User Reviews

I have to say that this is the best adaptations of the Phantom I have seen to date. Yes, it is made for TV, but don't let that turn you away. SyFy did a great job on this one. The acting was very good throughout. The story was intriguing and the action was fun to watch. If SyFy is thinking of making this into a series, they should absolutely do so. This may be a spoiler to some, but I love the new suit. I'll admit it does take a little bit away from the human aspect of The Phantom, but it still does not make him Superman. They took the classic story and modernized it well. I hope they will show it again soon so I can recommend it to others. If you have a chance, check it out.

I remember not being very impressed by the 1996 Phantom movie with Billy Zane, so when I stumbled across this made-for-TV effort to revive the character, I was open to watching it in the hope it would be a lot better.

It doesn't take long in watching this two-part movie to determine that it was intended to be the pilot of a proposed TV series. The proposed series never happened, and after watching this sorry mess, I think that was a good thing. So many things go wrong in this retelling of the Phantom legend. The production values are erratic - some scenes look expensive and slick, while other scenes look downright cheap. The "updated" costume of the hero looks frankly ridiculous, and will have you wonder why the filmmakers bothered to get the rights to The Phantom if they didn't have a costume that looked like the classic Phantom getup. The telling of the story is really muddled - some plot points (like why the hero was never told by his adoptive parents that he was adopted) are never explained in enough detail. And at three hours in length, the movie is WAY too long.

There's one good bit in the movie - the prolonged assassination attempt near the end - but that's too little, too late. Other than that sequence, this modernized update is a complete misfire. The only good it manages to do is to make people realize that the 1996 movie wasn't as bad as they remember.

I saw this on SyFy today and though to myself, "I LIKE IT!!". Set in a more modern day time than Billy Zane's Phantom (1996), this miniseries looks at the newest Kit Walker and how he came to be the new Phantom. I found the movie on a whole entertaining, and did I mention I love parkour! The characters, while not completely developed, were likable enough for me want to continue watching. Yes, its not the typical Phantom movies and comics, but times do change. We are in a new century, new technologies, and hence a new Phantom. I like how it was all incorporated. I have a penchant for liking the old storyline comics with a modern time twist.

These are my personal comments about the mini-series.

First - the good parts:

Update of Phantom story - excellent - the world has changed since the 1500's, 1930's, 40's etc. About time The Phantom updated to the 21st century;

Kit's character and family history - excellent, 'believable', perhaps a little too much time spent setting the scene.

Update/modernisation of Phantom's support organisation - Bpaa Thap & bad guys - The Singh Brotherhood - excellent. Great ideas.

• Spoiler Alert:

Location (island in ......- & not the Caribbean) & design (inside - above and below) of phantom cave - believable

• (though the 'Deep Woods' seems to be suffering a bit of a drought - El Ninyo effect?)

• Spoiler Alert:

Loved the 'training camp' scenes. He doesn't have 'super/magic Powers', he is simply fit, works hard, trains hard and experienced in what he does (or at least getting there).

• Spoiler Alert:

Most people would feel silly in the original purple suit these days. Nice revision.

Guran's updated character - excellent!

• spoiler alert:

For once, an important (lead?) female character does NOT fall in love with the leading male!

yes - Guran helps Kit (it's her job), and Kit has a girlfriend, but thankfully there was not a 'competition for the guy' sub-plot!.

Acting of main characters, including the villains, and most of the extras, excellent!

Second - not so good parts:

1. Depiction of Bandar people - weak.

Spoiler Alert:

Bandar are people - pygmy size.

When movie introduced them, the two 'Bandar' looked like children in costume and make up. And from what I could tell, about the only kids in Hollywood who couldn't act! No wonder they 'dissapeared' quickly after Kit sees the cave.

Spoiler Alert:

Scene of 'tribal initiation' of Kit - great idea, but:

• 'native' actors were too large to look like pygmy Bandar; - 'Witch doctor' character -> hmmm - far too much makeup.

It may have been better to portray them as the living descendants of the 'Flores Man' -

ref: http://www.nature.com/news/specials/flores/index.html

"Researchers have unearthed remains from individuals who were just one metre tall, with grapefruit-sized skulls. These astonishing little people, "

• quote from above web site.

After all - it is widely held that Modern Man was descended from Neanderthals and/or Cromagnons, for both of which we have found fossils. Modern Man's brain has developed since the Neanderthal, so why not intelligent descendants from the 'Flores Man'? The Bandar are a very secretive tribe.

In summary:

Great update to The Phantom story; a few parts, especially the Bandar, could have been done better.

Honestly, this movie (or 2 episode television series, if that makes sense) is a drastic new take on the 1996 movie.

It trades nearly all of the mythos and magical intrigue from the first movie for science and political intrigue, but it actually accomplishes the transition fairly well.

The story follows Chris, a 24 year old student at Columbia's law school, who has a thing for parkour. After his friend gets injured in a parkour accident, he meets an EMT named Renny, and they seem to hit it off. Naturally, his parents are immediately murdered by a pair of twin assassins. He is whisked off to an island and told that he is actually Kit Walker, the Phantom.

Overall, the protagonists are enjoyable, and definitely more lifelike than in the original films. Chris and Renny, along with her father, the assassins, and many of the characters on the island, were deep and interesting, yet each managed to provide the movie with a comic element. In fact, Jordy is one of the best "comic-relief friend" characters that I've seen in a long time.

However, this is where my review turns a little more negative. The antagonists throughout the movie were a constant source of disappointment. While the two assassins were in general very good, it was clear from the beginning that Abel was going to be an antagonist. Furthermore, while I enjoyed that the Singh Brotherhood was changed from a group of pirates to a technology corporation, the Brotherhood was fairly uninteresting, and Raatib Singh had some of the most cliché and terrible lines in all of film.

Overall, this was a fresh, new adaptation of a fairly decent nineties movie, and if you can stand fairly bland antagonists, I would recommend it.

This is a long 2 part story. It appears to be made for Canadian TV. No sex, nudity, or bad language. Like American movies, the bad guys are black, except in this one they speak French Canadian. The main bad guys hang out in Switzerland and boast a mish-mash of indistinguishable international accents, including one female (Belladonna Lithia) whose haircut makes me think she was once part of the Swedish Bikini team of the 1980's.

Ryan Carnes plays Chris Mooore, who lives with people he thinks are his parents. Like Luke Skywalker his past is kept secret and then one day he comes home, finds his legal guardians killed by the bad guys and vows revenge. Like Spiderman, he also likes the redhead next door. And there is a corporate meeting which reminded me of the one in Kill Bill.

Chris Moore has lost his memory and doesn't know he is the Phantom, although he does like to jump around the roofs of buildings. Once he is arrested, his DNA goes out on the Interpol network and he is discovered by the Good Guys and the Bad Guys, the Singh. Eventually Chris assumes the role of the Phantom and uses his new high tech bullet proof suit. It turns out his dad died from cancer (must have been those purple dyed asbestos fibers in the old suit). The bad guys have a weapon called "Flicker" or Flickr for you Yahoos or Flicka for you cowboys. This device uses digital TV to turn people into Manchurian Candidates, who will keep the war machine going and the arms dealers rich.

The movie doesn't have long drawn out action scenes. It is long on dialogue and building characters. If this is the first in a series. i.e. an introduction of characters, they did a good job. However, if this is it, you might wait until you have 3 hours to kill on a movie that is more carrot on a stick than action.

Flicker? Is this some sort of pun/reference to Flickr? Box on top of cable television set to access people's minds...wait a min, wasn't this device used by the Riddler in Batman Forever already? And why is there a Phantom team? In the comics very very very few people were allowed to know the secret of the Phantom, especially not the bad guys. Otherwise the whole legend of an immortal ghost who walks striking fear into the heart of evil would be useless.

Why is it that almost every new series has to use camera shakes, wash out colors, people running around jumping and climbing, etc? None of this shows that the producers of this version of the Phantom, The Ghost Who Walks, is taking things seriously. Everything that made the Phantom who he is in the comics is completely missing in this show.

American television seems to be lowering its standards every year.

I don't really remember the Phantom comic strips so I'm mainly going on the movie itself and the sloppiness and lack of attention to detail.

Starting from the beginning... OK so the 5 year old Kit Walker was in the car with his mother when it plunged into the water, he somehow got out of the sinking car and scrambled onto a tire strapped on the wall so he didn't drown but dodged the assassins from the Singh brotherhood... but how come he isn't wet I mean obviously he didn't fly out of the car into the tire. OK I guess that can be considered a minor mistake...

The boy was found near by scavanging the trash, unable to remember anything. Obviously the Bpaa Thap(or whatever the name of the phantom's organization) knew his face, and with all their intel and high tech crap should've known that his mother was killed, and that police records probably showed no body of a kid. They should've been looking for him and anything about a kid about 5 years old, who had a concussion, looked exactly like Kit Walker, found alone in a location not too far from the crash site on the front paper should've caught their eye in the first place. I mean if they were checking every DNA record logged in all intelligence agencies to find a match for Kit Walker 19 years after his disappearance, and the Walker family was so important that they kept the organization running for 19 years prepping for the 22nd Kit Walker, they probably were looking for him a couple months after the accident. How would such a significant boy just slip through?

Fine, let's just say they were THAT incompetent. How about when Kit returns home to find his foster parents dead. When he enters the home he keeps calling for his parents and for some reason, the guys who are there specifically to kill him don't hear him. He calls them out pretty loud and there's just a normal door, not some high tech sound proof door between him and the killers but they don't even hear him yelling for his parents.

Now we go to the Bpaa Thap headquarters. The first Kit Walker was apparently from Swiss. and in the early 1500s he was on a boat when it was attacked by pirates and landed stranded on an Indonesian island. Well first of all to land up on an Indonesian island he had to be attacked in either the Pacific Ocean or the Indian Ocean. That was before anyone in Europe even really knew about the Pacific. Vasco da Gama was the first to sail around Africa to get to India and that was around 1500. With the technology back then, it was a huge task just to get to India by boat. Even in 1536 there were no stable merchant routes between India and Europe by sea, which means there were no pirates in the Indian Ocean because there'd be nobody to plunder. Another thing, it would take months and probably over a year to sail from Indonesia back to Europe even with the best crew and navigational equipment of that age. The operation would have to consist of dozens of men and a pretty large boat. Of course he would not be able to get that on the island so how the hell did he get back to Swiss and fight crime? FYI, the in original Phantom, the Bangella island is located somewhere in Africa which makes much more sense.

Oh another thing, if he was from Swiss he shouldn't use English to write his diaries. Most likely he would've used German, which is confirmed by the way they pronounced Kit Walker when they picked the 22nd up and took him to the car crash site. Again in the original Phantom, Kit Walker is of British descent.

Ummmmm and yeah at the last scene. So he's all trained up for months to fight mercenaries and ex-military guys working for a worldwide crime syndicate and the gets tossed around by some tribal men like a toy. Seems like he's not ready lol And he picks up a a red hot metal ring and puts it right on. That thing should melt his fricken flesh...

I'm just mentioning the big gaping holes leaving out the more subtle stuff...

over all I'm giving it a 2 because of the acting which was decent. The rest was just so bad I couldn't get into the movie. Sure, I'm one who likes mystery thrillers pieced together flawlessly but the thing to note is that even huge blockbuster movies with almost no plot make sure they don't leave any obvious holes. It is always better to have no plot or details to put holes in than make a lousy one with tons of holes.

The short version: Absolutely awful cheap low budget brain-dead wannabe pilot! The longer version: So SyFy has a lot of really good stuff, but this was just dreadful. Cheaply made with a horrible inconsistent script, plot twists you can see coming before the opening credits have finished. Not everything has to cost a "Cameron" budget, but at least bother to get you're own logic straight. Every minute of this B TV rubbish screams "let's not think about this too much, it's a comic so we can do whatever cheap cliché we like" The main character with its bleached beach-bum hair is pretty pathetic, the supporting cast is actually OK. But all the nonsense like taking a glowing hot ring out of a fire, cheap wire acts, the stupid fights. Awful, awful and awful. The whole 3 hours was probably made on the same budget they did a single Flash Gordon episode.

Here is a tip to SyFy: if you don't want to spend the money to get the quality it deserves, then don't bother.