4. Ghost Rider
Speaking of Marvel characters called Johnny who featured in a botched maiden outing and a fluffed follow-up, Ghost Rider might just be the LVP of comic book conversions. Nicolas Cage nowadays resembles less an actor than an ahead-of-his-time performance artist taking irony to scary new places. As a self-confessed nerd, a comic book movie was always in his future, and in 2007 Cage duly turned out as Johnny Blaze a stunt motorcyclist who makes a deal with the devil to save his fathers life. Except Satan the rascal screws him over, killing his dad anyway and turning Blaze into a flame-skulled demon who can shoot hellfire from his hands, has superhuman strength and rides a badass motorcycle. Actually, apart from the dead dad thing, it was a pretty sweet deal. Why he should accept the challenge: Much as its unlikely that a bucket of ice water would quell the flames engulfing his skull for longer than a heartbeat, if youre gonna nominate Ghost Rider youd best be brave, stupid or suffering from an excruciatingly painful terminal illness. He might just use hellfire to incinerate your soul (consider yourself lucky) or, depending on what mood hes in, fix you with a Penance Stare to make you soil yourself/go insane/experience crippling agony/reduce you to ashes. And God help you if he decides to get creative: in a 1994 story, Ghost Rider dealt with enemy Scarecrow by breaking every bone in his body, then holding them out of place and using his rapid healing factor to set them crooked. Damn.
Jonathan Cordiner
Contributor
I watch movies and I watch sport. I also watch movies about sport, and if there were a sport about movies I'd watch that too. The internet was the closest thing I could find.
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