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Roarke, AKA the Devil, bestrides the Earth again in the guise of another actor (Ciarán Hinds, replacing Peter Fonda), and he wants his son, Danny (Fergus Riordan, the best thing in the movie), back from his mama, Nadya (Violante Placido), and thus sends a team or mercenaries, led by pretty-boy Ray Carrigan (Johnny Whitworth), to retrieve him.

In their way? Moreau (Idris Elba), a French, motorcycle-riding priest with a taste for wine, who, as the film opens, warns priests that Danny isn’t safe at their monastery. They dismiss his fears. They’re wrong, of course, get theirs, but Nadya and Danny, distrusting Moreau all the while, make their escape. Moreau decides he needs more help. He needs the Rider.

They always call him “The Rider” in these things. Is “Ghost” too silly? Did it not sample well? Is the term too associated with a ridiculous 1970s-era Marvel Comics character with a flaming skull and a flaming motorcycle who sells his soul to the Devil, then fights the Devil, even as he eats souls ostensibly for the Devil? I never did get this guy.

And where is the Rider, Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage), these days? The All-American white-trash hero is holed up in Europe, lingering in the shadows, and clutching his right hand to let us know he’s tortured. He offers lines like the following in tortured, sotto voce narration: “It likes the dark places. The Rider.”

When Moreau shows up, he and Johnny have the following conversation:

Moreau: You will save [Danny].
Johnny B: I don’t ... save ... people.

Until he does.

Just when Ray Carrigan and company have Danny and Nadya cornered in a junkyard, here comes the Rider, flying into action on his flaming motorcycle. But he’s distracted by eating again (souls), gets blasted, and the bad guys get Danny. The Rider wakes up in a hospital and Nic Cage gets to do crazy Nic Cage shit: asking for morphine and pills and yadda yaddas. When he and Nadya hook up, Nic Cage gets to say a few crazy Nic Cage lines: “No, I get it. You’re the devil’s baby mama.”

To be honest, there’s not enough of this. Nic Cage has built the second-half of his career around intentionally stupid shit (example), and some of that would’ve been preferable to the paint-by-numbers plotline we get here. At a diner, for example, after he and Nadya rescue Danny, and after seeing a father and son bonding at the diner for a few seconds, Johnny decides he wants to bond with Danny, too. His need is so palpable that Danny tells him, “Dude. You’re way cooler than the guys she hangs out with.” This, sadly, pleases Johnny. Is there anything worse than an adult who need the approval of a child? Who want to be cool in the eyes of children?

But then Danny is more grown-up than the overacting adults around him. He actually raises the question we’re all wondering. Aren’t I the Devil’s son? Isn’t that bad? To which Johnny tells him:

The power we have comes from a dark place. but it doesn’t mean we’re bad. We can do good. We can help people.

I thought the Rider didn’t ... help ... people? Oh right, that was a half-hour before.

“Ghost Rider 2” keeps doing this. We’re told that Roarke isn’t powerful walking the Earth; he only has the power of the deal. But we never see him make a good deal. He turns Johnny into the Rider to do his bidding, but the Rider never does his bidding. Ray actually reneges on his deal with the Devil, asking for more dough, and gets no comeuppance. Instead, after the Rider kills him, the Devil revives Ray as Blackout, a demon with the power of “de-CAY.” At the same time, at a far-out monastery with bald dudes with spirograph tattoos on their faces (head dude: Chris Lambert), the Devil is finally exorcised from Johnny. He’s himself again! Ah crap. Just when Danny needs him.

You see, the priests have this crazy idea to kill Danny, since he’s the Devil’s son; but then Blackout shows up, kills them, and takes Danny back to Roarke, who plans to transfer his soul into Danny’s body, effectively killing Danny and making himself stronger than ever.

So how do these three—the devil’s baby mama, a French alcoholic priest and a white-trash stunt rider without powers—save the boy from this coven of chanting yadda yaddas? Danny, who has the same power as his father, gives Johnny his power back, and, in a lengthy car-truck chase down European highways, Ghost Rider kills Blackout, growls “Road kill,” then lifts Roarke high in the air and sends him crashing through the earth. “Go home,” he growls.

It’s not cool, it’s not gloriously stupid. It’s just way, way tired.

So isn’t Johnny in the same place he was in the beginning? Clutching his right hand and bemoaning the dark places? You would think! But apparently the Rider was originally an angel named Blah-Blah and Johnny now feels that angel and so yadda yadda. He’s not yellow-flamed anymore but blue-flamed, and that’s good. Mother and Damien are reunited. The Rider is a hero. Or at least better. Or at least he doesn’t have to clutch his right hand.

“Ghost Rider 2” got made because the first, awful “Ghost Rider” grossed $115 million domestic, $228 worldwide, back in 2007. Never mind that in the U.S. it barely grossed twice its opening weekend total ($45 mil), indicating either a puny fanbase or lousy word-of-mouth. The studio thought it had a hit. It didn’t. This one grossed $22 million opening, $55 million total. Road kill.

—August 26, 2012