Head over to my Twitter feed and you'll see that a few days ago I started tweeting about The Phantom. Now anyone who knows me knows that I'm a bit of a sucker for a superhero film - all stemming back from a sweet upbringing where my dad introduced me to the wonderful world of Marvel comics and kick-started drawing as a hobby for me. Unfortunately, I decided not to continue with drawing (despite pleas from my high school art teacher) but I've never outgrown my love of comic books - and that's in spite of the geeky social stigma that goes hand in hand with following the escapades of brightly coloured crime fighters.
Anyway, I digress. The odd thing about this is that when The Phantom hit cinemas in 1996, I didn't go and watch it. I remember wanting to go and see it and thinking it looked pretty cool, but I never checked it out. I also never bothered seeking it out on VHS and I even let it sit on my shelf for months when my friend and former DVD Monthly colleague Stu Birtles lent it to me telling me to watch it because I'd love it. I ended up giving it back to him unwatched - simply because I had too many DVDs of my own to plough through without adding borrowed stuff to the mix.
This year that finally changed, once again I was trawling through my local supermarket when an aggressively purple DVD cover caught my eye. Featuring the domino mask clad face of Billy Zane and the awesome, awesome tagline that read "SLAM EVIL!", I knew it was finally time to indulge in a slice of nineties superhero cheese.
The long and short of it it is that The Phantom ain't half bad. It's a great looking flick, nobody takes things too seriously and the special effects are way ahead of their time. It's funny, not too long and is every bit as enjoyable as it should be. It's by no means a masterpiece but it's simply as good as it was ever going to be.
Anyway, it got me thinking about the current state of superhero movies. Ever since special effects technology effectively gave them the green light, we've been inundated with comic book movies - some good (Hellboy, Constantine), some amazing (The Dark Knight, X-Men 2) and some downright fucking abysmal (Elektra, Catwoman). Regardless of quality, as a fan of comics I've watched pretty much all of them - ever since Blade came wise-cracking onto the silver screen. The thing that interests me though is that Blade was seen as the first film in this influx of flicks featuring spandex-clad heroes. Paving the way for X-Men and the others, it's often regarded as a milestone film (even Stan Lee himself credited Blade as such - just check out the fantastic interview piece between him and Kevin Smith - Mutants, Monsters and Marvels). My only problem with this though is that Blade is only two years younger than The Phantom which in itself followed on from the likes of The Shadow and The Rocketeer, which came after Burton's Batman stuff. I guess my point is that comic-book movies have pretty much always been around since the Christopher Reeve Superman film, and even prior to that a host of other heroes had TV serials. So what was it about Blade that changed things? Why is that seen as the starting point for the genre craze that still hasn't let up some 13 years later?
The truth is that I simply don't know - I can only speculate. Maybe it was that Blade did away with the tongue in cheek cheesiness and made a film that could cater to more adult audiences. While the sequels were a little more...(what's the word) shit, the first Blade took itself a little seriously and reminded us that comic books weren't just for kids. Look at X-Men - here's a film that the majority of people in the UK will have watched on account of being avid viewers of the brilliant Fox cartoon from their childhoods. Yet, watch the first ten minutes of the mutant's movie and you're greeted with a concentration camp and an underground fighting ring where Wolverine fucks up a guy's hand for a few bucks! Following X-Men, you've got Spider-man dealing with some adult themes, Hulk having daddy issues and Punisher stabbing goons in the face for killing his wife and kid. Quite simply, it's not your squeaky clean, family friendly stuff that we were used to circa 1998. Some people claim the surge in superhero films was down to SFX technology finally being ready - I think it was because filmmakers finally grew some balls and told the stories that would appeal to adults. Whatever the reason, I love seeing these characters getting the treatment they deserve and I'm truly amazed at how some of the more fantastical of heroes have been adapted so well (such as Thor). For that reason, I'm pretty sure I'll never get sick of watching superhero films - but sometimes it's kind of nice to go back and watch the cheesy stuff like The Phantom that was made before the superhero movie revolution.
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