects played such a crucial part in the film that Johnson invites visual effects supervisor Kevin Mack to sit in for the director's commentary. Apart from explaining 'how they did that', Johnson talks a lot about developing the script, which he conceived as a "classic western meets monster movie". He also highlights scenes that were cut from the theatrical version at the behest of studio executives. These are restored in this Extended Cut and afford a little more screen-time for the young Johnny Blaze (Matt Long) and his dad (Brett Cullen). Johnson explains how the tightness of their bond leads to Blaze accepting the Faustian pact later on (A producer's commentary by Gary Foster is a lot less interesting, focussing on mundane matters like casting and location scouting).
Sin And Salvation is a series of four featurettes tracing the history of Ghost Rider from his earliest incarnation in a 50s comic-strip and reinvention through the decades. As the writers tell it, he was killed off in the 50s because of the Comics Code - a list of rules supposedly intended to 'protect' youngsters from "lurid, unsavoury, [and] gruesome illustrations." It wasn't until the free-spirited 70s that he was resurrected, but each decade brought a new set of challenges and added an extra layer to the mythology. Some comicbook fans did get a little hot-headed about the changes made for his big screen outing, but this DVD should still appeal to the armchair thrill-seekers.
EXTRA FEATURES
Ghost Rider: Extended Edition DVD is released on Monday 2nd July June 2007.
