Ranting with
Movieline at the South by Southwest (SXSW), Brian Taylor, co-director (with Mark Neveldine) of the Nicolas Cage-starrer
Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance, speaks in-depth on the sequel.
How will you accomplish surprising people and re-fashioning the Ghost Rider origin story, like Cage suggested?
"We basically completely re-envisioned the whole start of the character, and actually had to re-engineer the origin of the Ghost Rider. The whole mythology behind the Ghost Rider that existed in the comic books never really made sense to me, so we sort of had to re-engineer the entire back-story of the Ghost Rider into something new."
How do you overcome the challenges of re-introducing audiences to an origin when they’ve already seen him take a different path with the character?
"We’re just looking at it as an evolution. The movie takes place years later. We’re not disowning the first movie but this Ghost Rider is an evolved form of the previous Ghost Rider. And the mythology that went behind it is stuff that never got delved into in the first movie, anyway. Like, they don’t talk about who the demon is from when Johnny Blaze becomes the Ghost Rider. We get into that and really get into who that guy is, what his story is, and what makes GR the way that he is."
Were you aware of the randomly goofy photos of Nic Cage escaped out into the world?
"I’m not sure the ones you’re talking about, but I’d love to see them if you could send me a link. [Laughs] But I’ve got to tell you that working with him was the absolute highlight of that experience. He’s the best. Every day that Nic was on the call sheet and we were coming in to shoot him was a total rush. Shooting action is boring, shooting car crashes and all that stuff. But shooting a Nic Cage performance is a total adrenaline rush."
Head over to
Movieline for the full interview, where Taylor touches on potential
Crank sequels and more. With Nicolas Cage returning as the Brimstone biker,
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vegeance also stars Idris Elba, Ciaran Hinds, and Christopher Lamber, hitting theaters February 17, 2012 in 3D!