Syfy's new Phantom show looks... Well not so good. It looks better than their Flash Gordon show, but not really where it needs to be either. The Phantom is a tough superhero to update. For starters the Phantom has no real power. Which makes him not very interesting. Sure, Batman doesn't have a super power either but he's got other stuff going for him.



Phantom doesn't really have any powers and can come off as pretty hokey in today's atmosphere. It looks like the creators of Syfy's Phantom thought they could take the character and make him sort of like Smallville's Green Arrow in an attempt to update him for modern times. It's not a bad idea in premise as Green Arrow could be presented as pretty hokey but in Smallville they managed to update him just enough for him to be Green Arrow but also not just a modern day Robin Hood...

Unfortunately Syfy has failed on a lot of levels. Phantom's original costume isn't that great, but their "new" costume for him is even worse. It's supposed to look like Green Arrow's Smallville costume I think, but looks really low budget. Personally I think they should have went with the old Defenders of the Earth style of the Phantom and given him some minor superpowers just to make him more relevant. I always thought his jungle incantation to get super strength was pretty cool.

Or they could have made the show be like Phantom 2040 and made it you know, Sci-Fi! I guess that's too much to hope for from a network called "SyFy".