You love motorbikes and have always wanted to see Nicolas Cage with a burning skull? In “Ghost Rider” that’s possible. The Marvel action flick from the pre-MCU era is now available as a Disney+ subscription.
Marvel before the MCU – those were some wild times! You could see Ben Affleck jumping over rooftops in a red devil suit in “Daredevil” and Wesley Snipes was directed by Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro as sword-wielding daywalker Blade fighting bloodthirsty vampires.
Meme god Nicolas Cage was also part of this pre-MCU comic universe. In Ghost Rider, Cage plays Johnny Blaze, a stunt rider with a dark secret because he sold his soul to the devil to save his father from dying of cancer. In order to pay off his debts, he now rides through the night as Ghost Rider with a flaming skull on a motorbike to punish sinners for their misdeeds.
If you haven’t seen “Ghost Rider” yet and are in the mood for a juicy dose of Nicolas Cage overacting, you can watch “Ghost Rider” on Disney+ from 3 February 2023:
AND THIS IS WHAT “GHOST RIDER “
IS ALL ABOUT.
Who should play Ghost Rider in the MCU? pic.twitter.com/KcC02WTRdo
– Sam (@WallCrawler_Sam) January 27, 2023
To save his father from a deadly disease, Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) makes a diabolical pact with Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda): his soul in exchange for a cure for cancer. What Johnny doesn’t realise is that he can’t win this deal, because shortly after he makes this diabolical bargain, his father – now cured of cancer – is killed at a motorbike show.
Years later, Johnny has also become a real devil stunt rider, famous for surviving even the most daring stunts without a single scratch. Actually, Johnny is doing well in his life, but just when he is thinking about turning his life around and taking it down a notch, Mephistopheles contacts him and forces him to honour his debt.
From now on, Johnny is to act as his extended arm as a Ghost Rider and will only be released from his new duties once he has collected 1,000 souls. In addition, he is supposed to help his diabolical employer in the fight against his son Blackheart (Wes Bentley), who is currently shaking up the balance of power on Earth…
A HEART PROJECT FOR NICOLAS CAGE
Ghost Rider is a real project of the heart for Nicolas Cage. The actor with a penchant for overacting is a self-confessed comic book fan who took inspiration from Marvel superhero Luke Cage when choosing his stage name and even named his son Kal-El, which as we know is Superman’s Kryptonian birth name.
However, the actor has a special relationship with the fiery demon Ghost Rider. On several occasions, Cage has stressed that it is his favourite Marvel character and he even has a Ghost Rider tattoo adorning his skin. He explained his love for the idiosyncratic anti-hero to Collider thus:
“Ever since I was a kid, I was drawn to monsters, whether it was The Hulk or Ghost Rider. I couldn’t understand the complexity of something that looked so scary but was also somehow ‘good’. That in itself gave it a depth that I felt was lacking in some of the other characters. “
