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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Ehhh, the last thing the Punisher needs in his show is that story about how his family's dead because he sold them out to an ambiguously supernatural force in Vietnam in exchange for his killing prowess.
There was a lot of great stuff in the MAX series but Born wasn't one of those.
edited 10th Aug '16 2:31:12 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.It will probably have flashbacks because all of the Netflixes so far have used flashbacks in decent amounts.
Hah hah what?
edited 10th Aug '16 2:31:55 PM by Bocaj
Forever liveblogging the AvengersIt's been a while since I've read it but in Born, there's this ambiguous supernatural voice that flows through the narrative and Frank makes some kind of agreement with it, which grants him the ability to wipe out all of the Viet Cong that destroyed his camp and killed all his men single-handedly, surviving enough bullets and other wounds to kill him six times over by sheer force of supernatural f*ckery.
And then in the end, it's implied that the supernatural force is going to kill his family in payment so he can continue being the ultimate soldier of destruction forever.
The Punisher is one of those concepts where it's a really simple idea, but one that really works. Despite this, writers keep trying to f*ck with it and their efforts to reinvent the wheel and "fix" Frank are always dumb.
edited 10th Aug '16 2:34:55 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Like the time where it turned out that a demon arranged the death of Frank's family so he'd kill a bunch of people and empower the demon to take over hell.
Or the time Frank got hired to KICK ASS FOR THE LORD.
Why do people keep trying to put supernatural elements into the Punisher?
Forever liveblogging the AvengersI don't either, but you don't need to add "THE DEVIL MADE HIM DO IT" to communicate that Frank is not an admirable man. Hell, if anything, that makes him less awful because it means it's not really his fault; his choices were made because he was manipulated by Hell, not because of who he is.
Frank Castle
- Is a highly decorated war veteran.
- Loved his family with all his heart and soul.
- Fell back on #1 when #2 was taken from him by random, violent crime and proceeded to declare war on random, violent crime.
It's a pretty straightforward concept. But writers keep trying to add things like Satan killing his family or Frank letting it happen because he never really loved them anyway. And it's always stupid.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I don't know about the supernatural aspect, but I think there's some sense in presenting him in flashback as having some bloodthirsty elements to his character- but not to full Sociopathic Soldier levels necessary.
Because as terrible as what happened to Frank's family is, the "one bad day" take on him can go into the direction of presenting his vigilantism as a total normal or even admirable reaction to his circumstances (cf. the Death Wish films).
Conversely, by having these elements always exist in his personality, the presentation is more to the effect that he had a Morality Chain which he lost and that his vigilantism is an overreaction in line with his previous issues.
Although, I'm not sure that Castle's behavior (or really anyone in comics) is a fair/accurate presentation of a person with psychological issues.
One that that Castle does have on his side is that IIRC he knows the specific individuals complicit in killing his family, even if that doesn't justify his overall targeting of criminals.
edited 10th Aug '16 3:11:52 PM by Hodor2
Ennis still wrote my favorite version of Castle. And his writing was pretty spot-on most of the time:
- "They hated that old man so much they shot him through my family. The world went crazy on a summer's day in Central Park, In the time before uzis and berettas, before nine millimeter popguns ruled the streets. It was a Thompson, like the ones our fathers carried, and I recognized its rattle even as its big, man-stopping forty-fives punched blood and breath from my lungs. I hit the ground besides my daughter. She's been gutshot, badly, and when she saw the things that boiled and wriggled from her belly the expression on her face was not a little girl's. My wife bled out later on the operating table, her heart a gaping hole her life drained through. Whenever i get careless, that yearning in her eyes creeps up and brings me to my knees. Right then the old man's soldiers started strated shooting back. My son dropped wordlessly, without a mark on him. I took a breath that cut like glass, spat blood, rose to my knees, picked up the boy and searched in vain for entry wounds. The bullet had entered through his open mouth. That was our picnic in the park. And now every night I go out and make the world sane."
Yeah, probably should have stated that more definitively. I more meant that while the "always messed up" Castle is better in terms of not presenting him as a hero, it has a potential downside in terms of unfair presentation of mental illness.
It also struck me that Zemo in the MCU is pretty close to Castle and the usual run of Vigilante Man protagonists- has the black ops background explaining his skills and wants to avenge the deaths of his family. It's just that he targets the Avengers rather than the typical Generic Ethnic Crime Gang.
Unfortunately, there will always be people who view someone like Frank as a cool guy. Neither giving him connections to the devil or demons, nor making him someone who was always a budding sociopath just waiting to go off necessarily changes that. It's just that one of these things usually makes for a more believable story than the other.
Funny how that works with Zemo, isn't it? I guess Frank wouldn't necessarily agree with T'Challa's conclusion about vengeance being generally destructive.
edited 10th Aug '16 3:24:59 PM by hollygoolightly
The advantage of having a specific character or set of characters responsible for the killing is that it provides a more human face for Castle's foe. A specific enemy he can embark on a vengeance plot against.
The disadvantage is that it doesn't really service the vigilante element well outside that revenge plot. Eventually, there's going to come a time where Castle has achieved his revenge. He's killed the people responsible for his family's deaths. He's made the world sane. What's his reason to keep pulling triggers?
Ultimately, putting a name and a face to his family's death is setting Castle up for Motive Decay. The idea that his family was killed in the crossfire, that no specific person is responsible and instead his family's lives were claimed by random, violent crime, establishes that Castle's vendetta isn't against any specific person or gang but against the very notion of random, violent crime and any who perpetrate it.
He can't put the gun down, can't move on, because his enemy is an abstract concept. Not any one man or mob. So long as violent crime exists, so too does the Punisher. Until the day it finally kills him, anyway.
edited 10th Aug '16 3:28:09 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Sure, he would. The best versions of the Punisher are the ones where he holds no illusions about what he's doing. He openly accepts that he is a serial killer, that his crimes are unjustified, that he's "become them". But he still does it, because it's what he has. It's who he is.
There's a surprisingly good scene in Punisher War Zone, what is otherwise the shittiest Punisher movie, in which Frank coldly converses with a police officer who, after becoming disillusioned by the system's ability to stop criminals, has teamed up with Frank and is about to storm the villain's base with him. Paraphrased,
- Frank: I didn't know where this road was going to lead when I started on it. But it's too late for me to go back now. (blindsides the cop and knocks him out) You're not starting on it.
Im divided on whether Terry Crews or Forrest Whitaker should be Barracuda.
Reading about the character on The Other Wiki, I can't decide if he's Crazy Awesome, horribly racist, or a typically over-the-top Ennis villain. Maybe all three.
Crews is a wonderfully entertaining actor though and I'd love to see him in the MCU. I mentioned D-Man in another thread, and while he doesn't look like the character, he has the perfect personality.
Jigsaw, I think, is the only recurring Punisher villain. Mainly when the Punisher defeats his villains, he just kills them.
Although there was a Punisher series where his archenemies were the Kingpin and Bullseye. I guess they just imported Daredevil's villains because Frank's weren't interesting enough.
Speaking of Daredevil villains, I could see Bullseye interacting with the Punisher in an Evil Versus Evil kind of thing.
Like you'd have the police trying to figure out all these mysterious murders- some of mobsters others of mob opponents- and Frank and Bullseye would be hunting each other.
edited 10th Aug '16 4:07:07 PM by Hodor2

Should he talk like a stereotypical gangster, yay or nay?
Forever liveblogging the Avengers