Blog – Easter – Ghost Rider vs Passion of the Christ

Johnny Blaze as the Ghost Rider using the Penance Stare to make some fool contemplate on their abundance of sins and immolate in the 2007 Nicolas Cage starring Ghost Rider is way more spiritually fulfilling than watching Jesus get beaten to death in 2004’s Passion of the Christ. Mostly because it’s about Ghost Rider using actual spiritually divine powers to make the world a better place. That isn’t conveyed at all in Passion of the Christ, or anything really conveyed instead of just gore makeup effects. As South Park called Passion succinctly, “That wasn’t a movie, it was a snuff film”.  

Deadpool 2 has Wade compare sum of the box office receipts of his film and Passion saying, “Passion of the Christ, then me. At least domestically. We beat them overseas, where there’s no such thing as religion.” They’re both R-rated gore fests, but Deadpool is infinitely more rewatchable and enjoyable than Passion. As to how Passion in 2004 made 600+ million worldwide, maybe because a whole lot of folks thought that going to see Passion instead made it count as going to Easter Mass so they could cut out. Deadpool really trounced it outside of North America as seen by this chart on the-numbers website. It’s a bit of a mystery as Passion is just a miserable viewing experience. Yet it still gets trotted out around Easter as something viable.

For me, 2023 Easter weekend viewing was Ghost Rider (Which I just reposted the 2007 review here) and the I hadn’t seen before (or I did and totally forgot) sequel Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Having not seen the first film since probably 2007, and looking at my older review, my initial point still stands, it’s a hell of a lot more fun when Ghost Rider is on screen. Although as Nicolas Cage has become even more enjoyable to watch in his recent years that this makes it a hypothetical viewing of what a Nicolas Cage starring superhero movie could have been if played straight. Well as straight as Cage could be, he still hollers and eats jellybeans from a martini glass. It has a bit of a silver age corny vibe which is refreshing as sometimes superhero movies can get a bit serious.

There’s also an interesting note that the bad guy in 2007’s Ghost Rider, played by Peter Fonda, is called Mephistopheles who is the big Marvel bad guy Mephisto, someone who was always rumoured to show up on Wandavision in 2021 (also Mephisto in the comics stole the marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson Parker. It was weird). Fonda is really fun in the role being very campy although it’s never quite clarified that he’s Mephisto and not some generic devil guy. In Spirit of Vengeance, the guy is called Roarke, played by Ciaran Hinds. There’s a whole subplot in Spirit of Vengeance where Roarke is trying to take over new human bodies, so if one wanted to pretend it’s been Mephisto jumping from body to body in between movies it could work. Although Spirt of Vengeance is one of those quasi-sequels where it doesn’t exactly follow the rules of the first film. Along with a completely different main bad guy, the flashbacks to Johnny Blaze’s deal with the devil is different from the 2007 film.

Of course, this is all probably thinking way too hard about canon and character continuity in a flaming skull series. Spirit of Vengeance is directed by the Crank guys and it has some awesomely bombastic moments, moreso than the first film, like when the Ghost Rider takes over a piece of heavy machinery and basically turns it into a giant flaming chainsaw. Other moments it looks like they just ran out of money as it drops into greyscale with no background impressionistic images. It may be trying to be abstract and arty but just looks cheap. But when Ghost Rider kicks in, the flaming chaos is great, and even a funny moment when he reminisces about what it’s like to pee while as the Ghost Rider. Also enjoyable is Idris Elba as a boozy priest who has some funny lines and Highlander himself, Christopher Lambert, as a shifty monk.

Vengeful spirits permeate both Ghost Rider movies, which also features resurrections by a higher power for a higher purpose. That supposedly happens somewhere in Passion of the Christ but you never see anything aside from Jesus being beaten to a pulp. There’s even dopey cutways to the Devil in Passion of the Christ which isn’t anywhere as cool as either Hinds or Fonda as the Marvel branded devil Mephisto in either Ghost Rider. Instead of Passion, something that feels more Easter-y featuring genuine miracle except it’s a flaming skull riding a motorcycle, watch either Ghost Rider.