Post by Space RangerPost by Anim8rFSKSunday on Syfy, 4 hours, starting at 4pm Mountain and encoring at 8pm
Mountain.
By all accounts and indications it will be an unrecognizable mess of an
abomination. I am, of course, going to sit through it anyway.
Be there!
Aloha!
Excelsior!
'nuff said!
Okay, I have it but haven't watched it yet. What's your verdict?
Absolutely horrid. Hang on, I posted on rec.arts.tv about it ...
Here we go:
********************
Post by Space RangerPost by Anim8rFSKWell, I'll miss the first hour and a half. Anything important happen?
I'm about 17 hours into it. Just passed the halfway point. It's
gruesome, and the source material is all but unrecognizable. You won't
miss at thing by skipping part one.
Forgot to watch this - will have to try and catch it tomorrow.
I'm a bit over 3/4 thru it and its not eye-bleedingly bad, which puts it a
step or two above the usual Syphilitic Channel movie. (If you discount
the commercials. "Dinogator Vs. Supercroc"? Seriously?)
--
"There's something that doesn't make sense. Let's go and poke it with a
stick."
I can't really compare it to other Sci Fi movies since I avoid most of them
but I thought Phantom was fairly watchable.
I'm going for 'painfully bad'
The story, while predictable,
Post by Space Rangerheld my interest for the whole 4 hours. I thought changing the costume was
a mistake and it was funny how on a couple of occasions characters referred
to the Phantom wearing a purple outfit when he clearly wasn't.
Yeah, especially the TV commentator during the fight on the ambulance,
at night, commenting on the color. But did you notice that EVERYTHING
the TV commentator said was wrong? I think that was supposed to be some
clever sarcastic commentary on the TV news.
But costume
Post by Space Rangeraside it wasn't that bad.
Yeah, it really was. The Phantom has never held a gun in his life, but
he's the best shot in the world as long as he can move? Straight out of
Butch Cassiday and the Sundance Kid. At least go the The Middleman
(Middleman!) route and have him be pretrained on video games.
So, at the end, we find out who the shocking bad guy is (gasp!) even
though there was no good reason to suspect anybody but Kim (and what did
Kim hope to accomplish anyway? He can't possibly get away with holding
the girl hostage. So he goes on what's basically a suicide mission
'cause Singh says he'll kill him otherwise? At least have Singh
threaten his mother or something). So, anyway, Keene Curtis is standing
at the trunk of the car, and decides to toss a grenade at The Phantom,
because otherwise The Phantom will destroy everything they've work for.
Huh? Everything they worked for was to get The Phantom in the suit,
which is where he is. Huh??? So he tosses the grenade, The Phantom
shoots it in midair, and somehow the explosion knocks the bad guy into
the river, which means he had to go THROUGH the car, so he's blown
through a car 100 feet into the water where he ends up face down and ...
he's fine, and The Phantom doesn't even, you know, check for a pulse or
call body disposal.
The Phantom goes to his old friend who just happens to have made
deliveries to the evil headquarters, which they specifically mention is
on the 42nd floor, so The Phantom breaks in on 17 and goes up the stairs
to 18, where the evil computer server lives all by itself. Huh??
He can't shoot the bad guy because he can't break the code not to kill;
except he killed people through the whole show! He killed both twin
assassins, and threw another guy off a roof.
Why did he need $100,000 to finance his operation in NY, which consisted
entirely of talking to one friend and sitting outside the cop's
apartment?
Why don't they shoot him in the mouth?
Why do they wait 24 hours to try to decypher the secret clews, and then
do it while driving recklessly through Manhattan with 20 minutes to go,
BEFORE they know where they're going? Isn't it good odds they're
driving the wrong way? I swear this was a lift from Batman The Movie
('66) "a clear threat against Miss Kitka"...
So Singh sends the assassin (why is the assassin all freshly beat up?
It's been months since he killed The Phantom's parents, despite his
brother's body being fresh in the morge and the parents' apartment still
empty) to kill everybody at the evil TV studio and destroy every last
remnant of the Flicker technology. The Phantom shows up and kills the
assassin so HE can destroy every last vestige of the Flicker technology
himself. Then he calls the bad guy and says 'neener neener neener, I've
destroyed every last vestige of your Flicker technology' and the bad guy
is FURIOUS, even though The Phantom did exactly what Singh *wanted*
done, and then Singh tells the Board that they'll all be rich because of
the wonderful Flicker technology.
Why doesn't he just TELL the girl that he's The Phantom? All the bad
guys know, so there's no benefit to having a secret identity. She knows
he's working with The Phantom, and he's never going back to civilian
life. Does she figure it out from the journals? Is 'thank The Phantom
for me' at the end supposed to be a clever joke?
My God, they're actually doing THE BLUR subplot from last season's
SMALLVILLE.
Why do they tell him the first Phantom was a reformed pirate, when in
fact, he wasn't?
Why did they cast somebody the size and likeness of Seth Green? I'd
understand if he was supposed to be 16, but he said he was 24. Were ALL
The Phantoms midgets, since the suit was made for his size?
His power suit gives him 2.5x human strength, and he can snap your head
clean off without hurting his bare hands (unless he makes a fist) and
yet he has trouble fighting just regular guys off the street, one at a
time?
How has the Brotherhood possibly survived 500+ years when they kill each
other off at the first sign of a setback?
They MISSPELLED The Phantom's secret island base, on the title cards
over the establishing shots of it, OVER AND OVER.
Bengalla, Island
is that like
Mexico, City
or
North American, Continent?
And since when is Bengalla an island anyway, and since when isn't it in
Africa? And why are their training facilities in Canada?
Where the Hell is Kit's twin sister Heloise?
WHERE THE HELL ARE HIS HORATIO CAINES??? You do NOT see The Phantom
unmasked!!
Interesting casting for Guran, the male pygmy. :)
What was accomplished by making the dead body on the beach his father
instead of the pirate that killed him? Other than screwing up the whole
'skull' motif.
I did like the cameo by Devil. :)
So, at the end, Renny and Guran walk out the door of the skull cave, Kit
calls from inside for Renny, and he's sitting on the floor, facing away
from the door, where she would have had to step over him to get where
she was in the first scene. What, he snuck up on them, and then sat on
the floor facing away and called for her? To what purpose?
--
"He'll succumb to all who find
DOC SAVAGE! DOC SAVAGE!"
Hey, that's what we THOUGHT the words were,
first time we saw the movie in the theater . . .