After coveting the role for years, Gosling has been announced as the new Ghost Rider – a superhero stunt rider with powers bestowed by Satan. Is this a smart move all round or has he sold his soul to the devil?
Steven Spielberg once said: “If a person can tell me the idea in 25 words or less, it’s going to make a pretty good movie.” And Marvel’s most popular big-screen superheroes can be described using less than half that number. Iron Man is a tech bro in a tin suit; Spider-Man has the powers of an arachnid; Thor is a Norse god. Go and watch a film featuring any of these characters and you know exactly what you’re going to get.
But then there is Ghost Rider, who, according to <a href="https://www.marvel.com/articles/movies/marvel-studios-ghost-rider-ryan-gosling-comic-con-2026″ rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>reports from San Diego Comic-Con last week, will be the subject of a new Marvel Cinematic Universe film directed by Deadpool & Wolverine’s Shawn Levy, and starring Ryan Gosling. There is no quick way to explain what is going on with this guy. In the 1972 origin story, stunt motorcyclist Johnny Blaze sells his soul to Satan to save his adoptive father from cancer. The cure works but its beneficiary is killed almost immediately. The devil then tries to claim Johnny’s soul and, when that fails, binds him to the demon Zarathos. This, if Christopher Marlowe is to be believed, ought to result in corruption, despair and eternal, fiery damnation. Yet somehow our hero emerges from the arrangement with a cool flaming skull, vast supernatural powers and a motorbike capable of riding up buildings and across dimensions. Blaze regards the whole arrangement as a curse, but to the casual observer his principal penance is to roam the Earth passing judgment on people more wicked than he is, while looking good in a leather jacket.
So what does Gosling, one of the biggest movie stars in the world right now, see in the role? Reports suggest this was not simply a case of Marvel waving a blank cheque in his direction. Gosling has wanted to play Ghost Rider for years, and apparently approached Marvel president Kevin Feige with his own conception of the character, inspired by specific comic book runs. At this point in his career, the star of Project Hail Mary, Barbie and Blade Runner 2049 could presumably have asked to play almost anyone in the Marvel universe. He chose the infernal Evel Knievel whose face catches fire.
Part of the attraction may be that there is little cinematic inheritance to worry about. The two films with Nicolas Cage in the role were memorable chiefly as demonstrations of the venerable old ham’s ability to chew the scenery. The first arrived in 2007 looking as though somebody had attempted to build a superhero franchise from a heavy-metal album cover and a bottle of hair dye. The sequel, Spirit of Vengeance, made Ghost Rider seem like a character whose principal dramatic function was to drive towards the camera while screaming. Perhaps, in a way, the failure of those films now counts as a blessing; at least Gosling does not have to compete with an iconic performance.
Another plus point may be that the actor will be entering the MCU at the furthest point from its centre. Blaze – or whichever version of Ghost Rider Gosling ends up playing – need not immediately be forced to join the Avengers in yet another climactic battle against an army of anonymous CGI henchmen. Nobody is waiting to see him square off against Thanos or explain the multiverse. Gosling has a much better chance of moulding the project exactly as he wants. But this, it must be said, is a long way from the formula Feige used to build Marvel into the world’s most potent fantasy storytelling machine. Robert Downey Jr was not a megastar when he was cast as Iron Man; he was a risky, diminished name. Chris Hemsworth was barely known when he was cast as Thor; Chris Evans was hardly considered a prestigious casting as Captain America.
Yet the studio is in a very different era from the one in 2008, when Iron Man first hit cinemas. The release of Spider-Man: Brand New Day this week is predicted to once again see Marvel back on top at the box office, but there is no longer any guarantee that every movie it makes will zoom past the $1bn mark. On that basis, it is easy to see why Feige and his team might opt to hand the keys to the kingdom to an actor who seems to have Hollywood’s equivalent of the Midas touch – especially when the property he is interested in is something of a free hit. Handing a major star considerable creative freedom certainly worked with Ryan Reynolds on Deadpool & Wolverine.
Perhaps this will end up being the perfect match after all. Marvel finally gets a new hero, and its new Ghost Rider gets the freedom to turn one of the studio’s daftest creations into something entirely his own.
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