Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance co-director is spilling more beans about his new take on Johnny Blaze through AMC's vlog For Your Consideration. Again, we all know that the first film was a complete and utter travesty, but everything I've heard about this new CRANK'd take gets me excited.
Highlights:
--Taylor talks about casting the original Crank, "One of the first guys that I ever had in mind to play Chev Chelios in Crank was Nicolas Cage…that’s some pretty balls to the wall shit. Nic’s been one of my favorite guys ever…of course, I’d jump at the opportunity to work with him…Make The Ghost Rider movie that I wished I’d seen before."
--Spirit of Vengeance is going to be "100% different from the first movie in everything except for Nic. Character is going to look different, feel different, sound different, the back story of the character is different…the whole cast is different...It’s pretty much a reboot only with the same actor…a requel."
--The script they're working with is a retooling of David Goyer's (Batman Begins, Blade) draft from ten years ago.
--Asked if Ghost Rider is "going to be the plastic skull anymore?" Taylor responds dryly, "Yeah no."
--They're planning on doing "a HUGE splash at the Comic Con...that’s when we want people to see what the new evolved Ghost Rider looks like."
Movieline caught up with director Brian Taylor at the SXSW Festival down in Austin, TX where he was promoting the film The FP (an indie described as Kickboxer-meets-Dance Dance Revolution, yeah, I'm there). Not only has Taylor co-directed (with Mark Neveldine) three of my favorite mondo bizarro flicks of the 2000s (Crank, Gamer, Crank: High Voltage), he's also spearheading the new Ghost Rider sequel. I know, I know...you're thinking, but Dorks the first Ghost Rider movie was absolute garbage and I don't care how much you love Nic Cage, even you must admit that it was a complete cinematic abomination. You are right. Despite making a ton of money, 2007's Ghost Rider was frickin' awful. And even though, I love Cage with all my heart, I have to admit that it's one of the very worst comic book movies. Fact.
So, how can I be excited about another Ghost Rider film starring the Karen Carpenter-loving, dumb monkey laughing Nicolas Cage? Well, have you seen Crank 2? That movie is balls-to-the-walls utterly insane? It has to be one of the craziest, madest bits of surreal cinema ever burned into celluloid. And if you don't get it than forget it, you're lost. So the idea of Brian Taylor and Mark Nevildine rollerblading their camera 'round & 'round Johnny Blaze is fascinating. Can't wait to see this beast.
Anyhow...Movieline snagged a couple good bits from Taylor.
--On Ghost Rider's Origin: "We basically completely re-envisioned the whole start of the character, and actually had to re-engineer the origin of the Ghost Rider. The whole mythology behind the Ghost Rider that existed in the comic books never really made sense to me, so we sort of had to re-engineer the entire back-story of the Ghost Rider into something new."
--On how it fits with the original film: "The movie takes place years later. We’re not disowning the first movie but this Ghost Rider is an evolved form of the previous Ghost Rider. And the mythology that went behind it is stuff that never got delved into in the first movie, anyway. Like, they don’t talk about who the demon is from when Johnny Blaze becomes the Ghost Rider. We get into that and really get into who that guy is, what his story is, and what makes GR the way that he is."
--On working with Cage: "...shooting a Nic Cage performance is a total adrenaline rush."
--On the possibilites of Crank 3...or Crank 3D: "The stars have to align, you know. It was almost going to happen but the schedule wasn’t right and the money wasn’t right. It’s kind of like that movie has to get willed into existence at some point, by enough people who want to see it."
Reworking Ghost Rider's origin? I'm down. It's not like they could do any worse than the original film. I say throw it all out. Keep Cage and make something Crank'ed. Go nuts! I want The Bad Lieutenant with a Flaming Skull Screaming For Vengeance! And yeah, I'm going to cross my fingers, start wishing on stars, and eating four leafed clovers cuz I want to see Crank 3D!!! Maybe with a Nic Cage Fu Manchu appearance!
