I'm going to focus on the Punisher movies for now, since theres quite a bit to say about them for me.
The Punisher (Tom Jane) 4 Stars: The movie that got me back into the Punisher. After knowing more about the character though, I think this was a great Revenge flick, but not a good Punisher movie. The whole reason for the Punisher's existence is that his family was killed in a way that was purely coincidental. They were in the park and stumbled onto a Mafia hit and were gunned down. It could have happened to anyone and was completely senseless. In the movie they changed it so that rather than just being an ex-soldier trying to live a civilian life, he was an FBI agent who had his family specifically targeted. This means of course that the whole thing was personal, and everything the Punisher does is an act of 'revenge'. Some stuff was still great though, the fight with the Russian was handled really well I thought for example. The action scenes were just generally really good too.
The Punisher: Warzone (Ray Stevenson): 2.5 Stars - This is the biggest heart-breaker I've ever, ever seen in my life. It really is. I had been following the Punisher follow up since it was called 'Untitled Punisher Sequel' with a number of other die-hard fans, praying for something good. We almost lost all hope when Thomas Jane walked out on the role saying that the movie was shaping up badly (and I've read the script he rejected, I don't blame him), but then suddenly it all turned around. The movie had a code-name of 'Welcome Back Frank' (after the Garth Ennis mini-series that revived the character for modern day) and Ray Stevenson of ROME fame was signed on to play Frank. Ray Stevenson IS the Punisher, it couldn't be more perfect. We even got an Oscar Nominated director in Lexi Alexander to helm the movie. There was no way this could turn out badly.
Except it did.
Lionsgate Films was really unstable at the time. The wife of the first movie's director (Jonathan Hensleigh) was the producer of this movie, Gale Hurd. There was rumours from day one that she was unhappy about someone else taking over the franchise and didn't care to see this movie succeed. I can't really speculate on that, but reports from the set did claim that she was hardly ever there or willing to help out.
Things got worse when the filming was done and many places and rumours were saying that Lexi Alexander was actually removed from the movie and that Lionsgate were making some heavy edits to the movie (including some stories about including lots of Heavy Metal music). I remember making an online petition (the only time I've ever done one) that was signed by members of the cast and crew (I was dubious, but I actually got an email from Lexi Herself thanking me and saying that it was the actual crew members who signed it. This came via IMDB and also passed on via someone who had communicated with her directly before, so I'm pretty sure it was legit). Shortly after LionsGate revealed a new trailer/excerpt with Lexi Alexander introducing it, giving us a lot of relief.
Unfortunately, there was more trouble in the pipeline. The head of LionsGate films retired and was replaced by a new guy. The new guy apparantly didn't like the direction his predecessor was taking the company and almost out of sheer malice, decided to kill off a lot of the films made under him. The most obvious was 'Midnight Meat Train' a horror movie that had been getting good reviews/reception from focus groups suddenly had it's marketing budget slashed to ribbons and it's release was cut down to the absolute minimum number of cinemas allowed for a theatrical release. It was sent to die a horrible box office death. The Punisher wasn't quite so bad, but it's Christmas release date and anorexic marketing budget really hurt it. It even went straight to DVD in Australia/UK, and even that was months and months after the inintial release.
The biggest problem for me though: The script. It went through several re-writes and edits, and it's clear in the end movie that the script was the major problem. The Director had done a great job but the storyline was just plain bad. I didn't know if they wanted it to be a Straight up Crime Story like Marvel MAX Punisher, or a more light hearted action romp like Punisher from Marvel Knights. We ended up with a bizarre mix with some great moments that were classic MAX punisher (Shooting a man's face off with a shotgun, while carrying a child in one arm) and some out-of-place Knights stuff (Detective Soap...).
The worst thing is, they could have taken a storyline from the comics and with Lexi's great direction, Ray Stevenson and the wonderful cinematography we could have had THE Punisher movie, instead we got some weird story with a villian from the 70s making a super-gang to kill the punisher, with lots of violence.
Fingers crossed, someday we'll get the Punisher movie the character deserves...
