Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance Trailer

[Venomaniac]

I just discovered that although Peter Fonda wanted to reprise his role of Mephisto, but the villain will not be Mephisto, but Ciaran Hands who will be playing "The Devil". Apparently it was an edict from Marvel not to use Mephisto in the role of the devil, so according to wikipedia the film leaves it ambiguous if they are the same character.

So again, Marvel goes to extreme lengths to try and convince us Mephisto is not the Devil...

It gets worse, Marvel's reasoning is (and now the character's wiki page states):

He was jealous of the worship of the fire demon Zarathos, so, posing as Satan, Mephisto creates the Ghost Rider by bonding Zarathos to Johnny Blaze.

Posing as Satan. Posing.

Seriously?

I know they care about OMD but...they're seriously going that far? That's insane. And Finda was technically "Mephistopheles" so you could make a case that it's a different character. I feel bad for the guy- that's a silly reason to deny the role
edit: just to be clear- do you have a link. This sounds so crazy I'm taking it with a grain of salt.

[tnr105]

http://web.archive.org/web/20070926235838/http://www.justpressplay.net/movies/310-to-yuma/news/peter-fonda-talks-about-working-with-russell-crowe-and-ghost-rider-2.html

^Fonda wanted to return for a sequel from the beginning. The rest is from wiki, so yeah idk, but I can buy Marvel saying that they don't want Mephisto in the role of Satan. They did retcon that in the comics, so they may just be trying to hammer it home.

According to wiki, the filmmakers had enough wiggle room to leave it so you can make up your own mind on whether they are different entities.

[butters911]

Maybe Marvel wants to save Mephisto for one of the movies Marvel Studios is making?

[FSUSpiderFan]

Maybe Marvel wants to save Mephisto for one of the movies Marvel Studios is making?

or a Spider-Man movie...

[DarkKnightJared]

Okay, Marvel could probably pull stuff like that in their own studio movies, but I really don't think they have that kinda pull in movies where different studios have the right. If Lion's Gate (?) wanted to use Mephisto, if he was part of the Ghost Rider package, Marvel doesn't have all that much of say in it.

[ChaosInc]

That's not how licensing works.

Marvel doesn't have direct control, but they still influence the other films by their standard rights as license granters. Basically, they should have a sort of veto power that allows them to deny certain aspects of the films and suggest alternatives. Here's an example. Suppose Sony decides to have Spider-Man strangle a baby to death in The Amazing Spider-Man. Marvel, by right, has the power to step in and tell Sony that they're nucking futs and have the plot point changed.

There are many horror stories out there of licensed works (especially comics) under the direct thumb of the entity granting the license. Marvel, given how important Spider-Man is to their company, definitely has significant control over the direction of the films. They might not watch Ghost Rider as closely, but they still have a say in how the movie is developed.

While I don't know of any film examples for their cartoons Marvel does exercise control to protect their intellectual property. In Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends Firestar was originally going to be Mary Jane until Marvel stepped in and put a stop to that. So Angelica Jones was created, who happens to look quite a bit like MJ.

[Julie16]

I think it's hilarious that people are blaming the budget for the miserable lack of events in this movie, when something like Hellboy 2 had maybe 5 Million extra bucks and still managed to have roughly 50 times the creatures, scope and mayhem than this claptrap.

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