Why Catherine Zeta-Jones' 1996 Superhero Film 'The Phantom' Deserves a Second Look

Long before the Marvel Cinematic Universe codified what a superhero blockbuster was supposed to look like, Hollywood occasionally stumbled into genuinely enjoyable comic book adaptations that history has been too quick to dismiss. One of the more deserving candidates for critical reassessment is 1996's The Phantom, a Paramount Pictures production that has quietly resurfaced on streaming and merits a fresh viewing — not least because it features Catherine Zeta-Jones in an early, scene-stealing villainous turn.

A Hero Older Than Superman

According to Collider, the source material for the film predates virtually every superhero audiences now take for granted. Lee Falk's The Phantom comic strip debuted in 1936, making its purple-clad protagonist the first costumed superhero to appear in a comic format — arriving a full two years before Superman's debut in Action Comics #1 and three years before Batman's introduction in Detective Comics #27. That lineage matters when contextualizing the film, which director Simon Wincer approached less as a modern blockbuster and more as a loving reconstruction of the cliffhanger serials that packed cinemas in the 1940s and 1950s — the same well from which George Lucas and Steven Spielberg drew when crafting Indiana Jones.

Billy Zane, Treat Williams, and the Art of Committed Camp

Billy Zane, best known at the time for Titanic and later Zoolander, plays Kit Walker, the latest in a generational line of heroes to assume the Phantom mantle after his father is murdered by the criminal Quill, played by James Remar. The film's plotting is globe-trotting and unapologetically pulpy, following Kit's pursuit of the megalomaniacal Xander Drax — a role the late Treat Williams inhabited with a scenery-chewing gusto that feels entirely intentional. There is a knowing campiness to The Phantom's dialogue and visual grammar, but Wincer and his cast lean into those old cinematic conventions rather than winking at them dismissively, which gives the film a warmth and sincerity that has aged far better than its mid-1990s CGI.

On the technical side, the production leaned heavily on practical effects and genuine stunt choreography, with even the Phantom's lupine companion, Devil, portrayed by authentically trained wolves. The digital effects, while cutting-edge for their era, show their age in the way that most mid-decade blockbusters do — though they represent a fascinating artifact of a moment when computer-generated imagery was still a novelty studios deployed as a selling point rather than a seamless tool.

Catherine Zeta-Jones as the Villainess

For viewers specifically interested in tracing the career arc of Catherine Zeta-Jones, The Phantom represents a particularly instructive early chapter. She plays Sala, the leader of an all-female aerial unit called the Sky Bandits, and she commands the screen with the kind of confident physicality and screen presence that would soon make her a major star. The role doesn't ask her to do a great deal beyond be formidable and charismatic, but she delivers both in abundance. Kristy Swanson, meanwhile, brings genuine agency to the love-interest role of Diane Palmer, ensuring the film avoids the passive-damsel clichés it might otherwise have defaulted to.

An Underrated Throwback Worth Revisiting

Commercially and critically, The Phantom landed softly upon release — a fate shared by several earnest, mid-budget genre pictures of that era that were neither cynical enough to be provocative nor expensive enough to be spectacle events. Thirty years on, however, the film occupies a comfortable niche alongside properties like The Mummy — the Brendan Fraser version, which similarly drew on the Indiana Jones playbook — as an example of unpretentious adventure filmmaking done with care and craft.

It does not aspire to the psychological complexity of The Dark Knight or the serialized ambition of the MCU, nor should it be judged by those standards. What it offers instead is something rarer in contemporary studio cinema: a bright, colorful, genuinely fun adventure that trusts its audience to enjoy themselves without ironic distance. For fans of a certain stripe of matinee escapism, it remains well worth the time.

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