By Paul Jonassen
Four years ago, Hyde Park Entertainment and Crusader Entertainment announced their plans of bringing the Phantom to the silver screen, in a movie later on rechristened “The Ghost Who Walks”. Since then, nothing seems to have happened with the film. “Die Hard” writer Steven de Souza’s script was ditched, and he was replaced by the writing team of Olympic swimmer turned writer Mel Stewart and Mark Brewington.
And that’s it, really. It certainly doesn’t look like we are going to see a new Phantom movie from these people (although their Mandrake the Magician movie seems to be on its way sometime in the future, according to the Baldwin Entertainment Group website). The reasons for this may be many, but lack of interest from major Hollywood studios would probably be the most obvious reason (as you probably know, the Phantom’s last outing in theaters, in the 1996 movie starring Billy Zane, flopped).
I have to admit I don’t see what’s so difficult here.
According to the numerous “announcements” we saw years ago, their original plan was to make a big budget, Matrix-like Phantom movie (hey, wait a minute…). I don’t know how much money they were intending to spend on the film, but here’s a suggestion… Why can’t BEG, (“BEG”. Heh) and HPE finance the film themselves? Nobody ever said a Phantom movie need to cost 150 million bucks, like every Spider-Man and Batman flick seems to do. Make it for 15 million instead. A low-key approach to the character would in this case be better than anything, as I see it. Why?
Well, for starters, even if HPE and BEG could not finance a low budget film for themselves (their “company mission” is only to make movies in co-operation with bigger studios), it would surely be a lot easier to get the support of a Hollywood production company when the budget doesn’t exceed the cost of building a colony on Mars (be aware of the fact that I don’t pretend to know how every “rule” of the American film industry works, but this sounds a lot like what I would call “common sense”…)
Also, a low budget movie doesn’t need a lot of promotion, spin-off toys, tie in deals with McDonald’s, and it certainly doesn’t need to feature any of today’s popular, young actors/press-whores in the lead roles (I can see the poster… The Ghost Who Walks, starring Ashton Kutcher as The Phantom and Lindsay Lohan as Diana Palmer. Yuck) to make its money back. Recent movies like 28 Days Later, Napoleon Dynamite, and Saw are examples of fairly cheap, little hyped movies reaching a HUGE audience. Why, I don’t know, but I guess they might offer something that people generally want to see (which is kind of disturbing in the case of the Saw trilogy).
I find it very unlikely that anyone at BEG or HPE even know this website exist, and therefore there’s no way on earth any of them will ever see this article (not that they’d care about what one fan thinks about the project anyway). However, this is what I would like to see them do with the Phantom:
First, hire a great writer for the script job. Get someone who can make the character work for today’s movie-goers. A guy/gal who cares more about characters than blowing up stuff, yet still knows how to handle mystery, suspense, and gritty action, in a film that doesn’t have to cost more than at most half of the 1996 Paramount version. One guy who could qualify for this job would be Mark Verheiden, writer of the 13 issues DC Comics Phantom series. I have long admired his take on the character, which respected Lee Falk’s original vision, yet still managed to give us something that we really had not seen before, with an introspective Phantom and plots taken out of modern day news. I would believe Verheiden’s focus on character development and plot rather than over-the-top action would be perfectly suited for a low budget Phantom movie. More recently, Verheiden’s done fairly well in Hollywood, writing and script doctoring successful films like The Mask, TimeCop, and the new Battlestar Galactica TV-series. Another great choice would be Ben Raab, who’s proven many times that he is capable of writing everything from light-hearted action tales (The Aviatrix, which featured the return of the Sky Band), and what is quite possibly the heaviest Phantom story in history; the origin re-telling Legacy, both for Moonstone Books. Raab seems to have dropped some of his comics work recently to conquer Hollywood, which makes him an obvious selection. I am not going to criticize Mel Stewart as his work is unknown to me, but one has to wonder why HPE hired a retired Olympic swimmer when they could have gotten one of these guys.
To keep within a tight budget, the movie should be suspenseful, depicting a Phantom akin to the one that was apparent in the early Falk/Ray Moore stories, and in short, go back to the character’s roots. In those adventures, some of which just happens to be the defining moments of the character for the writer of this article, the Phantom is depicted as a dark, yet charming and humorous man. As a man with a sense for the theatrical, he often choose to stay in the shadows, letting his immortality-legend and a few well-placed skull marks do most of the job for him. The bad guys never really got a grip on him, and Moore’s brilliant, shadowy, moody artwork made the ever present sense of danger and mystery even clearer.
Also, the character of the Phantom was, in my eyes, slightly more interesting back in those days. A man obviously distinguished by the fact that he has this heavy, heavy legacy to live up to, he cannot disappoint his forefathers, and while fighting evil, he must still try to find a lover so that the Phantom line can be carried on. Despite his heavy burden, he had this wonderful, dry sense of humor, which sadly disappeared later on. Not to even mention the subject of his almost supernatural appeal to the opposite sex.
By having the character lurking around in the shadows for parts of the dramatic scenes of the movie, the film makers would save a lot of money, with the suspenseful excitement and mystery making up for the lack of big budget action (aren’t we all a little tired of buildings exploding and cars crashing anyway?). If they dared to drop the child-friendly approach of the Billy Zane movie, they could even make some of the scenes we all know and love from the comics – with the Phantom taking out the bad guys one by one in the dark jungle night, and scaring the crap out of them in the process — truly scary, as the villains think they are stalked by the immortal man who’s been fighting their kind of breed for centuries. Egmont stories like The Psychopath (by Lennart Moberg), and Ben Raab’s The Invisible Phantom, and reportedly the newly started Moonstone run of Mike Bullock, have showed how scary the Phantom can appear to the people who cross him.
As mentioned, character development would be even more important the suspense bit.
People should learn to know the man behind the mask just like readers of Lee Falk’s Avon novels and Mark Verheiden’s DC-Phantom did; his feelings on his duty in life, his obvious loyalty and respect for his father, the 20th Phantom, and in particular, his deep love for Diana Palmer, the woman he can seemingly never get because of his somewhat strange choice of career. The main reason why the Spider-Man movies have caught on so well with people around the globe has to be the sweet romance between Peter Parker (the most likeable protagonist in Hollywood history) and Mary Jane Watson. It’s a fine direction for a comic book adaptation, and could fit very well into a Phantom movie, especially since so many of Lee Falk’s stories quietly handled the subject of love (what else can you call it when the main character of a strip uses 40 years just to pull himself together to propose?).
As for casting, it is hard to think of any of today’s well-known actors who would fit the role of the Phantom. I doubt we will ever see as good a casting choice as the hugely underrated Billy Zane. I personally feel it would be best to go with an unknown guy, with the right look and personality, tough, but still charming. A man you would trust, but still be afraid to go against. A movie is only as good as its main character, so the entire picture would have to rest on the guy’s shoulders. If you can think of any fairly well known film actor working today who could fill the role, your imagination is certainly more effective than mine. Brandon Routh, who starred in Bryan Singer’s triumphant Superman Returns, is someone I could easily see as the Phantom. Obviously, that would never become reality, but someone like Brandon Routh would be good. Hugh Jackman, best known as Wolverine in the X-Men trilogy and monster hunter Van Helsing, would BE the Phantom, or due to his age, the Phantom’s father. Damn it, all good comic book-hero actors are taken!
As for bad guys, there are several villains from the Phantom comic who could work really well on the big screen. As the 1996 film used the Singh (or, if you like, “Sengh”) brotherhood, there would be no point in doing it again in a new film. However, the comic’s 70 year old history have seen a gallery of bad guys who, as I seem to recall Phantom writer Mike Bullock once stating, “would make James Bond wince”. The most obvious choices would be the likes of General Bababu and Semic-creation Kigali Lubanga,
both on the exclusive list of villains who’s been allowed to appear in Phantom stories on more than one occasion. However, there are literally hundreds of other crooks who could give the Phantom a run for his treasure-chamber money; such as Popsy from The Wharf Rats (basically Hugh Hefner gone bad), Ali Gutalee from Stones of Blood (Tarakimo terrorist), the Sky Band (appeared in the Zane film, but there’s still more potential), or Bent Beak Broder from the story of the same name (okay, maybe not, but the name kind of got me).
One villainous character that really should be in a Phantom movie is Ralph Mars from the 1995 futuristic Marvel miniseries, simply called The Ghost Who Walks. Ruthless, borderline psychopathic, and with a top trained physique, the Merv Hughes-based hitman made one of the best bad guys in Phantom history. It doesn’t matter if he fought the 22nd Phantom in the three-part story he appeared in; Mars would be perfect for any modern action movie. Go back, read this underrated series again, and see the light (also notice writer Dave DeVries’ excellent updating of the General Bababu character; also perfect for a new movie).
So the most important question of them all: What should the story be about? Well, I am not going to bore our readers with my ideas on potential plots (they are quite a few, you see), but if I was in charge, I would definitely go away from the Bond-like “madman tries to take over the world” plot used in the 1996 version and many other comic book adaptations. A low-key, thriller story, which could pretty much have taken place in the real world could be essential for viewers buying the concept of a man in purple tights living in a cave in the jungle. A good, no, GREAT idea if I dare say so, would be to base at least half of the movie on Lee Falk’s brilliant novel The Story of the Phantom: The Ghost Who Walks, an adaptation of the old daily strip story Childhood of the Phantom, which tells the story of how Kit Walker goes from being an “ordinary” boy in the Skull Cave to his time as a student in the US, and how he finally pretty much gives up his past and the love of his life to become the Man Who Cannot Die. It’s a moving story about love, sacrifice, and belief in a cause stronger than the fear of death, and if they dropped the numerous flashbacks to the chronicle stories of previous Phantoms, and combined it with a story made up by the film makers, it could officially have ended up as the greatest movie of all time (at least the best comic book adaptation…)
However, it would also be important to dedicate some time to the true origin of the Phantom, with a more fleshed out version of the famous 1536 pirate attack than what was apparent in the Billy Zane film, and a little focus on why Christopher Standish decides to dedicate his life to a battle he knows he cannot win, pretty much ruining the prospects of a normal life for everyone of his descendants. How can it be that all these men are willing to give up their own happiness, their entire persona’s, to adapt the image of a jungle legend? The first Phantom would have to be an extremely influential, charismatic and convincing man to manage such a thing, and should therefore be portrayed this way, not as the dialogue-free little sissy he was in the Paramount film (where the heck was the skull oath?).
And finally, there is one VERY important aspect of the comic that was pretty much glossed over by the 1996 film: The Legend of the Phantom. The LEGEND is the guy’s best weapon when fighting evil. Who doesn’t love the moments from the comics where we see sailors, bad guys, and natives talk in hushed tones about the immortal man from Africa; The Ghost Who Walks? His reputation often precede him, which gives him a psychological advantage over his “prey”, a feature that any filmmaker could easily take advantage of, and, as said earlier on, it would certainly give the film the “thriller-aspect” I think the character should be known for.
When Steven E. De Souza was originally approached by BEG and HPE about the character, it was, according to an issue of Friends of the Phantom, to discuss the possibilities for a Phantom TV-series that would kick off with a feature length pilot. Why they decided to make a movie instead I don’t know, but the idea of a Phantom TV-series is mouthwatering. What possibilities wouldn’t this give? For one, a series could also give the Phantoms of the past their time in the spotlight, something a movie could only do in brief flashbacks (I guess), and with today’s expensive, film-like shows, such as 24 and Prison Break, I think the character could easily fit the medium. Then again, I’d take anything, it be a direct-to-DVD film, an animated movie or TV-show, as long as it’s good, and could introduce the character to bigger audiences. If he shall survive for another 70 years, the Phantom could surely need this kind of exposure.
Whatever happens, whoever has the rights, I am sure the Phantom will return to the big or small screen one day into the future. How can I be so sure?
Well, I just figure somebody will one day realize this character is just too great to be stocked away in an un-filmed script on some producer’s shelf.
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