Superheroes Who Needed A Reboot

No. 5: The Punisher

Last time we saw Frank Castle in cinemas, he was played by Ray Stevenson in the Punisher: War Zone (2008); a movie that no one saw but which lived up to the comics.  Then there was Thomas Jane in The Punisher (2004), where he played an alcoholic that could barely win a fight against baddie Jon Travolta’s goons.

Though these films may one day become cult classics, there is not really a lot going on in them. They lack the vision for the character. The comics version of the Punisher has a battle-van full of gadgets and, no matter who you are, he would always beat you.

Ray Stevenson actually dished out his fair deal of punishing, but since no one saw the film, the franchise was always going to either get rebooted of scrapped.

Thomas Jane, however let a lot of people down.  It was hard to care for this character, his family had died and he spent the majority of the film with a bottle in his hand instead of dishing some tough justice.

A last ditch attempt to salvage the character was made with the short film The Punisher: Dirty Laundry a project made by Adi Shankar; which saw Thomas Jane’s Frank Castle doing his laundry in a rough neighborhood. It was brilliant, gritty and was the Punisher that needed to be in the 2004 film.

This year saw Daredevil return to the small screen on Netflix, among skepticism after watching the first episode I completely forgot about the dreadful Ben Affleck film. This series keeps the superhero genre grounded and saw heroes fighting street crime while the avengers are protecting the larger threats. The Punisher is set to appear is the second season with Jon Bernthal taking the role.

Never has a character been so well cast.  In The Walking Dead Bernthal played Shane, who cares about the survival of his group during a zombie apocalypse and did the dirty necessary jobs to survive. His character in The Walking Dead was both good and bad, good because he cared for his fellow campmates and bad because he was violent and had a temper. These traits are exactly what fan wants the punisher to be, he needs to be calm, calculated whilst at the same time he needs to lose it and get his hands dirty.

Jon Bernthal is already doing his homework reading up on the Punisher comics; the most notable thing is that he actually looks like the Punisher from the comics.

He is going to cause a great bit of conflict for Charlie Cox’s Daredevil and if it’s anything like the relationship of Rick and Shane in The Walking Dead it’s going to make great television.

James Morgan is a Contributor to ComiConverse. Follow him on Twitter: @monkeymorgasm