Trailer:
“A new world order is coming Shadow, and I am going to be a KING!”
By the mid nineties comic book movies had well established themselves as a subgenre, putting out close to one every two years. As we work are way closer to the 2000, even more would begin to emerge. This can be mostly attributed to one thing. CGI. Where many characters were previously impossible to do, the advent of computer generated imagery created all new possibilities. The Shadow might be the film you'd consider to be the first of the superhero genre to really take advantage of the opportunity.
For the most part, most of the effects in the film look pretty good. Sure the CGI is a little dated at times and can feel cartoonish, but The Shadow has a quality look going for it, that has aged well and does not feel overly fake. Unfortunately visuals is about all that this movie has got going for it and even Alec Baldwin's charismatic personality cannot save it.
The film opens with Baldwin’s character, Lamont Cranston living in a castle somewhere in Asia and acting all “evil” as he struts around like Prince John. He is visited by a magical, mystical monk who thinks it is a great idea to give and evil man great powers and teach him how to fight evil. First off….how does this make any sense. Give Lex Luthor a nuclear bomb and he will blow up half of California, he sure as hell won’t start fighting evil. Here is where the problems begin. It never shows Cranston’s change from an evil murderer to someone who you’d believe would ever want to fight crime. Thus he becomes un relatable and flat.
I know that the movie is based on a comic of the same name but I have never taken a look at it, so again I’m not sure how anything compares for if the origin was more believable in the original illustrated pages.
Anyways back to the story. The entire training sequence is skipped over and we find that Cranston has returned to 1940’s New York as a masked man who looks like a cross between the Lone Ranger and Zorro. He takes up the name The Shadow.
Alex Baldwin’s problem isn’t that he isn’t putting any effort in, it’s the opposite. He plays his character so over the top that it becomes silly and unintentionally comedic. His voice is the worst part. I cannot help but laugh almost every time he opens his mouth. It always has an extreme reverberation and echo to it, even when sitting in confined spaces like a car. Worst sound mixing ever.
Also the Shadow seems like he has just the powers of a Jedi with his constant mind tricks.
So The Shadow is helping to mop up the town when the last descendent of Gangus Khan arrives. He calls himself Shiwan Khan, and for the life of me I cannot figure out if he is preserved from the past or was just hiding out inside a coffin for some random reason. If he is from the past, it is very convenient that he knows English and how to make an Atomic bomb….before it’s even invented. Like the Shadow, he is also a Jedi.
Like the Rocketeer, the movie attempts to romanticize the 40’s time period but fails in every way that the Rocketeer succeeds. Rather than having that B-A movie hybrid style created by Raiders of the Lost Ark, instead it lands closer to The Toxic Avenger in the fact that it is so bad it almost rebounds back into good…..almost. I cannot deny that I was laughing by ass off through much of it as it was so cliché and over the top to a comical level.
The movie suffers from serious pacing problems as the movie jumps around to different times too rapidly. The entire film feels compacted and rushed. The dialogue is also unimpressive, not helped in the slightest by the wooden performances by everyone involved.
Which brings me to one of the worst performances of all by The Shadows girlfriend/ Sidekick Margo Lane (Penelope Ann Miller). Who does the super secret superhero decide to date? The ONE girl in the entire city that can read minds and learn who he is. Miller clearly is not an A list star, but she has enough films on her plate to convince me that she was just not even trying. I can't really blame her either.
So in the end the Shadow may be good for a few laughs, and is thoroughly enjoyable to riff on, but by no means does that make it a good movie. Even the quality visuals cannot save it from bad pacing, dry performance, over the top performances, and an outright horrendous script.
FINAL RATING; 2/10- 20%
Previous DAY 25: The Fantastic Four-
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NOTE: polls used later in ranking so PLEASE VOTE if you have seen it.