Despite what previous films may have you to believe, Ghost Rider is a badass. The fact that he's recently become one of my favorite antiheroes caused me to realize that he deserves much better in film than Nicholas Cage's awful version. Ghost Rider, like Deadpool, is not a character that should be toned down to PG-13 to fit the viewing requirements of children. His story is full of hyper-violence, death, and pain, so the idea that he should have a PG-13 movie makes no sense to me. Which is why I've decided to post this. So, without further ado, I present to you...
Ghost Rider
The Cast
Jensen Ackles as Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider
Jensen has the perfect range to portray the characterization of Johnny Blaze in this movie: a badass who hides his insecurities and depression behind a wall of sarcasm and alcoholism. He is also no stranger to characters involved with the occult, having played a monster hunter for nine seasons in the CW's Supernatural. In the movie, Johnny is a self-loathing alcoholic, still not having forgiven himself for the death of Crash Simpson, his adopted father. After becoming the Ghost Rider, he is forced to become a hunter for Mephisto until realizing the true potential of his curse.
Terrence Stamp as Mephisto
Age aside, the calculating performances given in The Adjustment Bureau, Superman 2, and Valkyrie, I am convinced that Stamp can give the cold, intimidating, silently evil performance needed for Mephisto. Mephisto is a trickster, known for offering deals that end up backfiring on the poor unfortunate soul who agreed to the terms. He is the ruler of Hell, but chooses to create servants that do his dirty work, like Ghost Rider.
Mark Strong as Blackheart's Host
Crispin Glover is one of those actors that looks like he could play a psychopath, and that's exactly what Blackheart's host is. He's the murderer that Johnny kills on his first night as the Rider. When we are first introduced to Blackheart in the movie, he's so weak that he needs to possess a host body, and the murderer is exactly what he needs. By the end of the movie, he's powerful enough to assimilate a physical body of his own that resembles the comic book incarnation. He's a creature that feeds off of chaos and violence, as opposed to his father Mephisto, who enjoys the simple pleasures of evil.
Gemma Arterton as Roxanne Simpson
Considering the fact that she was one of the good things about Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, and how much I liked her in Quantum of Solace, I feel like she would be an ideal choice for Roxanne in my opinion, although the fact that she's absolutely gorgeous helped. Roxanne is Johnny's love interest, and one that he hasn't seen since the death of her father. When the two meet again, she helps Johnny through his troubles and they slowly begin to fall in love again, before she becomes intertwined with his other life.
The Plot
17 years ago, Johnny Blaze made a deal with the demon Mephisto to prevent his adoptive father and famous motorcycle stunt artist Crash Simpson from dying of cancer. Mephisto held up this end by removing Crash's cancer, but the deal backfired on Johnny when Crash died in a horrible motorcycle accident three days later. Soon after, Mephisto came to close the deal and take Johnny's soul, but was prevented from doing so by Roxanne Simpson, Crash's daughter, proclaiming her love for Johnny. Angry and rejected, Mephisto bonds Johnny with the demon Zarathos in revenge, before returning to his realm.
In the present, Johnny is 33 years old, successful, but yet alone. His relationship with Roxanne fell apart and she left him due to his continuation of stunt racing, the same thing that killed her father. He is depressed and an alcoholic, and is drinking at a bar while contemplating suicide right before the start of another famous tour of his. It is here that he hears about another murder striking in New York City, from a serial killer that the police have not yet caught. Before Johnny can make a decision about suicide, Mephisto appears before him for the first time in years, and vaguely warns him about something happening tonight. Johnny shrugs it off as a drunk hallucination, but decides not to kill himself. He goes on with the stunt that night, and ends up in a horrible crash.
He's rushed to the hospital that night, and wakes up alone, with all of his friends having gone home. At midnight, the Rider transformation takes over, and Johnny breaks out of the hospital. It's at this point he first discovers his penance stare, which he uses on a doctor that had been secretly overdosing his patients. Johnny calls his motorcycle and heads after the serial killer he'd heard about earlier, finding him leaving a body in Christ's Crown cemetary. Ghost Rider kills him and leaves his body there, before returning to his tour bus. Unbeknowst to Johnny, the demon Blackheart takes possession of the murderer's dead body, since he is too weak to form his own physical body at the moment.
Johnny wakes up in his tour bus, not remembering the night before. He decides to cancel the tour after last night's accident. Roxanne (who attributes the things that happened all those years ago as nightmares resulting from her father's deat) shows up after hearing about the accident, and is surprised to already see Johnny up and around. They begin to talk, until Roxanne mentions her father. Johnny is distressed and leaves, heading out to a bar. There he meets Mephisto again, who finally reveals what he did to Johnny. His memories from the night before return, and Mephisto takes him to Hell, where he tells Johnny that he will now work as his bounty hunter. Johnny has no choice but to accept this, and his first few missions are to hunt down some demons that escaped from hell and are now roaming free in the mortal world. He recieves a book of the occult from Mephisto, as well his legendary chain, which was forged with hellfire.
The next day Roxanne invites Johnny to her house to talk and catch up, which is really her way of trying to keep Johnny away from bars. It works, and they start to spend more and more time together, to the point where they inevitably begin to fall in love. Johnny starts to stay with her and begins sleeping with her, and Roxanne begins to get curious when Johnny leaves in the middle of the night while she's sleeping. She thinks he's sneaking away to bars, when in actuality he's hunting the demons that escaped. Eventually while searching for the demons, Johnny ends up saving a woman from being attacked, and realizes that he can use his powers to help people while doing Mephisto's dirty work.
During this time, Blackheart has been killing priests around the city and draining them of blood, something which the public dubs as the Holy Murders. One night, one of Mephisto's royal guard informs him that Blackheart is no longer in Hell, and Mephisto realizes what's really going on. He summons Johnny back to Hell and tells him to hunt down the murderer, realizing what Blackheart is attempting to do.
Johnny starts investigating the murders, visiting each church and asking around. He discovers that before the murders, each church had a new member who was described exactly the same way each time. He discovers the police believe the same man who was commiting the previously unsolved serial killings before hand are commiting the Holy Murders. After another priest is killed, Johnny visits the church and discovers the man left a name this time.
Johnny asks Mephisto where the man will next attack. Mephisto reveals the church, and a curious Johnny asks why Mephisto wants the Holy Murderer gone. Mephisto lies and says that it's just another demon that escapes, and Johnny believes him. Mephisto sends him back, and later that night leaves Roxanne confronts him with her suspicion that he's drinking again. He denies this, but when she asks him what he's been doing, he can't tell her. He leaves, and eventually transforms later that night. Roxanne discovers that he's been tracking the Holy Murders, and upon finding pictures of the church that the murderer will be at next, takes one of Johnny's bikes and heads there herself.
Ghost Rider arrives at the church first and confronts Blackheart, who has already murdered another priest. Johnny recognizes Blackheart's body as the one belonging to the murderer he killed, and he and Blackheart (who has grown considerably stronger due to feeding off the souls of his victims) begin to fight. Blackheart realizes Zarathos is inside of Johnny, and forcibly removes him from him, leaving Johnny powerless. Blackheart absorbs Zarathos. Johnny, who is seriously injured, is rescued by Roxanne, who had been watching the entire fight. She takes Johnny back home where he explains everything. Before he can figure what to do next, Mephisto appears before them, where he finally reveals the truth: Blackheart is his son, whom he imprisoned after Blackheart tried to overthrow him. He created him using the evil energy that surrounded Christ's Crown cemetary, which was how he was able to escape into a body there after years of imprisonment. Blackheart is murdering priests in an attempt to do a ritual that would allow him to yank archangels from heaven. Mephisto doesn't know why Blackheart wants this, only that he must be stopped. He takes the shotgun Johnny was planning on using on himself earlier in the movie and imbues it with hellfire, making it powerful enough to affect Blackheart. He also reveals where Blackheart is before returning to Hell, due to the fact that while in the mortal world, he is not as powerful.
After concocting a plan, Johnny and Roxanne leave to go find Blackheart, who has hidden himself in a large old mausoleum near the edge of town. Once they arrive, Blackheart reveals his plan. He means to use the souls of the priests to pull the archangels from heaven and slaughter them in order to incite a war between Heaven and Hell. Heaven would inevitably win, which would allow Blackheart to assume control over a fresh Hell. He then fatally wounds Roxanne, and as Johnny tends to her, Blackheart releases the souls from within himself and begins to incite the incantation, with several angels falling from the sky. Roxanne dies in Johnny's arms. Blackheart then uses his immense immense power to defeat all but one of the angels. Johnny tosses his occult book to the angel, and tries to distract Blackheart while the angel reads an exorcism from the book. As the angel finishes the exorcism, Johnny fires his shotgun into Blackheart's host, knocking Blackheart and Zarathos from the body. Zarathos immediately bonds with Johnny again, and Blackheart uses his power to form a grotesque physically body of his own. Johnny fights him, and upon discovering that his penance stare does not work on Blackheart, who has no soul, he tears out the heart from Blackheart's new form, rendering it useless. Before Blackheart can rush into a new body, the angel reads another spell, sending Blackheart back to Hell for good. She reluctantly thanks Johnny for his help, and restores Roxanne to life, before returning to Heaven to tell the other angels to avoid war.
Johnny takes Roxanne back home, and when she wakes up, he's gone. In Hell, Blackheart begs his father for forgiveness, but it falls on deaf ears, as Blackheart throws him back into the deepest pit of Hell for an eternity. On Earth, Johnny uses his book to bless the area around Christ's Crown, to prevent Blackheart from rising again. He contemplates leaving, when Mephisto appears in front of him. Johnny tells Mephisto that in a strange way, he has given him a new look on life, and that he will take his curse and use it for good, instead of being Mephisto's dog. He then gets on his bike and leaves, while an angry Mephisto warns him that if he ever dies, there will be a special place reserved for him in Hell.
The movie would have two after-credits scenes. One would feature Roxanne calling Johnny's cell phone and revealing the real reason she showed up to see Johnny in the first place. She meant to tell him the truth about his real parents, that they didn't both die. His mother left Johnny and his real father months before his death in a car accident, taking the unborn child inside her with him. Johnny has a brother.
The second scene would be in Hell, and would reveal Mephisto creating a new entity to hunt down Johnny and reclaim Zarathos. He finishes the creation, and names it Vengeance.
Thank you for reading, and any feedback, good or bad, is always appreciated!