10 Terrific Scenes From Otherwise Terrible Comic Book Movies
8. Riding Into The Distance (Ghost Rider)
When you really think about it, there shouldn't be anything difficult about making a Ghost Rider film. Aesthetically, he's one of the coolest-looking Marvel characters out there, and while he might not have a rogues gallery as great as, say, Spider-Man's, he has enough interesting villains to make an entertaining feature.
And yet, 2006's Ghost Rider flies in the face of such logic. It's drab, random, laughably dated and, worst of all, wasteful. Wasteful with its premise, wasteful with its use of Nicholas Cage and even more so with its use of Sam Elliot, who plays an older, surlier Ghost Rider who ran rampant during the Old West.
It's great to see the two onscreen together, but ultimately the scene in question stands out for being really bittersweet. Not least because it peters out into a whole load of nothing, but also because it has one of the coolest comics-related images ever, featuring the old and new Riders heading out at night to save the world. It even has its own theme tune, complete with a wonderful tracking shot of the pair riding through the desert.
And then, y'know, it just sort of ends. Sam Elliot's character pulls a 180 degree turn and leaves Johnny Blaze to his own devices, wasting one of the few good ideas the film ever had going for it.