{"id":2297,"date":"2007-02-19T10:10:21","date_gmt":"2007-02-19T15:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/?p=1056"},"modified":"2007-02-19T10:10:21","modified_gmt":"2007-02-19T15:10:21","slug":"ok-who-threw-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/?p=2297","title":{"rendered":"Ok, who threw that?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Caught a movie over the weekend. “Ghost Rider.” And, surprisingly, it didn’t suck!
\n
\nI know that’s kind of tough to believe, and honestly I was kind of surprised myself. Nicholas Cage has been kind of hit-or-miss as an actor, but he does a very good job portraying a guy whose life has gone horribly, terribly wrong. In a way, as Johnny Blaze he was a fun combination of Elvis, Evel Knievel and H.I. McDunnough<\/a>. He was an excellent blend of bravado, guilt and bemusement.<\/p>\n

The movie itself had excellent effects and really good action sequences, even though there were some plot holes big enough to drive a flaming motorcycle through. The villainous elemental demons suffered from a bad case of “Kung Fu Minion” complex, attacking the hero one at a time instead of all ganging up on him at once. The big boss demon couldn’t enter a decrepit graveyard, because it was hallowed ground, but had no problem walking into a church and threatening the priest…<\/p>\n

On the other hand, as Peter David<\/a> points out, it could have been a lot worse:<\/p>\n

Just consider the studio notes that they COULD have gotten for “Ghost Rider”–<\/p>\n

“Okay, we’ve gone over the script and we have some concerns. First of all, he can’t be ‘Satan’s bounty hunter.’ This is our hero, and he simply can’t be connected to Satan. We’ll get killed by various conservative Christian organizations. So find a way to make him work without the whole ‘Mephistopheles’ thing. Also, does it have to be a blazing skull? We don’t understand the need for his head turning into a skull. We’ve got Nic Cage for this, who’s a name star: Why are we making his face disappear? It means we can’t have him in action as Ghost Rider on the poster. Kills maketing. Let’s have his face visible even when he’s in action as Ghost Rider. And he can’t have his head on fire in any event. If any kids set their heads on fire in order to imitate him, we’ll get a butt load of bad publicity. So just have Nic Cage’s head glowing a little, maybe, suffused in light. Oh, does it have to be ‘Ghost Rider?’ Technically it’s not even correct since the protagonist isn’t a ghost. Plus ghosts get us more flack from the religious right because they don’t like the whole concept of dead people walking. Plus we tested the name ‘Ghost Rider’ and it’s confusing: People think that it’s about someone who rides ghosts. We’ve taken the liberty of testing various alternate names and have found that “Death Rides a Cycle” is the best.<\/p>\n

Please implement these changes and we’ll talk later.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a side note, we saw the movie with a friend of ours who is a huge George R R Martin fan, and who gleefully discovered that HBO is planning on making a Song of Fire and Ice series<\/a>. We got talking about who they might cast in various roles, and after seeing Peter Fonda as Mephistopheles, we agreed that he’d make an excellent<\/b> Tywin Lannister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Caught a movie over the weekend. “Ghost Rider.” And, surprisingly, it didn’t suck!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-2297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-personal-blather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}