Originating as a one-off Spider-Man villain in 1974, ex-Marine Frank Castle rolled through the Marvel Universe conducting a one-man war on crime and occasionally running afoul of heroes like Captain America. Bits of his backstory were slowly teased out, revealing that he had lost his wife and children after they had the bad fortune to stumble onto a mob hit. Declaring war on crime, the mob initially but more comprehensively later on, he brought lethality to a medium that had previously left criminals trussed up for the police, or perhaps suspended by webbing from a lamppost.
The Punisher provided a great foil for traditional heroes with a traditional morality, and nowhere was this better highlighted than in his appearances in the classic run on Daredevil written by Frank Miller and drawn by Klaus Janson back in the early 80s.
Daredevil (and attorney alter-ego Matt Murdock) sees Castle as a hypocritical and amoral murderer, no better than the criminals he preys upon. The Punisher meanwhile mocks DD as an ineffective liberal, too soft to do what is needed to really stop crime. Their physical and philosophical feud made a real impression on me as a teenager buying his entertainment off the spinner rack.
Later on, when I was getting my comics at a specialty shop in Edmonton (Starbase 12, actually), things changed when the Punisher got his own title with a limited series from Steve Grant and Mike Zeck. Grant supplied a great modern crime story and all the trappings to make Frank Castle a bit more sympathetic, explaining how some of his more irrational behavior (shooting at jaywalkers and such, for example), was the result of his being poisoned during one of his periods in prison. Zeck supplied some brilliantly painted covers, and it was not too long after this that The Punisher got his own ongoing series, written by Mike Baron.
Baron is also no stranger to vigilantism and philosophy, having dabbled extensively both in his sci-fi comic Nexus, but the real fights took place in the letters column every month. For every person who suggested an established villain or hero from Marvel's extensive pantheon for Castle to butt heads with, another fan would eschew all fantasy in favour of just watching him gun down drug dealers issue after issue.
To his credit, Baron walked that tightrope pretty well for over 60 issues, and I read and enjoyed almost all of them, but the real question remained: was the Punisher a hero, an anti-hero, a villain, or something else entirely?
Successive writers and artists have tackled the question in many ways, Garth Ennis having had the most prolific turn at the wheel, but whose well-known distaste for superheroes had the Punisher getting the better of anyone in tights who came after him, including Spider-Man and Wolverine. The latter of these he ran over with a steamroller, knowing it wouldn't kill but would remove him from the fight fairly authoritatively. As comics became more and more adult, the crimes depicted in them got progressively darker and more disturbing, and Castle's punishments got more graphic and outlandish as well.
Seeming to live in his own comics universe by this point, and garnering attention with dramatically shadowed and realistic cover art from Tim Bradstreet, The Punisher became more and more popular as did his skull logo. Military personnel drew it on vehicles and helmets, some units even adopted it into their morale patches. Astonishingly, a Kentucky police station actually put it on the hood of their police cruisers until public outcry forced its removal.
I bring all of this up simply to give some context to what has gone on with character prior to the arrival of Marvel's The Punisher on Netflix last week, and to explain where I think the tv characterization has missed the mark.
Jon Bernthal's tortured portrayal of a broken man dealing with tremendous trauma and loss rings just as true here as it did in the second season of Daredevil, and he is unquestionably the best thing in it. In the comics, Frank Castle may have anger issues, but Bernthal's rage-filled revenant is an anger issue. Where the comics depict a coldly calculating and dispassionate warrior, the small-screen version is a long fuse leading to an enormous keg of screaming, grunting, bestial avatism. It's alternately compelling and horrifying to witness, but an effective choice for television.
Less effective in my eyes is the fact that this Castle's vendetta is a personal one. In the comics, the senseless and random deaths of his family drives him to declare war on all crime, but here he is directly avenging the deliberate murder of his family to prevent him blowing the whistle on a conspiracy. Although this makes his motivation more understandable and the character a bit more relatable, it limits the future storytelling possibilities. Frankly, making his goal of immediate revenge more rational almost undermines the character by making him indistinguishable from a host of other vengeance-driven characters. (And for the record: no, I didn't like it when Tim Burton set it up so that the Joker killed Bruce Wayne's parents either, or when those South Africans admitted to killing Rigg's wife in Lethal Weapon 2.)
For another thing, the Netflix Punisher has absolutely no connective tissue to the other Netflix Marvel shows or the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I get that Chris Evans is not going to drop by to throw hands with Jon Bernthal (although I'd love to see it!) and that we don't need to see Jessica Jones poking her nose in unnecessarily, but there isn't even an attempt to show the Punisher as existing in a world different from ours. There is no Stark Industries tech seen during the scenes in Afghanistan, no sign of the damage from the Battle of New York or even a mention of the destruction of the Midland Circle building from The Defenders. Even a "get a load of this guy-thinks he's Thor..." when Castle prepares to defend himself (gruesomely) with a sledgehammer would've been a nice touch.
To me at least, a big part of what makes the Punisher the Punisher is the fact that he lives in a universe where lots of folks on both sides of the law have extraordinary abilities. Having to deal with super-strong, bulletproof, or flying adversaries through a combination of intelligence, cunning, skills, equipment and nearly Batman-levels of planning helped Frank Castle to stand apart from a whole array of similar characters in other media (I'm looking at you, Don Pendleton's Executioner (and also a little bit at Charles Bronson in Death Wish)). Without this, there is almost nothing to distinguish the Punisher from almost any other vigilante character, outside of a flamboyant mode of dress based on an overarching cranial anatomical theme.
And even the costume gets short shrift in the Netflix, version, with the classic look only appearing in two episodes out of 13. To be fair, it's not like Charlie Cox slides into his red suit for every episode of Daredevil , but between this and the fact that the showrunners made a big point about the fact that there would be no links to events from The Defenders, and no fantastic elements, I'm a bit disappointed. We've come so far in letting comic book characters in movies and tv look and act like their funnybook counterparts, it's a bit of a letdown not carrying on through The Punisher.
Honestly, if there is one character who could benefit from being portrayed as living in a world other than our own, it is Frank Castle. In the comics, The Punisher has gone up against powered armor, mutants, witchcraft, ninjas, vampires, Doctor Doom and the Kingpin. Facing him off against former servicemen who are now amoral mercenaries if not outright terrorists, bankrolled by corrupt officials in the public service, is just a little too close to 'the world outside my window' than I would care to admit. And this is to say nothing of how to sympathetically portray a troubled individual who uses guns to solve the vast majority of his problems less than a month after yet another mass shooting has taken place. Realism could end up being the boat anchor that most limits the Punisher in future outings.
And speaking of realism, the show's one capitulation to the fantastic seems to be the sheer amount of damage that Frank Castle is capable of enduring. Seeing the effects of Bernthal being shot, stabbed, blown up, beat up, and tortured made me think they should have named his character The Punished instead.
All of this probably makes it sound like I didn't enjoy anything about Netflix's iteration of The Punisher, and that is not precisely true. It is a gripping tale of vengeful justice with a great actor in the lead role, despite the departures it takes from the source material.
The best thing it has going for it outside of its lead is a great cast of tremendously interesting supporting characters. Some of these are former war buddies of Frank's, from Curtis Hoyle (Jason R. Moore) who runs a support group for other vets in a church basement, to Billy Russo (Ben Barnes), who now heads up a private military corporation. Billy also runs tactical training exercises, which is how he encounters Agent Madani (Amber Rose Revah) of Homeland Security, who is fervently searching out clues for an unsolved murder she left behind in Afghanistan which eventually leads her to you-know who.
The most intriguing character, however, is Micro (Ebon Moss-Bachrach). In the comics, Linus Lieberman is a hacker and engineer known as Microchip who serves as Alfred to Castle's Batman. His Netflix analog is a principled whistleblower who ran afoul of the same conspiracy by leaking footage of the murder to Madani, and sees Frank Castle as a means of achieving his goals. Complicating matters is the fact that he has allowed everyone to believe the conspirators killed him a year ago, including his wife and children. His only contact with them is through the surveillance cameras he has surreptitiously installed in their home, seeing their challenges and heartbreak but unable to do anything about it.
Although their relationship starts out adversarial, Micro and Castle share this fascinating dynamic of two men separated from their loved ones, but are differentiated in that one of them is ostensibly working towards a happy ending that the other can never have. When Micro has to watch someone as dangerous as Frank Castle interact with his daughter and young son, his envy and discomfort is palpable, a real credit to the actor.
As an action series with a tightly wrapped story, The Punisher has a lot going for it, and most of this is due to its willingness to focus on the characters around him. In a lot of ways it is a series about trauma and the ways that people deal with it, like the troubled young veteran in Curtis's support group who is finding it difficult to fit in. This makes a lot of sense dramatically; after all, you know they are unlikely to kill a cash cow like The Punisher, but what about the young co-worker from the construction site? In the very first episode he tries to reach out to an incognito Castle who is struggling to leave violence behind him, but after being rebuffed, he gets coerced into pulling a robbery.
Despite the fact that it didn't feel very much like The Punisher to me (and there are no doubt a ton of dudes from those old letters pages who will disagree with me), it was a decent watch and I will be likely to check in for the inevitable second season. Here's my wish list for that endeavour:
- Start the war - and reveal what compels Frank Castle to pursue criminals now that his family's murder has been avenged. Not revenge again though; this time, it's impersonal.
- Make mine Marvel - remind us that this story takes place in the same world as Iron Men and thunder gods. Take your cues from Spider-Man Homecoming (but maybe not the tone).
- Embrace the fantastic - Baron's run had some wonderful notions that were unrealistic but accessible, like the yakuza trained accountants who kept all the Kingpin's financial records in their heads. Normal sucks; why would you want to be that?
- Anthology format - do you really need to build to a confrontation with a big bad? Or could you have a set of mini-arcs like last season's Agents of SHIELD, and go from investigating a militia, to infiltrating an outlaw biker gang, to taking down their cartel drug suppliers in South America? 13 episodes is as much screen time as four movies...
- Leverage the Netflix Universe - as long as Kevin Feige is intent on keeping the MCU and Netflix in separate sandboxes (which makes sense in terms of tone if nothing else; could you imagine Tom Holland's Spider-Man vs. Bernthal's Punisher? Ugh...), then make use of what you have access to. If Daredevil doesn't come after Castle now that he is back killing people in job lots, there's going to be some explanations needed. Set up an arc with Alfre Woodard's Black Mariah from Luke Cage, or Vincent D'Onofrio's brilliant Kingpin, with a possible resolution in a second season of The Defenders.
The Punisher can be an intriguing character (even though Joss Whedon hates him!), and I hope that future seasons take a step back towards the comics that spawned him, but they haven't lost any real ground here and have a great lead in Jon Bernthal. They are close in some ways, but definitely off the mark in others - I'm definitely intrigued enough for another (9mm) round.
No comments:
Post a Comment