Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Crime (Fighters) & Punisher

2008 looks to be a bumper year for comic book geeks; we've got Iron Man, Speedracer, Hellboy II, another Hulk film, Batman: The Dark Knight, and the long-awaited Watchmen film all set to drop in '08.

Not bad, but the one film that has piqued my interest more than all of those combined is the Punisher: War Zone movie. No, really.Growing up as a kid in the 80s, there was no cooler superhero than the Punisher. He didn't have superpowers, he wasn't some rich weirdo that hung out with little boys, he didn't bother with an alter-ego, and he actually KILLED people... lots of people.
The Punisher was the only comic book I regularly followed in the 1980s. Later on, I got into the Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Frank Miller stuff, but as a kid, Punisher was #1.

For those who don't know, here's the story of the Punisher in a nutshell:
Frank was a Vietnam war-hero. Frank witnessed his family being murdered by the Mafia. Frank went ape-shit crazy, dressed up in body armor, called himself "the Punisher", started killing criminals, took their money to buy guns and explosives, turned around and killed more criminals (repeat).
End of story. He was the perfect Regan-era underwear-pervert.

What kills me is that what should be the easiest comic book to turn into a movie has yielded two ripe turds of films. I mean how fucking hard is it? War-vet goes crazy and starts killing criminals - This ain't fucking rocket-surgery, people! Just watch 'Taxi Driver' three times and put a skull-suit on Travis Bickle. Done.
Well, I'm hoping like hell that they get it right this time. They have Titus Pullo playing the Punisher and it's being directed by the woman who did Green Street Hooligans. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Regardless, I'm sure that it'll be a hell of a lot less disappointing than the Watchmen flick - Bastards.

3 comments:

Chris B. said...

You didn't like Dolph "I must break you" Lundgren as the Punisher? I actually thought that one was pretty entertaining. This last one sucked, though. It's hard to remember why you liked the comic at points. (That's a bad movie.)

Meat Head said...

Fucking weird. Just got into an argument at the bar about this movie coming out. Some guy spoke up about the wrong subject to the wrong guy. He was going on about how the Punisher was awesome and the last movie rocked. I then said you have no fucking clue about anything Punisher. I told him Payback and Man on Fire was better punisher movies than that crap.

The Punisher goes nuts and becomes a stone cold killer. The only reason he will not kill a criminal instantly is if he needs them to talk. If they have nothing to give him to so he can kill more criminals they are dead. PERIOD. How many times did he just straight up torture dudes and then once they said that’s every thing man, he just put a bullet in their head. If you are a criminal you got 2 choices with the Punisher die quick or die hard, choose.

He is not a super hero he is a bad guy that people like. He kills and kills and kills. Nothing will stop him but death. He has no friends, he has no lovers he does not care about kids or soccer moms or innocents. He only cares about killing more criminals.

I told that to the guy in the bar and he tried to tell me that I didn’t know anything about the Punisher and should watch the movie again. I told him to kiss my chode and he stop by the house and I could pull out a long box or two of Punisher comics he is more than welcome to read.

I was on a role yesterday. Right before that I got into an argument on how Lilly sucks donkey dick.

E said...

I dunno if you ever read the comics, but Garth Ennis, the guy who wrote Preacher, has been writing the Punisher comics for a few years now. He's about to wrap up his run in a few months, and these sixty issues really have been the best Punisher I've ever seen. If you're down with Frank Castle, I enthusiastically recommend picking up a collection or two from Ennis's Punisher Max.