Thoughts on The Phantom

I watched The Phantom for the first time earlier this year. I expected it to be bad, but it was actually pretty decent. A fun B-level action adventure movie that clearly was going for a self-aware 1930s serial vibe. Billy Zane was great, he had a lot of charisma, humor, and definitely got the old-fashioned superhero vibe of just being a classic good guy. Though I heard that Bruce Campbell was originally considered for the role, and would like to see what that would have looked like.

There were some problems I could see with the film. The purple suit was way too bright-looking against the jungle island setting, and it looked ridiculous onscreen. There was also a poor transition where Catherine Zeta-Jones’ character, who was one of the villain’s henchpeople, just turns to the good side seemingly out of nowhere. I guess it was when she started to have compassion for Kristy Swanson (who I didn’t recognize at all in the film)’s character while she was held hostage, and turned against her crew, but it wasn’t well-established. But Zeta-Jones was one of the highlights of the film to me for her smooth sensuality, and I so wanted to see a side story about her and her band of lady pirates.

I got that Treat Williams’ villain was supposed to be hammy and over the top, but I just found his voice incredibly irritating, and couldn’t see him as a real threat despite his on-screen kills. I also initially got him mixed up with Timothy Dalton’s character from The Rocketeer, thinking he was supposed to be a Hollywood movie star secretly in league with the Nazis. Instead, he’s a major business owner who is in league with a lot of shady people and profits from piracy.

Despite that the scenes were very derivative of Raiders of the Lost Ark due to having the same screenwriter (Jeffrey Boam), I still thought the action set sequences were fantastic, with more of a real sense of danger, having stunt people hanging off of airplanes or off of bridges. They were fun to watch, and did have an old-fashioned thrill to them that fit the period style.

So the movie was a pleasant surprise to watch a nice B-level superhero movie, and I really enjoyed it.