With Jon Bernthal’s riveting portrayal of The Punisher aka Frank Castle in this year’s season two of Netflix’s Daredevil streaming video series, I breathed a sigh of relief. Alas, someone had finally gotten The Punisher right!
However, I am compelled to ask myself, what took Hollywood so long?! I mean, the whole gun-toting, vigilante thing is not exactly a new theme. From Charles Bronson’s Death Wish to Denzel Washington’s Man on Fire and The Equalizer, or Liam Neeson’s Taken, we’ve seen anti-heroes hell-bent on violently avenging the abduction/death/injury of those close to them numerous times over — to much box office success.
Previous iterations of The Punisher on the big screen have been meet with ire, and largely fallen under the radar. From Dolph Lungdren’s (1989) to Thomas Jane’s (2004) to Ray Stevenson’s (2008), the films have missed the mark.
I believe there are a few reasons why:
- No shared vision – each Punisher film was a one off, produced by studios and directed by filmmakers who seemed to lack any long-term vision for the character or how it fit into a broader superhero world.
- Character anonymity – to the masses of non-geeks, many have no clue who Frank Castle is; which brings me to my next point …
- Genre confusion – Punisher films have been woefully promoted to-date. Is it a crime drama, a superhero film, or a bit of both? It appears that the folks who produced the previous three film iterations were just as confused as the moviegoers.
But thank goodness for the brilliant collaboration between Marvel Entertainment and Netflix.
- There is now clearly a shared vision, as the Punisher has been nicely integrated into the larger Defenders universe that includes Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist.
- Due to the overwhelming success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the whopping success of the street level heroes portrayed on Netflix and good ‘ole social media word-of-mouth, fan demand for less mainstream superheroes like The Punisher has never been higher.
- And lastly, there is no genre confusion. By brilliantly including Frank Castle in an existing grounded, superhero television series (Daredevil and the soon-to-be-released, stand-alone Punisher series), we get to see his story flushed out over more than a two-hour film (big advantage), in a setting that has the look-and-feel of a Law-and-Order episode(s) rather than a B-level action film.
Some may see all of this as a cinematic comeback for The Punisher. But to quote Frank Castle, “it’s not revenge!” 💀
