The Phantom (1996)

We’ve talked before about Hollywood executives of the 90s not understanding comic books, and specifically Batman. The Shadow was one of those attempts to capitalize on Batman. Another was 1996’s The Phantom. It’s another example of people running studios thinking Gen-Xers of the 90s were just clamoring for a 1930s newspaper comic strip. Once again, they were making a movie for an audience that had no emotional attachment for it. But don’t let that deter you. It’s actually a lot of fun, even though it slides heavily into camp. Billy Zane, who would later play the villain in Titanic, is the title character of The Ghost Who Walks. The Phantom is supposedly immortal and has been fighting crime for 400 years. There’s a reason for that, and if you aren’t familiar, no spoilers here. Catherine Zeta-Jones leads a girl-gang of air pirates, and Kristy Swanson is the love interest. The movie adapts some stories from the strips of the 30s, and it’s a guarantee there wasn’t a single person who saw the movie knew that. Just like all the others, The Phantom failed at the box office but became a decent hit in the home video market. 2026 is a little more forgiving of movies like this one. 90s audiences were looking for grit, and this is not gritty at all. You would have to understand where Gen-X was at that point with its disillusion of what was happening with their perceived future. The Phantom doesn’t give them a Gotham City where everything is bad, it gives them an optimistic New York of the 30s. Like The Shadow, it was a movie for people who had been young 50 years earlier. And that’s never been Hollywood’s target audience. Time has allowed The Phantom to be viewed much more positively, even if modern audiences have no idea about its newspaper origins. Just like The Ghost Who Walks, The Phantom’s 1996 version may be immortal.