‘Ghost Rider’ Sequel Director Calls ‘Agents of SHIELD’ Version “Vanilla”

After two somewhat financially and critically disappointing Ghost Rider films, the character laid dormant for a few years until Marvel’s Agents of SH.I.E.L.D. delivered audiences a new interpretation of the character. Brian Taylor, who co-directed Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, was left unimpressed with the iteration of the character, claiming that he’s an example of a much darker corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“They’ve brought that character back on TV now and he looks like the clean, vanilla, G-rated character again,” Taylor confessed to Flickering Myth. “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.”

This sentiment echoes thoughts he shared with ComicBook.com earlier this year that there’s an overwhelming feeling of “sameness” to the MCU as a whole.

“The Marvel [Studios] movies, I just don’t understand at all. I have to be honest, they seem very long to me,” Taylor confessed. “I’ve got to be careful the way I say this. I just don’t get them. I’m kind of bored with them and I just don’t find them particularly entertaining. I think they’re really well made in terms of craft. The action is really good. They’re technically really great. They have a lot of actors that I love. But I just don’t get it.”

The filmmaker also detailed how much he regretted not pushing the character into darker realms with the movie he made alongside co-director Mark Neveldine.

“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,” Taylor confessed to Flickering Myth. “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.”

With films like Deadpool and Logan being huge successes, an R-rated Ghost Rider film would have potentially played well, yet the character likely won’t hit the big screen anytime soon.

“If we had had the opportunity to do the original, rated R Goyer script, I think that movie would’ve been a classic,” Taylor admits. “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.”

Which version of Ghost Rider do you like best? Let us know in the comments!

[H/T Flickering Myth]