GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Bereamic Awesome Movie

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Wizard-8 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.

Mike Musiek 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.

gaitz86 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.

Grassy1 If this were a movie it would have been the best I had seen in a long long time. At last there are shows again without the huge explosions every five minutes and mostly CGI.The cast were brilliant and worked flawlessly together. Just need to have Ryan not look like he is smiling most of the time. The relationships were very believable, making you want to be there with them.Very impressive sets, not to over the top and I liked the way Phantom was brought into this century.This is a definite for all to enjoy, especially Phantom fans who should embrace the changes made to improve and modernise.