This year, we’ve had Kenneth Branagh helming Thor for starters, and we’ve got the likes of Shane Black directing Iron Man 3, the aforementioned Christopher Nolan, Patty Jenkins on Thor 2, and Joss Whedon on The Avengers. I said earlier that interesting directors are getting to make comic book movies now.

As I understand it, it was only the fact that Sony was running out of time, and that the rights would revert to Disney otherwise, that it decided to give a new Ghost Rider film the green light.īecause Sony’s boldest decision is in its choice of film makers. In fact, had Disney not snapped up Marvel a few years ago, I’d even wonder if a sequel would be happening at all. But then the critical and fan reaction wasn’t great, and you’d have to wager that Sony didn’t have the confidence to do a direct follow-up. The delay in getting around to a sequel, in commercial terms at least, has been a surprise. But it was a pretty uninteresting couple of hours that made an awful lot of money. Appreciating that some warm to it, I thought it was a pretty uninteresting way to lose a couple of hours. And I say this with full disclosure that I’ve not got a lot of time for the first film. Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance is more of a throw of the dice, and I really hope it works. These are films that we’re looking forward to seeing to varying degrees, but they’re working very much within set franchises now.

And then there’s Christopher Nolan, who’s toiling away on The Dark Knight Rises. Marvel is packing one film with as many heroes as it can get with The Avengers. Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance? It’s as close to a gamble as you’re going to get in the genre in 2012.Īfter all, Sony is rebooting Spider-Man, and bringing the franchise pretty much into line as it does so (and bringing down the bill).

And ultimately, while the general quality of comic book movies has been increasing in most parts, there are few flat-out risks. Mickey Rourke has been chattering of late about how Jon Favreau wasn’t basically given the control over Iron Man 2 that he should have had, for instance. More worryingly, the appointment of interesting directors hasn’t always meant that they’re left to make the film they want.

Ghost rider 2 full movie