The Phantom (2009)

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.

In New York, the twenty-four year-old Chris Moore (Ryan Carnes) is on the last semester in the Columbia Law School and is a practitioner of Parkour. When his friend has an accident practicing the sport with him, the paramedic Renny Davidson (Cameron Goodman) helps them and Chris and Renny immediately fall in love with each other. However Chris is arrested by the police but Renny's father, Detective Sgt. Sean Davidson (Ron Lea), releases him. When Chris arrives home, his parents make him promise that he will study a lot to not fail in the upcoming exams.A couple of days later, Chris dates Renny and while he is returning home alone, he is abducted by a group in a van. Soon the leader of the group, Abel Vandermaark (Jean Marchand), explains to him that he is a foster son and his real name is Kit Walker. He is the twentieth-second generation of The Phantom, the ghost who walks, and they belong to his organization Bpaa Thap that helps The Phantom to fight the crime along the centuries. Chris does not believe on his words but when he returns home, he finds his beloved parents murdered and the two criminals waiting for him. Chris flees and one killer dies in an accident. He calls Vandermaark and they travel with Guran (Sandrine Holt) to Bangalla, where he is trained to be The Phantom. Meanwhile the evil Singh Brotherhood led by the cruel Raatib Singh (Cas Anvar) is plotting a scheme using the technology developed by Dr. Bella Lithia (Isabella Rossellini) to kill the charismatic leader Jalil Ben-David (Jason Caselli) and begin a worldwide war."The Phantom" is an adaptation of my favorite childhood hero, The Phantom, in the Twentieth-First Century. I saw this movie yesterday on DVD in an edited version of 150 minutes running time and despite of the flaws, I liked the story and found it very entertaining. The Phantom follows the family tradition, and the uniform has been used since 1536. Therefore, there is no reasonable explanation for the twentieth-second The Phantom to wear different clothing. The uniform could have been improved, but is colors and shape should have been kept the same.Abel Vandermaark is a contradictory character and the conclusion of the story is not good. Nevertheless my wife and I have enjoyed a lot this free-adaptation of this forgotten hero. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "O 22o Herdeiro" ("The 22nd Heir")

Been a long time since I saw a series that gets me excited. This new take on my childhoods classical hero made me hope they actually start making more episodes.The Phantom has always been a grown man but being able to watch him grow gives him a whole new dimension. Don't read me wrong here, I'm a die hard Phantom fan and read the comic since as far back as I can remember. It's like the series Smallville where you get to see how Superman grew up. This new series has all the classical Phantom parts and a more classical good vs. evil feeling to it. I have been missing out on that in the more modern series.Kit Walker (played by Ryan Carnes) and Renny Davidson (played by Cameron Goodman) made me think of Kit and Diana immediately. They both are very accomplished actors and preform flawlessly in this pilot. Having Guran played by Sandrine Holt made me smile, she is an excellent actress. Just a very nice twist to put a female in the role of Guran. Abel Vandermaark, played by Jean Marchand, is a very good actor but I really didn't get his role in the story line. Him ending up as a villain confused me since he isn't a part of the original storyline. Felt like Professor Charles Xavier (X-men) all of a sudden becoming the super villain and turning against the ones he has been defending all his life. But I guess that he will become the symbol of evil for the Singh in the fight against the Phantom.I did miss not seeing Devil and Hero and the rest of the animals, to make it a 100% feeling they need to be introduced to the series (or something similar). They don't have to be a wolf and a horse. If anything the eden should at least be there. Other missing parts are his twin sister Heloise, what happened to her? Guess that they all are things that could develop during the series (if they ever get funding). If I had the cash for it I would fund it myself.So I do hope that they make this into a regular series.

I never knew the old Phantom before, so I watched this with an open mind, I usually know nothing of the movies I'm about to watch not even genre. I kinda guessed that this was a comic-book adaptation and i was right.Okay, so this is a B-flick. the characters are neither very deep nor engaging, the actresses are, while nice, not really very stunning. Everything breathes second rate.But what is really disturbing is this trend that remakes of old 70s themed movies, comic books, TV shows turn out to be slightly racist, in it's casting and in the story lines.The evil villain here is Singh. Singh is probably the most common of names in India, like Smith or Lopez or Popov. And in the cast, to replace Guran, an African with an Asian woman??? I like pretty girls as much as anyone, but this is part of a worrying trend that started with Battle Star Galactica, when they replaced colonel Thigh with a white guy.I guess we have to be thankful that B.A. Barracus isn't some Bubba from Alabama in the new A-Team movie.The Melancholic Alcoholic.