Spirit Of Vengeance director Brian Taylor believes the R-rated script for Ghost Rider was superior to the “vanilla” Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. version in every which way.
Chatting to Flickering Myth, the filmmaker touched base on David S. Goyer’s hardcore screenplay, which presumably would have formed the basis for at least one of the Nicolas Cage-fronted Ghost Rider movies. But as Taylor concedes, one of his biggest career regrets is not making the case for an R-rated adaptation, as he firmly believes that if he had the opportunity to produce the original script, the end product “would’ve been a classic.”
I think that Ghost Rider should be a rated-R, horror character. The original script that David Goyer wrote for that movie, which was actually written almost a decade before the first Ghost Rider film, was a hardcore, rated-R horror script and it was awesome.
Then, in the time between that and the second movie, the script had been rewritten literally 14 times or 16 times or something like that to the point where it was kind of a mess. It was also just a little too clean and a little too restrained. If we had had the opportunity to do the original, rated-R Goyer script, I think that movie would’ve been a classic.
The Robbie Reyes version of Ghost Rider was brought on to Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. in time for season 4, though Brian Taylor believes the character lacked bite due to an over-reliance on CGI. Gabriel Luna was the actor tasked with bringing the Spirit of Vengeance to life, though it’s fair to say that his performance failed to leave much of an impression.
Via Flickering Myth:
I think the cast was really good and I think we got a lot of things right. I think the design of the character was fantastic. The way we did Ghost Rider as a tar-bubbling, black, charred creature was absolutely the right take on Ghost Rider. They’ve brought that character back on TV now and he looks like the clean, vanilla, G-rated character again. That version really has no interest for me, but I do think a scary, rated-R, horror superhero movie is an awesome thing that should be done and I wish that Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance had been it.
As Taylor suggests, if Ghost Rider has a future at Marvel, we’re hopeful that the Powers That Be point Johnny Blaze (or Robbie Reyes) in the direction of Netflix, where the likes of Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Mike Colter’s musclebound Luke Cage have been able to flourish.