Academy Award-winning actor Nicolas Cage was in attendance at the recent San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) to promote his new superhero movie, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, and he spoke at length about how different the movie will be from 2007's Ghost Rider. He disclosed to STYD that he will actually be playing Ghost Rider, in addition to Johnny Blaze, and spoke about how he approached embodying a creature "from a different dimension." MTV also had a chance to query Cage about the movie and he revealed that, in addition to all of the changes to the character and tone of the movie that he previously mentioned, the look of Ghost Rider himself (itself?) is "completely different" in Spirit of Vengeance than it was in the first movie.
The iconography of the character, he just is — the Ghost Rider is just the coolest looking superhero and it has to be the one that goes to film and looks the best. And I think they've achieved that with this. ... A lot of thought went into [the look]. All of us together talked about the wardrobe. It's sort of, like, moving. It's like alive, it's organic almost, with heat. And the skull is much more dark visual, the skull itself, so it's a completely different look.
And, in a perfect case of synchronicity, the first promotional images from Spirit of Vengeance appeared in the most recent issue of Empire magazine (and were subsequently scanned and posted online) so we can get a better idea of the new look that Cage described. In addition to the shot of Ghost Rider, there is an image of Cage as Johnny Blaze and the first shot of Idris Elba as an as-yet-unspecified (but definitely badass looking) character.
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance was written and directed by Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine, the creative team behind the Crank movies. The movie takes place several years after Blaze (Cage) first made the deal with the devil that turned him into Ghost Rider. Living in self-imposed exile, Blaze embraces his demonic side once again to save the life — and soul — of a 10-year-old boy named Danny (Fergus Riordan) who is being targeted by demonic forces. Ciarán Hinds, Idris Elba, Violante Placido, and Johnny Whitworth also star.
