Remember those Nic Cage Ghost Rider movies? Those were classics, weren’t they? As we know, the films were the first big superhero successes, and went on to pave the way for the superhero gold rush we currently live in. Okay, yeah, none of that happened. In reality, these movies were yet another example of studios trying to capitalize on a big name (Nic Cage) all while not staying faithful to the character, for fear of alienating mainstream audiences.

Recently, a different iteration of Ghost Rider appeared on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but we still have yet to get a film that truly takes advantage of the character. Speaking with Joblo, Cage revealed that the filmmakers hard originally wanted to do a more faithful take on the character:

“Y’know, GHOST RIDER was a movie that always should’ve been an R-rated movie. David Goyer had a brilliant script, which I wanted to do with David and for whatever reason they just didn’t let us make the movie. But that movie is a still a movie that should be made, not with me obviously, but it should be an R-rated movie-heck, DEADPOOL was R-rated and that did great. GHOST RIDER was designed to be a scary superhero with an R-rating and edge and they just didn’t have it worked out back then.”

Nicolas Cage may be a bit of a punchline these days, but it sounds like he has his head on straight in regards to these movies. Had they been allowed to make the Goyer script as intended, I can’t help but wonder if it could have opened up the floodgates for more R-rated movies. At the same time, I also wonder if audiences indeed would not have shown up to the theaters, as studios feared. While we can look at things now and say that the audience is there, back then, it was a completely different world.

Do you think an R-rated Ghost Rider would have worked back in 2007? Let us know down below!

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SOURCE: Joblo