Hello friends,
I took the month of October off from writing this blog--sometimes you want to watch TV and movies, read books, and listen to music without thinking about what you will write about, but thought that I would inaugurate my return with a set of real time thoughts of a viewing of The Phantom (1996) starring hero of American cinema and Titanic lifeboat seat thief Billy Zane!
1. I had forgotten that James Remar was in this movie. Which is odd because usually when James Remar is in something, his presence is the only thing about it that I remember. For instance, can you name me one other salient feature of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation besides that James Remar took over as Raiden? What was that movie even about? In my memory it is the whole cast standing around wondering where Christopher Lambert has gone, and why James Remar is hanging around. Anyway, James Remar is in The Phantom as Quill. Good times.
2. Billy Zane got super swoll for this movie. His first shirtless scene in the Phantom's lair is a regular gunshow. Bla-dow! I love a good shirtless muscle montage (the Siberian training scene from Rocky IV, any time Oliver Queen is on the salmon ladder on Arrow, etc.). Rather than show Zane working out, they have elected to have him shirtless, combing over an ancient tome. For some reason yet to be determined, he has been oiled up for this particular reading session. No complaints.
3. The actor who plays the Phantom's father is Patrick McGoohan, who starred in the TV series The Secret Agent, and then in The Prisoner. The second was better than the first, and was remade into a mini-series some years ago starring Jim Caviezel who is one of America's great under-capitalized resources. Remember The Count of Monte Cristo? That movie is amazing.
4. Oh, hey, Kristy Swanson! Why aren't you in more of the things?
5. Treat Williams is less convincing as a villain than he was as badass mercenary Carl Thommason in The Substitute 2: School's Out. There just isn't much menace in Treat Williams. Even when he is doing really villain-like things it isn't super convincing.
6. Oh...that's right, Kristy Swanson has a hard time finding work because she isn't a very good actress.
7. The dialogue in this movie is oddly informal. Superhero movies (and TV) tend towards a certain kind of elevated prose. But the exchanges in this movie are so casual. At one point Robert Coleby, who plays Capt. Horton, walks into a room and says "Hey, Phantom, why don't you ever use the door?" and the Phantom replies, "I dunno, I guess I like the window." Eh...heh.
8. I really forgot Catherine Zeta-Jones was in this movie. She is really gorgeous. Do you remember her in Intolerable Cruelty? That movie is profoundly underrated. It might be Clooney's best work ever, and she is every bit as good as he is.
9. The Phantom isn't all that good at crime fighting. Thinking he has found the pirates who have hijacked some sort of thingy (boat maybe?) he bursts into a room guns drawn and says "nobody move!" and then when he sees it is the women's shower he creepily says "ladies...pardon my error," like he wasn't in the middle of trying to fight pirates. There is something Austin Powers-y about this moment, but unlike Austin Powers it doesn't seem to be on purpose.
10. No matter how cut you are, I think everyone looks terrible in the stretchy fabric suit of the kind the Phantom wears. Brandon Routh has the body of a god, but a similar costume in Superman returns made him look weirdly doughy.
11. No horse runs fast enough for that plane to horse maneuver to work. Though I do enjoy the "owww" that the Phantom makes when he drops into the saddle. That tells me that there were multiple takes of this little stunt, and every single one of them hurt Billy Zane in his bits.
12. I love that the Phantom just has a spotlit throne in his lair, the Skull Cave. Like he just hangs out on it, waiting for the world to need the Phantom.
13. If you name your kid Xander Drax, you have to know he is going to grow up to be a megalomaniac.
14. Someday I hope to pay for a cab with a small leather pouch full of gemstones. That's a baller move.
15. I like the evil business man who wants out of Drax's scheme after he hears the pitch. "No, no, no this isn't right. Skulls?" Because of course any VC guy is gonna be like "I'm not sure as to the viability of this strategy." Of course, when you take that approach you know you are gonna get Drax-ed.
16. The cabby who drives Billy Zane around in New York is played by John Capodice, who plays the obnoxious detective that Jim Carrey humiliates in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
17. At one point Treat Williams yells "show me the power! show me the power!" like he is Rod Tidwell in Jerry Maguire. This moment is terrible, but The Phantom is still great.
18. The last missing Skull of Power is somewhere called "The Devil's Vortex" which seems to be like the Bermuda Triangle, in that lots of ships are lost there. Also, "Bring the Girl, she's our Phantom insurance" is a line that was penned by a professional screenwriter, but right after this gets said, Billy Zane uses two pistols to fast slide down an elevator cable, so it all evens out in the end.
19. "What is wrong with you," Kristy Swanson asks Catherine Zeta-Jones, "why are you so mean?"
20. Billy Zane hung onto the outside of a flying plane 20 years before Tom Cruise made it cool.
21. Then the Phantom rises up out of the water like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now, and the feeling that this homage induces in me is what I imagine it would be like if Weird Al were to make a parody song of the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Why, when you have already edited together most of The Phantom, would you be in a place where quoting a masterpiece of world cinema seems like a good idea?
22. It's not too on the nose at all to have an early 20th century industrialist say to a pirate "you represent the old order to grizzled scalliwags and peg leg Pete's...and I represent the new order!"
23. Guys don't go flying when they are hit with cannon balls fired out of a cannon.
24. The climactic fight scene is so awkwardly choreographed that Billy Zane's hands are in defensive positions before the blows that he is intending to deflect even begin to be delivered.
25. The villain falls into a pool of sharks, except they clearly couldn't get sharks. Those are dolphin fins coming out of the water, and I would bet my life on it. This seems like an odd choice.
26. But then Treat Williams got exploded, and The Phantom was over. I will continue to eagerly await the sequel.
No comments:
Post a Comment