My thoughts on the mini

Here's my initial thoughts on the mini (originally posted at www.chroniclechamber.com, the world's best Phantom site, where I will later post a full review. Watch this space).

MILD SPOILERS:
It's a good series, with a really good opening scene that gave me goosebumps. It would have benefitted enormously from having some errors/changes fixed, but overally, it was much better than expected. The final scene is really exciting, and is alone reason enough why this deserves to become a regular series. A mouthwatering moment that could lead to very cool new stories.

Ryan Carnes (and most of the other actors) did a good job (his Phantom voice, slightly deeper than his regular voice, is terrific), and the new costume, while still not great, works much better when seen on the screen rather than in still photos (however, it actually looked more purple in some photos, here it looks almost completely black with some purple "shine" from time to time). What we all thought was a "hoodie" is actually a high-tech helmet Kit can take on and off! Cameron Goodman is lovely as Rennie, Kit's girlfriend, and the romance between them is really well done.

The action is pretty good, and the fight scenes are well done. Even the "cartoon origin" sequence worked pretty well, despite a glaring, annoying error that it's unbelievable nobody making the thing noticed (slight spoiler: the 1st Phantom swears the oath over the body of his dead father, not his father's murderer). They got a tiny detail like the year the Jungle Patrol was founded right, but they could not do the defining moment of the entire Phantom series correctly? Unbelievable.

Also, the name "Lee Falk" is not mentioned anywhere in the credits, which is downright offensive. And I dislike the filmmakers making fun of the original outfit (there's even a moment where a character claims the 21st Phantom "loathed" his costume because it was so theatrical, which I found very unecessary and annoying). The way they explain the 21st Phantom's, um, absence is certainly interesting.

The first part of the mini certainly has a "Phantom-feel", but some of it is lost in the second chapter when things become really, uh, tech-y. However, we are fortunately not in Phantom 2040/Defenders of the Earth-territory, and the MacGuffin is actually pretty cool (though hardly realistic).

While much of this post focuses a bit on negative stuff, I overally liked the thing despite some issues and hope it gets picked up, as it is has huge potential (hopefully with a tweaked costume closer to the original) as a regular series. Keep in mind this is a VERY modern take on the character, with clear sci-fi (um, syfy) elements, and if you're a purist who loses sleep when an artist draws the skull ring on the wrong finger, you should find something else to do with your time rather than watching this because you are going to be dissapointed. However, I (mostly) liked it, so shoot me.

It's essentially The Phantom meets 24 meets Smallville (though much better than Smallville ever was). There are changes, but some of them doesn't contradict established Phantom lore, they build upon it.

But the wait for a truly great Phantom adaptation continues.