I was thinking it would have been kind of cool if Ghost Driver had a skull decorated like a Day of the Dead Calavera which seems reminiscent of some of El Diablo's tattoos. His skull looks really odd in the comic panels I've seen (which they didn't go with on AoS), was there a reason for that other than artistic license?
Just looks like one. It's still his actual face, the mouth moves and such. It's just meant to resemble a stylized racing helmet.
It was exciting seeing Ghost Rider join the MCU and on Agents of SHIELD no less. It was like Spider-Man in Civil War. And how about that intro. As for the car... You have to update the mode of transportation. I wonder what he'd ride in the 24th century. On that I agree. Not one of the character's high points but then again, he's possessed by someone who is in turn, corrupted. "Why does the devil walk on human form anyway? I have no idea. Maybe he doesn't know either. Maybe he passes on from body to body, down through history, waiting for the perfect fit. But I know one thing, on Earth, he's weak. His powers are limited. He needs emissaries to do his dirty work, so he finds them or makes them, using his greatest art, the art of the deal." - Johnny Blaze (paraphrased) Also, I wonder if they have plans to bring back Ward. The opportunity exists.
I suppose if you call a car from 1969 an "update". In 2099 he's riding essentially a flying motorcycle as of the last few Spider-Man 2099 issues.
I admit I'm not massively familiar with the character, but it's always been my understanding that Ghost Rider was more of an anti-hero in a similar vein to the likes of Punisher, who most definitely is a stone cold killer in the MCU. Between this, 'Dr.Strange', some elements of 'Daredevil' and pretty soon 'Iron Fist', I'm interested to see where they go with this and if they're going all-in with the supernatural stuff, or if it'll turn out to be just another flavour of super-advanced reality bending technology. Mind you, at that level the whole "indistinguishable from magic" thing becomes more and more literal so it's possibly a meaningless distinction.
I enjoyed this quite a bit. They went the mysterious route with Robbie and the Rider, and it worked pretty well. The effect for the transformation was well done as well. Curious to see what's up with the box and it's contents. Anybody have any ideas who/what that was?
This first episode was okay, but not exactly mind blowing. The season premieres for "AGENTS OF SHIELD" have never been that hot. And there were too many plot lines going on in this episode. This has been a major weakness with the series since Season Two. I see that Skye is still wearing that damn Goth makeup. How original . . . not.
I'm surprised they didn't make him Ghost Rider. They've done everything else to keep him around. Yes, I read he was cast in SHIELD. It doesn't bode well for his character in Fear, especially considering the ending of the last episode, but that's okay with me. Blaze wasn't, at least not back in the day. In fact, he had gained some measure of freedom from the curse by doing good deeds. But these days, who knows? I stopped reading Marvel a while back when they corrupted all their characters in Civil War.
I never read the books so I can't speak with any authority, but I've definitely seen people to refer to the Johnny Blaze version as an anti-hero. Now, the books themselves may not a been a "splatter their guts across the road and pull their spine out through their..." level of violent, but that's not really needed to qualify as an anti-hero. Indeed, just reading the tvtropes summery shows he has the basic requisites. He may have even been one of the first of the main stream anti-heros, way before things went OTT in the 90's. Still, as someone pointed out earlier, the usual thing to do when adapting a character like this (especially a legacy character with multiple incarnations) is to render them down into the simplest version of their story, cherry picking some of the more interesting elements from all of them and then weaving them into the established world as organically as possible. Indeed, Quake is a prime example of that at work in the MCU.
So anyone else see the premiere last night? It's surprising to see Marvel introducing Ghost Rider here instead of in his own movie or on Netflix or something. I gather they're trying to take the show in a "darker" direction now that it's on at 10 PM. They also seem to be trying to sex it up a bit, which is so far being done very gratuitously, with the opening close-up shots of Daisy putting on her lingerie before putting on the rest of her gear, and the AIDA gynoid just happening to be naked while Radcliffe was installing her upgrades. Not sure what I think of the whole Ghost Rider thing yet. That's never been a character I've had much interest in. At this point I think I'm more interested in the car. I loved the line about how, between The Dukes of Hazzard and The Fast and the Furious, most of the surviving '69 Dodge Chargers have been wrecked by now. I bet that's something the producers were told when trying to source some for the show, and they put it into the script. Interesting that John Hannah is a regular now, instead of just a recurring guest. I suppose they must have big plans for him. I have to admit, I sometimes have a bit of trouble figuring out whether Fitz or Radcliffe is speaking off-camera, because I've gotten used to thinking of Fitz as the one with the Scottish accent. Also some interesting tension between Simmons and the rest. She's trying to make compromises to be in a position to salvage what autonomy she can for the team, but that often puts her in the position of being the bad guy to the rest of the team, and that's a very difficult balance.
Simmons better watch out, Fitz seems a bit smitten with that LMD real doll. Ghost Killer might be a better appellation than Ghost Driver. Yo-yo has grown on me quite a bit. She doesn't look like a generic superhero actress which is cool. Not just because she's Latina but her features aren't as typical. I could understand it if it was a horse but people still ride motorcycles. At least they didn't put him on a Segway. I never read this version of Ghost Rider but from the comic panels I've seen it looks like they did a remarkably faithful translation of the look of the character. I thought the car was nicely done for TV CG.
One advantage to using the newer version of Ghost Rider, with the car instead of the motorcycle, is that it avoids any possible confusion with the Nicholas Cage movies. You have a nice clean break that makes it immediately obvious, even to the most casual or uninformed viewer, that this is a brand-new Ghost Rider that has nothing to do with the movies. Probably a smart move. (And I say that as the guy who novelized the first movie.) This isn't the Ghost Rider I read back in the seventies, but that's cool. It's not the 1970s anymore. Things change. As to the new ep: was it just me or was there a bit more skin and blood than usual. Guess they're taking full advantage of their new 10 o'clock time slot.
They seem to go full bore with the magic from the get go, with not only the Ghost Rider but also that evil spirit (?) box. By the way, i'm sure, the android is called Ada (after Ada Lovelace) - the go to name for first generation female form androids (at last since Ex Machina).
There's already a thread on this topic. Christopher probably has that user on ignore though, so didn't see it.
So, Coulson is doing d-grade agent missions and being kept off anything important, but is going against the SHIELD "director" to do what he wants anyway. This is probably to set up a big confrontation and probably ending with Coulson going on the run at some point. All the skilled SHIELD agents on Coulson's team are working basically desk duty, except Simmons because she's basically betrayed the team to join the evil side. There is also Ghost Driver, who fights emo Skye in a completely pointless scene. Finally, a guy makes a sexbot because...13 year old boys are running this show, I guess. Did AoS steal some of Arrow or Gotham's writers? I ask this (rhetorical) question because this episode seems so pathetic and lame its hard to imagine it didn't come from writers on those shows. I'm glad I just read a recap and didn't bother with this episode. It looks like I'm done with the show that used to be my second favorite show on TV. This is more depressing then when Arrow became garbage at the end of season 3/beginning of Season 4. Hopefully ABC will put AoS out of its misery after this season, or get new producers. Then I'd give it another chance. As it is, its now joined Arrow, Gotham and Supergirl on the pile of garbage superhero shows currently airing. What a bad end for a show that used to be so good.