Let me start this by saying that I am a huge Marvel Comics fan. There, now I have that out of the way, I can get to my gripe. I just watched “Punisher: War Zone” and I had to voice my thoughts. What the fuck are Lionsgate and Marvel Productions thinking releasing this nonsense? Marvel seems to be working on the theory that if something doesn’t work, just keep re-booting it until it does. This theory doesn’t work!
Both The Hulk and The Punisher are characters that are full of potential and I can understand why Marvel wants hit films based on them, however, you have to get the film right first time or the audience will not come back for another taste. This was the case of The Hulk. When Ang Lee’s “Hulk” came out in 2003, it made a fair amount of money but it was not a fan favourite because Ang Lee crafted a deep and psychological drama about the dysfunction between father and son. The Hulk was the physical embodiment of Bruce Banner’s internal rage because he had daddy issues. The fans didn’t want this! We wanted Hulk Smash!!!!
Marvel did make money on “Hulk”, so a sequel was inevitable. When “The Incredible Hulk” came out in 2008, Marvel decided to give the fans what they wanted. We had a more realistic looking Hulk, we had mass destruction, less soul searching, a super villain, in short we had a comic book Hulk brought to life.
Now “The Incredible Hulk” was not a perfect film, it was a little light weight in the story department but it was a fun romp. The biggest problem the film had was that Marvel decided to “re-boot” the series. This means they wanted to start again, pretend the first film didn’t happen. This theory can work, just look at Christopher Nolan’s new Batman series. But I kind of feel the same way about re-booting as I do about remaking. You need some distance. We had a bit of distance between Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Begins.
I think you could have made “The Incredible Hulk” more palatable, by just continuing on from Ang Lee’s film. You could have made exactly the same film but just acknowledge the first films existence and not try and re-write history.
But this article is not about the Hulk films.
Let’s take the re-boot concept to the ultimate extreme and talk The Punisher. The Punisher is one of Marvel’s more intriguing characters. He is dark, violent and he appeals to that dark recess of our mind that just wants justice. A film version of The Punisher would always prove tricky, he is no superhero, he is a vigilante, he is a walking one man arsenal that is out to punish the bad guys that the police can’t touch.
In 1988, Mark Goldblatt, an editor who wanted to direct (please note, he is editing again now) came to Sydney, Australia and directed Dolph Lundgren and Louis Gossett, Jr in “The Punisher”. I can’t tell you how awful this film was (yes I can, go to Bad List above), Lundgren spends the entire film with a badly painted five o’clock shadow on his face and Gossett, Jr wonders around trying to figure out how he can get out of this damn film.
A re-boot was inevitable and not unwanted. In 2004, Jonathan Hensleigh, brought us “The Punisher” starring Thomas Jane and John Travolta. This was a low budget origin story. Never mind that they changed the Punisher’s back story, it was an okay action film that would have benefitted from a couple of re-writes and a few more buckets of money. Jane at least gave the Punisher a soul and Hensleigh knows how to stage an action scene. Travolta was the weak link, he just chewed the scenery and hams his way through the film.
The 2004 film, “The Punisher”, was made at a cost of US$33 million and took approximately US$54 million at the box office. Add to that DVD sales and TV sales and you can imagine that Lionsgate wanted a sequel. Now you can imagine my thoughts: learn from your mistakes and now you have done the origin story, you can just get into the action. Maybe we will see the War Van. This could be cool.
HA!!! Marvel and Lionsgate pulled a Hulk on us. New actor (Ray Stevenson) and new director (Lexi Alexander) means re-boot! Ray Stevenson delivers a one note performance in dark and nasty film that owes more to “Saw” than the first film. No War Van. No coolness!
This film is gory to the extreme and I don’t know about you but when I see our hero open a door and look down to see a bad guy, who is actually posing no real immediately threat, and then lowering his rifle and quite literally blows the bad guys head clean off, does not say hero to me.
The film changes the back story again and introduces new characters that comic book fans may know but it will leave the newcomer lost. The secret of making superhero films is take your source material seriously. This was not the case with the bad guy, Jigsaw (played by Dominic West). He was a stereotyped mobster who after an accident with a glass crushing machine becomes the poor man’s version of Jack Nicholson’s Joker. Also, wasn’t Jigsaw the bad guy from “Saw”? Another comparison.
I hated this film and I will review it in detail in the next episode of the podcast (episode 29) but I will say that I believe the three strikes and your out rule must apply here. The Punisher is not a character that filmmakers seem to be able to do on film (not that hard really, think Rorschach from Watchmen, but with big guns) and they have now tried three times. Give it up Marvel, enough is enough. You can’t just keep re-doing films until you get them right. I think the reduced takings on “The Incredible Hulk” and now the box office on “Punisher: War Zone” (films cost US$35 million and so far has taken US$9.8 million worldwide) would say that audiences, once bitten, are twice shy.
