The 1996 Phantom movie remains one of my favorite superhero movies, it’s a good fun adventure story. I was hoping that would be reflected in this novelization, but it just misses the mark. It opens strongly adding a lot of detail to the origins of The Ghost Who Walks and his legend. There’s also some excellent background and characterization for many of the story’s cast that adds depth to the on-screen personas. But that all comes to a halt when the story moves from the jungle to New York. Which is the end of the first act in the movie, but about 70% of the way through the book. As a consequence the majority of the movie’s plot line is crammed into the last few chapters in an almost mechanical, rote style that describes the basic action and just regurgitates the movie dialog without any real sense of place or purpose.
The overall effect is a disjointed one as if two different drafts had just been smushed together to meet a deadline. ( )