dk said:
Well, neither of those are pure action/adventure movies if you want to get down to it - like Raiders of the Lost Ark, or something. The X-Men films are sci-fi/action and the Spider-Man movies are straight-up superhero. Ghost Rider should be action/horror - similar to Blade. The Exorcist is not an action/horror film. It's pure horror. The problem with taking Ghost Rider as seriously as something like the Exorcist, is that the story involves a skeleton walking around in biker gear and driving a hell-cycle. These are not elements of pure horror.
It all depends on what you want to make witht the movie.
If you could take the Hulk or the upcoming Batman Begins in a very serious and adult way, you take the Ghost Rider as well.
I find that, if you don´t try to take this issues seriously, the movie can end on the dumb side.
You can certainly take the Ghost Rider character seriously, but you're not going to convice even the most willing of audiences that it's all "real." Ghost Rider is escapist fantasy stuff - as it should be.
As much as you are not going to convince that a girl possessed by a demon is capable of levitate or turn her head all the way.
Or that in Poltergeist, a little girl can be abducted inside a TV, or that a tree can come to live and try to eat a kid.
But the movies are very serious and adult nontheless, it´s all in the way the thing is done and deal with.
By the nature of the character, I expect the film will have a darker tone than either Spider-Man or X-Men - though maybe not Daredevil. In the end, Ghost Rider is still based on a comic book and it still has elements of superhero in it. The movie wouldn't be true to the source material if it didn't follow suit.
But the thing is, i don´t think that Sony is going to take the movie as seriously as it should be.
As you state, it might not be as dark as Daredevil, when Ghost Rider should be much more darker than DD wildest dreams.
Bottom line is, i´m a big comic book fan and a amateur filmaker, so, is my understanding that comic book movies should be taken very seriuously....the more serious and adult possible, that´s why i love Hulk and i´m very hyped for the upcoming Batman Begins.
Hell, in some old issue of Wizard i read, by some writer or artist, that the word
COMIC BOOKS might, something, fool some people because, when they see that, the first thing to cross their minds is that it is a very
kiddy thing, when the thing is, since the 70´s, comic books are becoming more and more adult and serious.
If you look at the majority of comic books, the issues that matter, the issues that develop the character story are always dramatic and adult....you have, The Death of Gwen Stacy, Knightfall, The Killing Joke, The Death of Superman...just to name a very few of them, and not the 100th time that Spider-Man fights Venom.
But the thing is, the comic book format, the drawings and colors, make many people look at it as things for 10yr old boys.
Sure that the action and the thrills and the aventure and the excitement as to be there, because it´s inherent to the comic book movie, because they are superheros and supervillains, but that´s the beauty of it, to see the world through diferent eyes, from the perspective of not so normal people.
Now, after saying all this, is my understanding, that you need...you really need to take GR very seriously.
You have to get the audience to understand and, above all, feel that they are watching a man that made a pact with the devil (Mephisto, in this case) and his possessed by a demon.
You can´t make a movie about a guy that makes a pact with the devil as it is the most normal thing to do, and that to be possessed by a demon is a thing that happens on a daily basis.
F..K"
