New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Scott Lumley: Of all the Marvel characters, this one should really be the easiest to adapt. He doesn't have any super powers. He just has guns and toys and he knows how to use them. I don't understand how, given the fairly impressive catalog of Punisher stories that actually read very well, that nobody in Hollywood can adapt this character.

I think Lexi Alexander may have actually been going in the right direction and the studio lost their nerve a little. Possibly when looking at a production this grisly they just didn't know how to market it. The Punisher isn't a character based on humor or jokes or quips or super powers, he's a grim character that makes the bad guys wish they had never been born. Surely as (North) Americans we can all get behind good wholesome vengeance, right?

If we can't market this in the last vestiges of Bush's America, does this mean we're moving in the right direction?

Max Braden: The Punisher has no recognizable characteristics compared to the other characters. Even if you considered Iron Man a lesser known character, you could quickly describe him to a neophyte. The Punisher is a vigilante with guns. So who isn't? You need either a recognizable star or really cool action sequences to sell that character, and this project had neither. Transporter 3, on the other hand, had both, and notably earned more in its second weekend than Punisher opened with. If they were crazy enough to greenlight a third Punisher, they'd better put The Rock in costume and give him a cool batcave.

Sean Collier: Three words: No Kevin Nash.

Seriously, though, there was never any reason to suspect that anyone would care. The version from a few years ago barely made a dime, there was no marketing push behind this film, and we've given a combined $1.2 billion to the efforts of Batman, Iron Man, Hancock, and The Incredible Hulk this year. This one was dead on arrival.

Reagen Sulewski: Most everything here has been covered, but I'd like to add that one problem the character of The Punisher has is that he's just not fun. He's grim and dour and bent on the goriest kind of revenge. He's practically a Batman villain. I just don't see him ever catching on as a popular multiplex character.

David Mumpower: The interesting aside to Reagen's point is that The Punisher is thematically similar to the Rorschach character in Watchmen. This is the perfect example of a question we're about to address. Why does one comic book character excel while another fails?

Continued:       1       2       3       4       5