A reinvented Ghost Rider

MANILA, Philippines - The directing team Neveldine/Taylor (Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor) known for its edgy, gritty and kinetic action movies Crank, Crank: High Voltage and Gamer take on the supernatural action thriller Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, the highly-anticipated sequel to the 2007 blockbuster Ghost Rider starring Nicolas Cage.

In the sequel, Johnny Blaze (Cage) still struggling with his curse as the devil’s bounty hunter is hiding out in a remote part of Eastern Europe when he is recruited by a secret sect of the church to save a young boy (Fergus Riordan) from the devil (Ciaran Hinds). At first, Johnny is reluctant to embrace the power of the Ghost Rider, but it is the only way to protect the boy — and possibly rid himself of his curse forever.

In the following interview, Brian talks about the film during a visit with journalists on location in Eastern Europe.

How’s the shoot been going for you so far?

“It’s been going unbelievably well. The cast we have on the movie is unbelievable, so every day, there are performances that make you walk away super-funked up about what you’re doing. The locations I mean are just unbelievable. This place Cappadocia in Turkey, it’s like the desert planet on Star Wars in real life. It’s crazy. We’re shooting in these 6,000-year-old ruins and just tromping all over them like it’s a backlot. There’ll be like a thousand of year old statue and grips are like standing on the head when they’re setting lights.”

Was there one thing coming onto the project that was the most important thing for you to make it your own, make it feel fresh and original?

“It’s just that we wanted to really humanize it, and well, I think the main decision coming in that we wanted to differentiate this movie and make it alive and fresh. In the last movie, the title character was played by stunt guys, so the big thing we wanted coming in before anything else was the Ghost Rider needs to be played by Nicolas Cage, always, all the time. When he’s fighting, all the time, so 95 percent of the stunt work, all the action, everything that is the ‘GR’ is Nic and he’s playing it as a dual role, because the Ghost Rider is possessed by the spirit of Zarathos, it’s a different person, it’s not Johnny Blaze.”

So you’re almost creating your own version of it?

“Yeah, we wanted to just completely depart from the first movie and make it a whole thing. We’re picking up this character, whatever, five or six years later, and he’s in a much different place. He’s a much different guy. He’s in Europe. It’s a different bike. The physical transformation that happens to him has progressed where he doesn’t look the same, the skull looks different. Everything looks different. It’s changed and progressed. Think of it like an illness and it’s progressed and this is in the final stages of that illness. It’s gonna feel a lot different from the first movie.”