Dating back to 1536 The Phantom has been a guardian of the innocent and the enemy of evil. For generations the mantle has been taken up by the Walker family making it seem as if The Phantom is an immortal spawning such monikers as The Ghost Who Walks, The Man Who Cannot Die, and Guardian of the Eastern Dark. Its been years since the death of the 21st phantom, his heir, lost. The first to discover his whereabouts is The Singh Brotherhood putting the life of the 22nd Phantom in danger. It’s a do or die scenario but is Kit Walkers newfound son up for the task and if so will he survive long enough to become The Phantom?

I’m not sure if there is a fence here for the 1996 big screen version of the Phantom starring Billy Zane or if everyone who can recall it thought it stunk like I did. In any case my opinion is that it can be lumped in there with such infamous duds as Batman & Robin, Dick Tracy, and The Shadow. SyFy’s newest version of The Phantom doesn’t do much to separate itself from the horror of that live action film. In fact it might even be worse.

At some point in film history a mold was formed that acted as a requirement for almost all action heroes; they had to be trained by some form of government, i.e. The Marines, The Secret Service, Special Forces, Navy Seals and they knew some form of martial arts that in most cases was also known by their enemies. Matter of fact it wasn’t long before every hero in every form of media was kung fu fighting. Parkour seems to be the new kung fu, hell even the Incredible Hulk does it now, which means the new Phantom has to do it as well. Fine, whatever. Unfortunately not all of the art is natural here. Some stunts with our boy leaping from buildings, jumping from beams, hopping rooftops are obviously wired and with the two part event being as awful as it is the production really can’t afford to look worse then it already is.

When I saw that I had been assigned The Phantom on my writers page I shrunk back in my seat and hit Altavista to find out what I had in store which eventually lead me to IMDB where this productions forum was filled with scathing reviews from people who hated it. I thought to myself, “It couldn’t be that bad.” Of course a lot of complaints where that the new Phantom deviates from the traditions of the original Phantom series. A new suit, a bad attitude, and some other very nasty things were said. Unfortunately most of what was being said carried weight. Ryan Carnes (General Hospital, Doctor Who) stars as Kit Walker, the 22nd Phantom. He’s cookie cutter for this type of show. With the birth of origins stories from Smallville to Merlin, Phantom seems to take a slice of that pie with a younger hipper lead. We get it, all superhero teens have angst issues and rebellious tendencies. As for the new suit it takes an already existing idea from, of all places, The Power Rangers Operation Overdrive and tosses it into one of those cheesy RAD BMX suits and paints it purple and black. What was the budget on this thing?

Dialogue may be this features own worst enemy. There’s a lot of Q&A based chatter at the start of the feature, which is to be expected, but its delivery is read. My favorite horrible line had to have been, “I won’t be drinking that particular brand of Kool aid.” Terrible. In any case The Phantom is what it is, a SyFy made for television movie  and you get what you pay for. Its cheesy, poorly written, badly acted, and a handful of other negative things you can read all about at the shows IMDB page from other reviewers like myself who thought this was a step backwards for comic book adapted media. As always final judgment is yours. Enjoy.