Billy Zane's Attempt At Superhero Stardom Led To A '90s Flop That Deserves A Second Look

Something curious happened in the wake of Tim Burton's "Batman" in 1989. "Batman," to remind readers, cost a rather hefty $48 million to make, but did gangbusters numbers at the box office, making over $411 million back. In modern dollars, that's like a $125 million movie making $1.07 billion. Tim Burton became a box office superhero. Naturally, Hollywood rushed to churn out more successes like "Batman," and many other superhero projects were immediately greenlit across town. It's important to note that Burton's "Batman" film was highly stylized, designed to look like it took place in a fantasy version of the 1930s. It felt weirdly timeless, which may account for its success; it couldn't be easily dated. "Batman" felt more like a pulp 1930s comic strip than a high-tech modern comic book movie.

When Hollywood moved to imitate "Batman," they glommed on to that pulpiness rather than the source hero. Surprisingly, there wasn't a sudden flux of big-budget superhero movies about Wonder Woman, the Green Lantern, or The Flash. Instead, there was a string of highly stylized movies about 1930s pulp heroes, or which were at least evocative of 1930s pulp heroes. In 1989, Hollywood didn't want to touch Spider-Man, but they were very keen to get "Dick Tracy" into production. Sam Raimi made "Darkman" and Disney released the very good "The Rocketeer." In 1994, Alex Proyas made the Goth-happy "The Crow," and Russell Mulcahy made a high-profile version of "The Shadow." And, naturally, there were sequels to "Batman" in 1992 and 1995.

By 1996, there was one final kick of the "pulp hero" trend in the form of Simon Wincer's underrated superhero movie "The Phantom," based on Lee Falk's 1936 newspaper strip. "The Phantom" starred Billy Zane as the title hero, and it's way better than its reputation suggests.

One can tell that the producers of "The Phantom" wanted their film to feel pulpy and old-fashioned, as they hired screenwriter Jeffrey Boam, who wrote "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," to write the script. Although set in 1938, "The Phantom" was possessed of a very 1990s, tongue-in-cheek attitude, with characters kind of whimsically admiring the adventure situations around them. Billy Zane was a capable leading man, not only performing action/adventure scenes with aplomb, but bringing a lighthearted sense of sarcasm to the proceedings. The Phantom, with his eggplant-purple spandex outfit, was no brooding loner. Imagine if Batman was in Bruce Wayne mode 24/7, and you'll get a good idea of the Phantom.

Zane only carries about 50% of the movie. The other half belongs entirely to Treat Williams as the film's charismatic villain, Xander Drax. Williams isn't so much a snarly villain as a greasy-haired dandy, smiling and chuckling his way through the movie's plot with glee. "The Phantom" needed more Treat Williams. His goal is to gather and assemble three mystical skulls made of gold, silver, and jade that, when united, promise a weapon of immense destruction. In Drax's employ is a grizzled explorer played by James Remar, and a sexy biplane pilot played by Catherine Zeta-Jones. 

The Phantom, meanwhile, attempts to romance the innocent city girl Diana (Kristy Swanson), conspires with his aide Guran (Radmar Agana Jao), and converses with the ghost of his dead father (Patrick McGoohan). The late great Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa plays a pirate king that both Xander and the Phantom have to do business with. The bulk of the plot involves the Phantom trekking through the city using his secret identity, a rich playboy named Kit Walker.

There is additional mythology to the Phantom, but it doesn't make the character seem terribly mythic. The Phantom is actually the latest in a multi-generational string of Phantoms that goes back a century. Ordinarily, the Phantom stays in the jungles of Touganda (yes, a fictional country), but he travels to the big city for the movie. The details are delivered in a matter-of-fact way, though, which keeps the movie light. The filmmakers know we're not here for heavy magic, but for adventurous, humorous fun, and on that front, "The Phantom" delivers. It only suffers in its budget. Although made for about the same amount of money as "Batman" seven years earlier, it looks much cheaper, with some FX sequences looking like the blue-screen bonanzas they were. The final weapon is little more than an animated green laser beam. 

Audiences stayed away from "The Phantom." It made only $23.5 million at the box office, aping the financial failures of "The Rocketeer" and "The Shadow." Hollywood was wrong to assume audiences wanted 1930s pulp heroes on the big screen; the pulpiness wasn't why people liked "Batman." Critics weren't too kind either, giving "The Phantom" largely negative reviews; it only has a 44% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 46 reviews). Roger Ebert liked the film, though, giving it three-and-a-half stars. ("Wonderfully entertaining, red-blooded, and rousing," he wrote.) Ebert liked the realism of the title character, pointing out that he was an ordinary guy, and not a superpowered being.

It's a bright, fun brisk movie that's definitely worth a watch. It's currently streaming on Hoopla for free.