The Phantom

• Directed by Simon Wincer
• June 7, 1996
• Based on Lee Falk’s comic strip The Phantom distributed by King Features

The Phantom must stop a powerful criminal genius from reuniting three magic skulls which will grant him ultimate power.

Writing that plot down for this I realize it sounds an awful lot like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. At least in broader strokes. All that is missing are aliens.

Billy Zane plays the hero. For a gentleman that has spent the bulk of his life in the jungle, Zane’s Kit Walker/Phantom is alternately worldly and charming and at other points kind of clueless on how things work. On the one hand he makes his way rather easily around the modern world (he did go to college in the states). On the other he is kinda clueless on finances and at one-point hands a cabbie (John Cappodice) a fistful of random jewels to cover a cab ride. Those types of elements always bother me. How does that even work? I know it is supposed to be funny but it messes with internal logic.

As for the action, Zane handles that well though this certainly does not hint at the potential for him to ever have been an action star. He comes off as tough enough to handle villains that head his character’s way.

Kristy Swanson is here as the love interest Diana Palmer who is a globetrotting reporter working for her uncle’s (Bill Smitrovich) newspaper. She and Kit were flames in college and now something bothers me: how could she either not recognize Kit’s voice or at least find it familiar when he was in his Phantom garb? And what did he go to school for? He has no discernable skill that would be obtained via college.

Every hero needs a villain. As Xander Drax, Treat Williams appears to be just having fun up there playing an over-the-top villain. His Drax is evil but jovial at the same time to the point of coming off almost as for him doing evil is fun. And somehow for me it just fit in the movie. It was a perfect counter to The Phantom.

I never quite got how the character of Quill (James Remar) fit into all this. Quill is one of Drax’s henchmen and Quill also happens to be a member of the Sengh Brotherhood who have been a nemesis of the Phantom lineage since the very first Phantom. I expected Quill’s presence and the Sengh Brotherhood all to be tied together but in the end it just seemed to be one big coincidence. It wasn’t part of a plot or anything by the Brotherhood to get the skulls together again. Was this an element dropped during filming that was not fixed?

I think The Phantom should’ve taken a more Indiana Jones route with after the first skull was reunited with the second. I think that would’ve made a much more interesting story. A world spanning superhero story set in the same period as all the good Indiana Jones films sounds great. Even if it was on a tighter budget as this clearly was. Pull a Mission Impossible: The Series and dress up Southern California as some other country.

Kit at times during the story speaks to the ghost of his father (Patrick McGoohan) who coincidentally was killed by Quill. How he is able to talk to his father’s ghost is never really made clear. I am not sure if it was one of those things that might be known to someone more schooled in the mythology of the character or not. Why he is able to is more or less revealed in a closing line of the film’s voiceover where he offhandedly says that once Kit and Diana get together he can finally get some rest. In other words, once the next generation of The Phantom is secured he can go away.

Eventually the story does connect to the Sengh Brotherhood which is headed up by The Great Kabai Sengh (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) who much like the Phantom is a direct descendant of the founder. This seemed like the perfect villain for this movie. Instead he was tacked on at the end.

The Phantom is a breezy and fun adventure film that only gets hurt the lackluster finale. Most of the way through though it is just bouncy end feels more like a pulp story than your standard superhero work.

The finale with the pirates seemed a little rushed. These pirates had previously sought the three skulls in order to enact their own nefarious purposes but once they are presented with them at their hideout (where the third is) The Great Kabai Sengh is not too interested in having them it seems. And that’s why I think the pirates chasing the skulls should have been a part of the story from the beginning. All the elements were there and for some reason they were left untouched.

I give them props for making this a period piece. Most superhero films would be set in the present day but instead this does something different and sets it in the era in which it was created. The neat thing about the Phantom is that you can really set it in any time with a completely new cast and would still be a sequel. The Phantom stories could occur at any point as there was 400 years and multiple individuals who were that persona.

The Phantom was just fun. At its core it is about entertaining. It looks as if the actors were generally having fun in their parts and that went through the screen to the audience. It was adventure through and through with no real deep themes or deep meaning.

Despite a lackluster ending I enjoyed the bulk of The Phantom and I could see myself watching it again. It’s just an enjoyable romp that pays a bit of an homage to film serials and is faithful to the spirit if not the style of this source material. I recommend this one!