Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance Review (1/5)

Brilliant. Exciting. Eventful. Think of the complete opposite to each of those words, and you've barely scraped the surface of the insult to the film industry that is this woeful sequel.
...I'm speechless. Any of my colleagues who read this blog will attest that there are very few occassions on which I can be left lost for words, but I have actually reached a state of disbelief that Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance is so incredibly dire that I am simply unable to put to you just why it is the very last movie you should ever waste your money on this year. As such, in much the same vein as Lemonie Snicket (well, not really), I'm going to pitch to you a series of unfortunate questions that are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of why this is one of the worst films I have ever seen. No, seriously...

• Why, when we've spent a whole movie (Ghost Rider, 2007, 3/5, much better) building up the intriguig origins story of this dark flame-headed antihero, do we need to revert to a rebooted version of the tale with just about everything changed except lead Nicholas Cage as the Rider and Johnny Blaze? Worse still, why does this origins story get condensed into a series of atrociously-drawn motion comics that last the best part of five minutes and pitch the Devil as an insanely stereotypical gangster who was always going to be the antagonist? Cage's introductions to the film are patronising to say the very least- whose idea was it to make the film accessible to newcomers, when the grand majority of the audience coming to see it are merely the fledging remants of those like me who actually quite enjoyed the original? One thing I can say for sure is that even that group of us is going to be significantly reduced after seeing Spirit of Vengeance. If this was on Sky Movies (heck, if I were renting it on DVD too), I would most likely have switched over.
• If we're going with the whole idea of this being a reboot (and we are, because to say any of the charm or mystery present in the first film remains here is to insult its predecessor hugely), then why on earth is Nicholas Cage back as Blaze? Surely it would have made much more sense to recast the Ghost Rider so that there was no possible continuity to had between the two films, rather than confusing 'fans'- that term's in the loosest sense- by losing all of the cast bar Cage from the original, the Devil and Roxanne included? That question is something that seems to have plagued the writers of Vengeance throughout, as they don't seem to be able to decide whether they can truly leave behind their first creation, and that makes it a horrible mish-mash of concepts.
• What happened to the special effects budget? Seriously, the first film's Rider actually looked pretty impressive, ripping out the souls of the guilty at the end of its various setpieces, whereas here there's no such effect, and as such all we get a few henchmen set on fire by his flame breath (yep, he has flame breath now) or his whip. That's dull viewing to say the absolute least, and that the film tries to balance itself between awkward scenes of Cage's Blaze trying to be a father figure, trying to withhold the Rider (I actually laughed out loud at how badly overexaggerated his portrayal was in a scene where he went off-the-wires) and three or so basic setpieces involving his evil alter-ego. In fact, why did the writers even dub this as a Ghost Rider film? Can they really justify only including the comic character as nothing more than a plot device to advance the slow-as-hell (pun fully intended) storyline along towards its lacklustre ending?
• What the heck was the point of promoting the film as being in 3D? The trailers for John Carter and The Amazing Spider-Man that aired before the movie had more 3D shots in them (and were a lot more interesting, to boot!), making the inclusion of the format and the additional cost that comes with it feel absolutely pointless. Could we not have had the bit when the Rider basically urinates fire in some form of depth for a laugh? It would have been a heck of a lot funnier than any of the lines the writers deemed to be 'jokes' in this, each of which were met with absolute silence in my cinema screen ("Did we beat them?" "Yeah...you could say...hell yeah!" Ha.). How did the team even think that those kind of 'gags' would even be funny?

Before my English crumbles into a complete state beyond comprehension to the human ear, I'll round off. In short, at no point in your life should you even consider watching Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance- it does a huge disservice to its decent predecessor, and wholeheartedly makes that film which had some promise seem like the bloomin Dark Knight in comparison. I've never seen a flick so completely devoid of any chance of empathy or indeed enjoyment, and can't quite believe Marvel Knights let this go to the big screen. I would have lost my dignity the moment I made the decision to show it in cinemas (a fair amount of it has already gone from simply going to see it). If a movie can top this as the Worst Flick of 2012, then something is seriously wrong with the industry.