Despite their best efforts, 'Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance' didn't reboot the franchise as the studio and filmmakers hoped. In fact, it was almost as cheesy as the first film. But here's a movie we maybe would've watched: Nic Cage - before the Ghost Rider VFX was applied - looking like some kind of 'Tron: Legacy' skeleton/clown.

What you see below is an excerpt from the deleted scenes on the 'Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance' DVD. It shows part of an unfinished scene where Cage, as Ghost Rider, is freaking out some bad guys and eventually using his trademark Penance Stare (which makes the bad guy feel the pain of every misdeed he's done). It's a boring, goofball scene in the movie but when you watch it without the VFX finished, it's fascinating.

Cage explained the makeup - which was his choice, by the way - in an interview with Empire:

I would paint my face with black and white make up to look like a Afro-Caribbean icon called Baron Samedi, or an Afro-New Orleans icon who is also called Baron Saturday. He is a spirit of death but he loves children; he's very lustful, so he's a conflict in forces. And I would put black contact lenses in my eyes so that you could see no white and no pupil, so I would look more like a skull or a white shark on attack. I would walk on the set looking like this, loaded with all these magical trinkets, and I wouldn't say a word to my co-stars or crew or directors. I saw the fear in their eyes, and it was like oxygen to a forest fire. I believed I was the Ghost Rider.

And that is what it's like to work with Nic Cage.

You can watch the video below (via Reddit) to see Cage in action as Ghost Rider or Baron Saturday or whatever he wants to be called.

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