I want you to think for a moment about how many successful movies and TV shows have featured a veritable one-man army taking the law into his own hands and dealing out harsh justice to some well-deserving bad guys.
Can you think of one? My guess is you probably have difficulty thinking of just one. That’s because Hollywood has a very, very, very long history of telling these types of stories, and why not? They’re straightforward, they don’t have to be expensive, and people seem to really like them.
So why is it then that we’ve now had not one, not two, but three separate movies featuring Frank Castle, the Punisher, and none of them have managed to really get it right? The Punisher should be the easiest comic book character to make a successful movie out of. Yet no one seems to have really been able to do it. And more than that, what can Marvel do to make the Punisher work now that they have the rights back.
First, let’s look at the film that started it all.
The Punisher (1989)
This film was the first attempt to bring Frank Castle to the big screen. It featured Dolph Lundgren with his hair dyed black. In this movie, Frank Castle is a former police officer whose family is killed in a mob hit. Legally declared dead, Castle now lives in the sewers and wages a one-man war on crime. His former partner (Louis Gossett Jr.) is trying to bring him in. Meanwhile, the mafia is under threat from the Yakuza, who have kidnapped their children and the only one they can turn to is the man who has declared war on them.
In the plus column, Lundgren does a pretty good job as Castle. But the script isn’t too terribly good and there’s some cheeseball parts in here that are real cringe-worthy. Its biggest failing, though, is that if you stumbled on this movie late at night and missed the opening credits, chances are you could go a good long while before realizing it’s a Punisher movie. It’s such a generic action movie and one of the biggest mistakes is they didn’t include the Punisher’s trademark skull shirt. Just including that little detail would have gone a long way to differentiating this from all the other B-flicks flying around at the time.
Because of the studio’s financial difficulties at the time, this didn’t even get a theatrical release in the States and was instead released straight-to-video. It was so poorly received that no one would try again until fifteen years later. That’s when we got…
The Punisher (2004)
When I first saw the movie Thursday, I came away with one thought: the actor who played Casey, a former drug dealer who has gone straight and whose life is thrown upside-down when his old partner comes calling, would make for the perfect Frank Castle. As long as he dyed his hair black.
That actor? Thomas Jane. So you can imagine my excitement when my dream pick ended up being cast in Jonathan Hensleigh’s Punisher reboot. This time around, they stuck a bit closer to the comics, including giving Frank his signature death’s head symbol.
This time around, Castle was ex-military who was working with the FBI. On his last job, the son of money launderer Howard Saint is killed. Saint (John Travolta) is not happy about this and he and his wife order a hit on Castle’s family while he’s at a reunion in Puerto Rico.
The beginning is slow and the family reunion scene is just pointless. This movie really suffers from OSS—Origin Story Syndrome. Once we get past the origin and Castle becomes the Punisher, then it picks up a notch (despite some cheesy moments from Castle’s neighbors).
Jane is absolutely perfect as Castle, but the biggest problem once more is the script. He dropped out of the sequel because he didn’t like the direction it was taking, and so that led to the sequel becoming a reboot, and that brings us to…
Punisher: War Zone (2008)
This time around, Ray Stevenson plays the part of Frank Castle. And it’s also the closest we’ve gotten to a good script and the one that stays closest to the comics.
The Punisher’s origin is told very simply in a quick flashback. Castle is a military guy and he’s back in New York (the previous film being set in Tampa). They even managed to work in a little-known tidbit from the comics—before the military, Frank was studying to become a priest. We’ve also got a better supporting cast in the form of Microchip, played—surprisingly well—by Wayne Knight. And we’ve also got the Punisher’s nemesis from the comics, Billy Russo, Jigsaw (Dominic West).
Stevenson does a good job, but the costume design was really bad. I get they tried to make him look like he’s wearing body armor, but that vest makes it look like he’s wearing a neck brace. And in a lot of scenes, the skull is so faint that it can barely be seen. Costume design aside, though, he’s good. Not as good as Jane, but he gets the job done.
Dominic West, however, is just terrible. Same goes for Jigsaw’s brother, Looney Bin Jim (Doug Hutchison). Right in the middle of this serious movie, director Lexi Alexander dropped in two characters who act like they should be in an R-rated version of the old Batman TV show—yes, they really are that campy. There’s a total disconnect between Stevenson’s serious performance and West’s cartoonish over-the-top debacle.
The tragedy of the latter two Punisher films is that if you took Jane, Travolta, and Will Patton (who played Howard Saint’s right-hand man in 2004’s Punisher) and cast them as the Punisher, Jigsaw, and Looney Bin Jim, then you’d have a really awesome film that I think both the average movie-goer and Punisher fans alike would have been happy with.
So now the question…
Where Do We Go From Here?
That’s actually pretty simple. If you haven’t yet, go watch Dirty Laundry on YouTube. It’s an unauthorized short Punisher film starring Jane as well as Ron Perlman and directed by Phil Joanou. And it is incredible. This is what a Punisher movie should be like—dark, uncompromising, and violent.
But I say, forget the movie route. Three times we’ve tried, now let’s try something different. Marvel is looking to expand into live-action television, starting with ABC’s upcoming SHIELD series. And one of the easiest characters to bring to television is the Punisher…depending on how you bring it to TV. There was, briefly, a Punisher series in development recently, but it looked like bad news from the start.
Now here’s my idea. If you haven’t yet, check out Netflix’s remake of House of Cards, directed by David Fincher and starring Kevin Spacey. It’s a Netflix exclusive series and it is remarkable. Disney recently signed a licensing deal with Netflix. And while the Punisher isn’t a good fit for network TV with all its constraints, there wouldn’t be any such constraints if the show were a Netflix series.
It’s pretty simple, actually—hire Phil Joanou to develop a Punisher series for Netflix and get Tom Jane to star in the title role (I also wouldn’t mind seeing Wayne Knight back as Microchip). Everything’s already set up for it. Jane is very interested in coming back to the role and is very fond of the character, Joanou obviously has an interest as well, or else he wouldn’t have directed Dirty Laundry. Disney now owns Marvel and Marvel Studios recently got back the rights for the Punisher, and now Disney and Netflix have a licensing deal in place.
It’s a great solution all around. You’ll get a live-action Punisher that will enjoy more success and a broader reach than another movie, and it will also help both Marvel and Disney utilize new media.
Yeah, I actually half expect this to a good way for Disney to try out a lot properties. A six or so ep mini-series of Heroes for Hire on Netflix, for example. It would be the best solution all around, get exposure to some of these characters that just wouldn’t logistically sustain a bi-annual film release, nor fit too easily into set “box-office genre.” However, Netflix is the great equaliser in that it allows people to sit there and watch a lot of stuff they probably wouldn’t if it was directly marketed to them. “I just finished the last season of Alias, and the newest season of Hawaii Five-O isn’t on here yet, but what this Heroes for Hire thing? Oh. Cool.”
I don’t exepct however, for Joanou to get picked up as director, nor would I expect Jane to be brought back in. I do however, bet that Dirty Laundry gets looked at long and hard when putting the next Punisher pitch in.
Exactly, there’s a lot of stuff I may not have ever thought of checking out if not for Netflix. And something like Heroes For Hire (which I was psyched to hear name-dropped recently by Loeb) or Punisher would be perfect. These shows don’t need mammoth budgets and they could get a lot of traction this way.
You’ve got a good point that a Punisher series could very likely lack Joanou and Jane, however. I totally admit that’s a pipe dream on my part. But the Mortal Kombat: Rebirth trailer led to Mortal Kombat: Legacy, so who knows?