Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

Posted by Charmaine Blake on Feb 15th, 2012 in Action Adventure, New Releases, SuperHero Movies | 0 comments

Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance – The 2nd Sequel To The Ghost Rider Series

Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance is going to bring a whole new action/adventure to the Ghost Rider series. Nicolas Cage still plays Johnny Blaze, a ghost rider who gave up his soul to the devil and now he uses this said curse to maintain the good in the world. Let’s take a look at an exclusive interview with Nicolas Cage on the movie “Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance” showing in theaters on February 17th 2012.

Nicolas Cage As Johnny Blaze In Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance

“First off, I thought the film was fantastic, it was just manic genius.

Thank you, thanks, it’s good to hear you say that – that’s a good word for it! [laughs]

It’s incredibly rare in your career for you to return to a character. What was it about Johnny Blaze that lured you back?

Well there was more that I thought I could do with it. I did have a specific idea about it, actually the genesis of which happened in London, at Westminster Abbey. I was dressed in black leather, head to toe – in those days, I still liked to wear leather jackets and pants and motorcycle boots – and I went to Westminster Abbey on my lunch break, and the bishop from Colorado was there.
It was an environmental summit – I had no idea – and then he introduced me to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to the Pope of the Greek Orthodox Church and there I was, dressed like Ghost Rider with these two very important spiritual leaders, and I thought, “Why not Ghost Rider? He could be working with them”. And then the bishop looked at me and he said [in a hushed tone], “Oh, and by the way, I can be naughty too!”

So I had this idea – Ghost Rider recruited by the church, working with the church in some way and that was it, that was the beginning of it. Then Sony developed the script with Neveldine and Taylor. This time Johnny has been on the lam, it’s been eight years, he’s been living with the curse for eight years, so his state of mind is different, so he’s much more sarcastic, he’s much more ironic, like a cop or a paramedic, who develops a dark sense of humour to cope with the horrors that he has seen. And another element is that I got to play the Ghost Rider, which I didn’t do in [the first film] but I did in Spirit Of Vengeance.

I did wonder, as I got a lot more of a sense of you in the performance as the Rider, especially in the way you moved your body and head, what inspired those distinct movements?

It’s all something that I developed and thought about, even to the point of walking on the set, y’know, so as not to feel ridiculous, but to really believe I was this ghost, this spirit of vengeance, painting my face with a kind of Afro-Caribbean voodoo icon, or a new Orleans voodoo icon. I had white paint and black paint and black contact lenses on my eyes and I sewed bits of ancient Egyptian artefacts into my leather jacket and would channel this spirit of vengeance and really believe I was that. And the fear that, because I wouldn’t talk to anybody, the fear that I would see in the other actors eyes only helped me believe it even more.

Then I would think about cobra snakes [chuckles] I mean, because I used to have one and I would watch it dance. Whenever it was angry it would turn its back to me and would have this pattern of an occult eye on its back, and it would move slowly side to side, to rhythmically put me to sleep and then it would attack! So it would try to hypnotise me and attack – and I thought, well, maybe Ghost Rider should do that. So trying to pull all these odd ways of moving, to kind of take the audience out of their reference point and make them think they’re in the presence of something else.”

You can continue reading the interview at Den Of Geek

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Charmaine Blake loves movies, musical theater listening to music and taking pictures of anything that she finds interesting. She is a voracious reader and writer, and enjoys her time writing for New Movie Launches. Charmaine loves spending time with her pets and currently has a Siberian Husky, a toy poodle and a cat.