Ghost Rider (2007)

In order to save his dying father, young stunt cyclist Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) sells his soul to Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda) and sadly parts from the pure-hearted Roxanne Simpson (Eva Medes), the love of his life. Years later, Johnny's path crosses again with Roxanne, now a reporter, and also with Mephistopheles, who offers to release Johnny's soul if Johnny becomes the fabled, fiery Ghost Rider, a supernatural agent of vengeance and justice and lets hilarity ensue. Mephistopheles charges Johnny with defeating the despicable Blackheart, Mephistopheles's nemesis and son, who plans to displace his father and create a new hell even more terrible than the old one.

Trivia: To create the Ghost Rider's voice, sound designer Don Davis recorded all of Nicolas Cage's lines as the Ghost Rider, and then filtered them through three different kinds of animal growls (played backwards, covering three separate frequencies) and then played them through a mechanical volumizer, before finally giving them a fiery crackle. Director Mark Steven Johnson compared it to "a deep, demonic, mechanical lion's roar" and says that "one thing is for sure, his voice will shake the theatre!" Nicolas Cage's computer generated skull was made from a three dimensional x-ray taken of his actual skull. The flame tank chopper Johnny Blaze rides is a modern replica of the "Captain America" chopper that Peter Fonda rides in Easy Rider. Nicolas Cage wrote sections of the script.

As a comic book converted to screen this is pretty good compared to some of the recent attempts. Nicolas Cage was, well, Nicolas Cage, he doesn't change much. Eva Medes was jaw droppingly gorgeous and if anybody outshone her it was Raquel Alessi who played the young Roxanne. The special effects were pretty good, the bike was kick ass. All in all a pretty good popcorn action flick.