GHOST RIDER's Johnson Goes to Hell

By: ANTHONY C. FERRANTE
Date: Friday, November 11, 2005

CINESCAPE can't wait for GHOST RIDER from DAREDEVIL writer-director Mark Steven Johnson. There's so much excitement about what Johnson is conjuring up with Nicolas Cage playing the cursed motorcycle rider Johnny Blaze that we're offering up an early sneak peak.

Johnson graciously took time out from his busy schedule to tease us about what to expect from the Marvel comic book adaptation.

"GHOST RIDER is the one closest to me as far as my life growing up, because I'm a big motorcycle junkie," explains the 40-year-old Johnson. "I read all the comic books, but Ghost Rider and Daredevil were the two I responded to the most. Ghost Rider was the one I always thought was more visually spectacular. I always loved monster movies as a kid and always thought Ghost Rider could be a cool monster movie/'Beauty and the Beast' story."

For being such a cool story, Johnson notes it wasn't that easy to translate into a film. David Goyer (Blade) took a crack at it a few years ago, then Shane Salerno, followed by Goyer again who returned to do an entirely different version, with the possibility of Blade helmer Stephen Norrington directing.

Of course, according to Johnson, most problems with the comic book story related to the ambiguity attached to lead character Johnny Blaze and his actual mission for the devil. In the comics, Johnny sold his soul to the devil to save his father figure from cancer. He dies anyway, and Johnny was subsequently turned into the Ghost Rider by the devil.


"The comic had some great stories, but it seemed to keep falling apart," says Johnson.

"The classic run had some great individual stories, but it had some of the same problems that some of the film versions had. The deal Johnny makes with the devil never quite made sense, and it was supposed to always be a 'sell your soul' story. The fact that the devil turned Johnny Blaze into the Ghost Rider, and the Ghost Rider would use that power and turn around and fight bad guys and evil and fight the devil never really added up. It was always a problem with the old scripts I read, too it never quite made sense."

Later incarnations of the Ghost Rider saw Danny Ketch take over for Johnny, but Johnson explains that "the mythology got too convoluted that, when they brought Danny in to simplify it, he literally touched the tank of the haunted motorcycle in a graveyard and it turned him into the Ghost Rider."

"Later they tried to connect Johnny Blaze and Danny Ketch together, that they were related, but it got really confusing," says Johnson. "I think it needed to be cleaned out, and you needed to keep all the things that were so cool about the Ghost Rider."
How Johnson eventually solved the problem was treating the GHOST RIDER movie as a supernatural western and thankfully was given the freedom to streamline the concept for the big screen.

"First of all, I wanted to not make it like other superhero movies," says Johnson. "I didn't want it to be set in New York or Gotham. It's not a guy who puts on spandex who jumps off a roof or a window. It's really more of a monster story, and I wanted to make a western."

Most importantly for Johnson was the idea that there has always been a "Ghost Rider," and he's always been the best rider in the world.

"The reason I came up with that is the devil gives you his power because he needs you to work for him as a bounty hunter," explains Johnson. "So the mythology I created is that there's heaven, there's our world, and there's hell. And every once in awhile, something escapes from hell like a prison break and gets into our world. When that happens, you call upon the Ghost Rider to track it down and bring it back. What they don't count on is Johnny Blaze is different from the Ghost Riders of the past. He's got a pure heart. He's got someone he still loves. He didn't sell his soul for money or for greed or for power. He did it out love, and that makes him different from the other Riders."

Being able to modify the comic origin slightly was integral to Johnson, and he feels grateful that he didn't have the pressure of bringing such a well-known icon like Spider-Man to the big screen, thus allowing him more leeway.

"I don't feel the pressure of Spider-Man and that people are going, 'This is a great comic and it's been around for 40 years,'" says Johnson. "It's not like that. Ghost Rider is one of the best characters, there are some great stories, but there are some things you can hopefully improve upon, which is great."

GHOST RIDER opens with Johnny as a young boy trying to save his father from cancer. He sells his soul to the devil to save him, and the devil tells him, 'One day I will call on you.' Cut to 20 years later, and Nicolas Cage is an Evel Knievel superstar who, no matter how badly he crashes, is always able to walk away from the scene. People think that he must have an angel on his shoulder, but Johnny knows who it is the devil who's just waiting to make good use of him. And it's only a matter of time until the devil comes calling.

The devil, Mephistopheles, is, appropriately enough, played by Peter Fonda, best known as Captain America from the '70s counter culture biker film Easy Rider.

"I wanted to take the greatest motorcycle icon from movies and make him the devil" says Johnson. "I thought it was cool to have Ghost Rider versus Captain America."

The story kicks into high gear when the devil's son Blackheart (Wes Bentley) escapes from hell to start his devilish reign on earth just a few eons too early.

"He's supposed to wait to the End of Days when the anti-Christ comes back and rules the world, but he's tired of waiting," explains Johnson. "He hates his father and decides, 'Now is my time. I'm going to make my time now.' So what he does is come to our world, and he begins to collect these fallen angels, demons that exist in our world, to work for him. So the Ghost Rider is summoned to track these things down and send their scaly asses back to hell."

Shot like a "Sergio Leone western mixed with a Hammer Film," Johnson beams about his unique comic book hybrid.

"I set it in Texas, and it has a whole different feel from the city," says Johnson. "It's a monster movie. Fighting crime that's not what this movie is about. This is about a guy who has sold his soul to the devil, and he wants to get it back, and he has to ride through hell and work as the devil's bounty hunter to do that. It really feels like you're watching a western. In fact, we've been shooting our final battle in this ghost town. It's tumbleweeds and boots. It's really a great playground. It doesn't look like anything else."

Among the many challenges of bringing GHOST RIDER to the screen was perfecting the visual effects, which are being supervised by Kevin Mack. Creating realistic fire is one of the more difficult effects to achieve, and since the Ghost Rider's skull is literally aflame, there were concerns early on about having 'real' fire before proceeding.

"Fire and water are the two hardest things in visual effects," says Johnson. "We wanted to come up with a new fluid, dynamic look to the fire and really make sure the fire had a life of its own. Once we saw the rough test, we realized this could be amazing. We have to differentiate ourselves from fire in the past and give it it's own personality. A skull is a skull, it's not going to change, but how do you give it life? How do you give it expressions so it doesn't look like a Pirates of the Caribbean skull? "

One aspect of the fire that Johnson and the effects team came up with was utilizing the different colors of fire to represent Ghost Rider's emotional turmoil in a given scene.

"When he's angry, his fire will turn from yellow to white hot and it will grow and enrage," says Johnson. "When he's sad, his flames will go a cool blue, literally like a blue period. That will cause shadows over his face which will give him expression. It's really great. We're using fire and shadow and are able to sculpt his face and give it an exciting look."

While Johnson would have liked to do many things practical, he accepted early on that, in order to make this character work, his flaming skull head would have to exist in the digital realm, creating a big visual effects movie.

'We have to replace his head in every shot with a frightening skull, and that stuff alone is a lot of visual effects," says Johnson. "You always want to do as much real as you can, but it's not like Hellboy where I can put him in a costume. I considered that that the skull could be a mask, but once you do that, the fire has to be CG, so you might as well do a CG skull, too, because it's going to look better."

He points out that visual effects-heavy films can be difficult because, due to the length of time required to developed the effects for Ghost Rider, the character's image will be long in coming.

"You have to use your imagination of how things are going to look or how it's going to come together," Johnson explains. "There is not a Ghost Rider on set. It's a guy with an interactive lighting collar around his neck."

While Daredevil had an R-rated director's cut released on DVD, Johnson doesn't expect GHOST RIDER to go the same route even though the film is more of a horror movie.

"I don't think it's going to be necessary, " says Johnson. "Even though this is a darker character, in some ways it's not as dark as Daredevil was. It's got more of a realm of fantasy. This is dark in the way that LORD OF THE RINGS is dark. When you're killing demons, it's somehow more acceptable to a general audience than if you're killing people or beating somebody up. The scene in Daredevil where [Ben] Affleck is beating up that one guy and unleashing punch after punch it's very violent. That, to me, is more violent than using a chain to lasso a demon and burn him to a crisp. It's a different kind of tone."

In fact, Johnson is still surprised at what a critical and fanbase drubbing DAREDEVIL took when it was initially released, and he feels a lot of that had to do with a comic book movie backlash at the time as well as the whole Ben Affleck/Jennifer Lopez romance that was being flogged to death in the press.

"I think Ben got unfairly knocked," says Johnson. "I thought he did a great job in the movie. And, of course, I think the director's cut is a much better version of the movie, and everyone agreed on that. I think the thing I felt we didn't get credit for that we deserved is that we tried to do something different and tried to tell the real life of a superhero. We thought it was a bit of a risk to show the superhero home alone, taking pain pills, seeing what that life is like and seeing what it's like to be a handicapped person and not making it so 'gee whiz.'"

The film was also a financial success (grossing over $100 million domestically) although people have since pegged it as a failure, which Johnson says is a misnomer.

"DAREDEVIL made a lot of money for people," says Johnson. "The entire East Coast was shut down because of a snowstorm, and we still opened to $42 million. We did well. You'll read things that says it was a disappointment, but then HELLBOY will make $58 million, and they'll make a sequel. Ours made over a $100 million. They were looking at ELEKTRA as a sequel of its own and wanted to see how that did, and unfortunately it didn't do so well."

As for spending two to three years on superhero films like this, Johnson says on any given day he has ambivalent feelings about it.

"I love these movies so much, I'm cool with it, and I write these movies, too, so it adds another year to the process," says Johnson. "I'll be on this movie for three years. That's what's hard. Most directors will do two or three movies in that time. It's a big commitment."

With the completion of GHOST RIDER, Johnson says he will definitely want to take a break and do something smaller.

"These movies are exhausting, especially something like this where you on the other side of the world, away from your family," he says. "There's also a lot of money at stake and a lot of pressure that comes with that. But that's what you sign up for."
And what about a GHOST RIDER sequel?

"One at a time," he says with a smile. "God willing there will be one, because this has been the most fun I've ever had."

(GHOST RIDER is scheduled to be released next summer by Sony Pictures on August 4, 2006)