“I actually care what happens to you, which makes precisely one of us.”
There were three separate attempts to adapt the Punisher for live-action, including one from Marvel Studios itself, Punisher: War Zone. Marvel found movie success in their big-time heroes, and their more street-level types wound up thriving in television, specifically Netflix.
To that end, instead of a fourth attempt at the Punisher in film as part of the MCU, the character was folded into the Defenders set of shows by being half the plot of season 2 of Daredevil. Jon Bernthal inhabited the role so magnificently that Netflix green-lit a wholly unplanned Punisher series to go along with Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and The Defenders.
Based on the first three episodes, we get a story that, at least so far, is the most connected to the real world of soldiers and violence and governments and politics, and the least related to superpowers and alien invasions.
SPOILERS for the Netflix corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The series gets off to an odd start, as we see Castle take care of all the people involved in the death of his family, a mission he left for at the end of DD season 2, and then he burns his skull shirt, all before the credits roll. Then Castle is “Paul Castiglione,” a demolition worker on a construction site who talks to nobody, has a thick beard (more than one person accuses him of becoming a hipster) and curly hair, and is barely recognizable as the killing machine we saw in the cold open.
But of course, by the end of the episode, he’s saved the life of the one person who was nice to him, killed the guys who were mean to him (who are criminals so it’s okay? kind of? more on them in a bit), and then the actual plot kicks in at the end of the first episode when David “Micro” Lieberman finds him in his blanket surveillance of the city.
Lieberman is a character that is far too common on screen, the super-hacker (SEE ALSO: Hardison on Leverage, Riley on McGyver, and all those other characters who have unlimited and illegal access to all the surveillance and all the top-of-the-line software!), who can basically perform magic. Sure, it’s a world that has Norse gods and green rage-monsters and Tony Stark, but this series makes an effort to be separate from that. (Even when we see Karen Page in episode 2, there’s absolutely no mention of Daredevil or anyone else from that world. Besides her and her boss Ellison, the only other MCU character in these first three episodes is Clancy Brown’s Schoonover, already established in DD season 2 as Castle’s CO in Afghanistan.)
It is interesting to see the journey Lieberman and Castle go on that leads to their teaming up at the end of episode 3, as they’re not friends, and they don’t trust each other, but they have a common goal, and their skills complement each other. (As Lieberman puts it, every missile needs a guidance system.)
There are a lot of little things that these first three episodes do right. After suffering through the half-assed PTSD in Iron Fist, it’s a relief to have a show do it right. Not just Jon Bernthal’s pained performance as Castle, where you see every emotion etched on his pores, but also in the group sessions that Castle hovers on the periphery of, and all the various ex-military folk’s differing reactions to coming home from combat. This series takes the horrors of war seriously, leading up thematically to the ambush that puts Castle over the edge in the flashback in episode 3.
Unfortunately, a lot of the rest of it feels off. The actual storyline is incredibly predictable and derivative, and one we’ve seen a billion times before. In the original comics, Castle was a Vietnam veteran, and the vet-comes-home-and-can’t-adjust storyline is territory that’s been well trod in the four decades since that war ended. The best chance to give this a special twist is that it is in the MCU, but so far there’s nothing that interesting. It’s just a fairly standard corruption storyline complete with unrealistic faked deaths. (Seriously, why does anyone believe that Lieberman is dead when they didn’t find his body after it fell into the Central Park Reservoir, which is a closed system? If he fell into the Atlantic, I’d buy it, but not an artificial body of water in a constructed park.)
Not to mention the very problematic first episode, which is almost completely standalone. Every beat is eminently predictable, from Castle brushing off the friendship attempt, to his refusing to engage until someone’s life is in danger, to just the general tired sliminess of the construction workers. Also, these are just working stiffs who turn to crime, not because they’re bad guys, but because they have money trouble. Yes, they’re assholes, but are they really assholes who deserve to die? Since “3AM” is all just shifting plot stuff around to get Castle back into the Punisher game, I doubt that the series will address this, as the subsequent twelve episodes seem entirely focused on Castle’s military past.
What the story lacks in originality and interest it makes up for in acting. Bernthal remains superlative in the title role, and he’s very well supported by Jason R. Moore’s rock-steady Curtis, Ben Barnes’s charismatic Russo, Paul Schulze’s sleazy Rawlins, and especially Amber Rose Revah and Jaime Ray Newman as, respectively, Agent Madani (whose investigation into what happened in Kandahar is very obviously going to collide with Castle and Lieberman’s own look into it) and Lieberman’s “widow” Sarah. Newman especially elevates a role that could easily have been a tired cliché and makes Sarah into a smart, clever, tragic presence in her own right.
Still, maybe it’s because I’ve been watching so many superhero films of the late twentieth century that were trying very hard to run away from their comic-book roots, but by eliminating the fantastical elements that one expects by the possessive “Marvel’s” before the title, it also removes what would separate this story from all eight billion other ones of its ilk.
Let’s hope that things pick up as we go along. We’ll have a full review of the entire 13-episode season on Tuesday.
SPOILER ALERT! Please try to keep the comments as spoiler-free of episodes 4-13 as possible.
Keith R.A. DeCandido writes “4-Color to 35-Millimeter: The Great Superhero Movie Rewatch” for this site every Friday. He has also written about Star Trek, Stargate, Batman, Wonder Woman, Doctor Who, and the other Marvel Netflix series. In addition, he’s the author of a metric buttload of fiction, most recently the Marvel “Tales of Asgard” trilogy featuring Thor, Sif, and the Warriors Three, three Super City Cops eBook novellas about cops in a city filled with superheroes, and tons more. He’s Author Guest of Honor at Atomacon 2017 this weekend in North Charleston, South Carolina; check out his schedule here.
I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to watch this at all. I don’t like the character of the Punisher, and I certainly don’t like seeing him portrayed as a protagonist instead of a villain. And at this time, when gun violence and mass shootings and uncontrolled rage in general are such an epidemic in this country, it feels ill-considered and risky to make this show at all.
Still, I decided to watch it despite my reservations, because I’m a completist, because I liked Bernthal’s performance in Daredevil despite not liking his character, and because Karen Page was in it and I didn’t want to miss out on a part of her story arc. Also, it turns out the female lead, Amber Rose Revah, is really beautiful, so I want to keep watching for her.
I’m five episodes in at this point; I just don’t feel as strongly motivated to binge through it as with other Marv-flix shows. I actually had to psych myself up yesterday to even bother to keep watching: “Hey, you sat through Inhumans, so you can see this through too.”
Some things work okay, others not so much. Madani’s partner Stein is annoying. When a character’s very first line is stilted exposition for the audience — “As your newly assigned partner”? Seriously? — it’s not a good sign, and his supposed witty banter is just as clumsy. Okay, you don’t expect The Punisher to be a laugh riot, but some competent comic relief would be appreciated.
Also, in episode 2, as soon as the guy started playing “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head” on his stereo, I knew there was about to be a fight scene. Yes. Kick. Fight. We get it. That’s only the second time I’ve seen that gag used (the first was in Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol), and it’s already a predictable cliche.
I think the show is trying too hard to have it both ways. On the one hand, it’s not shying away from how damaged and dangerous Castle is. In episode 1, he comes off as a dull-eyed psychopath barely containing his murderous fury, more like a horror-movie predator than a hero to root for. And the show isn’t glorifying or sanitizing his violence, but showing its ugliness and its consequences. Yet at the same time, it’s going out of its way to have other characters insist that Frank Castle is “a good man.” That is, at the very least, a gross oversimplification.
It’s odd that the Punisher’s solo series so casually discarded the spinoff setup that Daredevil season 2 established. I mean, Frank ended that season putting on the costume (such as it is), finding a huge cache of weapons, and making plans to use them to hunt down the rest of the gangs and such he wanted vengeance on. But his solo series wraps all that up in the first five minutes, tosses it aside, starts him off fresh with no costume and no guns, and introduces a whole new set of enemies for him to hunt. It’s kind of discordant.
Particularly since that ending with him randomly finding that huge cache of guns was kind of silly and contrived, like he’d unlocked an achievement in a video game or something. If they’d actually followed up on it and explained it and used it, it could’ve made it feel less clumsy. The fact that it ended up being essentially ignored just makes it feel pointless.
By the way, I found the actor playing Lewis (the young blond veteran kid from the group meetings) familiar, and it turns out he was a regular in the lame Australian K9 series unofficially spun off of Doctor Who.
“Yes, they’re a**holes, but are they really a**holes who deserve to die?”
They are in the process of attempted murder when Castle steps in, saving a young man’s life, so I would say yes.
I’ve finished the series and enjoyed it, and will attempt to avoid spoilers for the rest of the Punisher series (no promises about other MCU stuff though).
I do wish this connected a bit more with the MCU. There is an…implied connection with Daredevil/Defenders during the scenes Karen is in. Her reaction to seeing Frank alive seemed a bit over-the-top at first (I know she’s got this huge heart and she felt a lot of empathy for him) but then I realized that this likely takes place after the events of the Defenders storyline, and she’s probably super-raw emotionally after losing Matt.
I can’t delve too much more into a review-sorta-thing without spoiling episodes 4-13 to some degree (disappointment at things that did/didn’t happen, etc.).
I do have to say that while no, in your/my eyes the jerk construction workers didn’t deserve to die, it isn’t at all out of character for Frank Castle to decide to kill them. They were, after all, in the midst of brutally beating and about to murder a (relatively) innocent man.
The Punisher from the comics (depending on who was writing him) might have left the (relatively innocent) guy to die rather than save him, since he technically was a guy who committed armed robbery. That would be more along the lines of this being a Spider-man or Daredevil show with the Punisher as an antagonist sort of thing.
@2/H.P.: Not only does New York State not have capital punishment, but nowhere in the US is attempted murder a capital crime.
I binge-watched the entire thirteen episodes back-to-back on the 17th. I’d easily place it as the second-best of the Netflix-based MCU-shows, if not just the best period, and no small part of that is the casting. Bernthal is absolutely superb as Frank Castle, and that’s from someone who thought he would never get over Bernthal’s stint as Shane in the Walking Dead (but then, Shane was *supposed* to be an unlikable asshole, so still props on the acting there).
I don’t mind that it focuses on the non-fantastic side of the MCU, but it would have benefited from more of a connection to Daredevil or the rest of the Defenders. (Most of my enjoyment of that series came from the interactions between the different heroes.)
Won’t comment on the plot for the sake of spoilers, but I agree with what you said.
The construction workers were going to commit murder, so I don’t really care much that they got murdered instead. It was a bit over the top, but hey, the man is called the Punisher for a reason.
So I finished the whole series over the weekend, looking forward to the spoiler filled review.
Like CLB I was very much in two minds about this one – I’m not american, and I find the childish obsession with guns and freedom ever so tiresome. I also have friends who served in various militaries in all sorts of roles, and the scars are there. But I *really* liked this series.
Ep 1 is definitely a bit abrupt – here’s our hero running some randoms over, kills another guy, strangles someone in a bathroom, bam, vengeance done.
But I realised why that happened – this isn’t a show like Liam Neeson’s Taken about vengeance. It’s a show about what happens after. As Russo the Anvil recruiter explains – these are people who have had thousands invested into them, learning skills, working under pressure, and then they get sent back home with no followup, no jobs, no hope.
3AM is a story of someone who wanted vengeance, and now finds it didn’t bring the peace he expected. And he’s basically working himself into exhaustion every day just to get some rest.
Ep 2 things start getting interesting, especially the way our l33t hacker gets the tables turned on him in a matter of seconds – Frank Castle is being reluctantly dragged back into the world, and is not happy about it., I was a bit disappointed that Carson Wolf was removed from play so quickly – he was always a little too overly “bad guy” for any sympathy, but the interrogation was smoothly done.
Ep 3 is where I started to like the show – it’s very rare for me to see a good investigation into PTSD outside of something like Law and Order where da former soldier snapped. Here we have a nice diverse group – Lewis, the angry young man, Russo, the young man done good channelling himself back where he came from and still giving back to his community, Curtis the only one trying to heal the ragged wounds Civilisation leaves. Even the side notes are played well – angry black man and redneck Vietnam vet.
As an outsider, it really starts to shine a light on the failings in the veteran support services, there are a lot of layers of nuance going on that really surprised me coming from a superhero show.
@CLB – His arsenal from DD shows back up in ep 4 – they belonged to our two bit friend from DD Turk, and he sold it on.
@6/Mayhem: I am American, so I find the childish obsession with guns even more tiresome, because it hits closer to home.
As for the Turk scene, I found it unclear whether those were the same guns being referenced. Either way, the guns are still absent from this show, and that’s the point. The makers of DD season 2 gave him those guns and the costume to set up a possible spinoff, and the irony is that the makers of the actual spinoff discarded both those things almost immediately. It almost feels ungrateful. Like if your folks buy you a new car for your 16th birthday and you go right out and trade it in for a used moped.
Completely agreed with you krad, on what is good of the three episodes (and the entire series, I’m up to episode 12), and where it fails. Ultimately, it’s a generic conspiracy thriller of sorts (that just happens to have a main character named Frnak Castle), and not a Marvel comics show at all. So sad.
People are ragging on me on Facebook because I didn’t like it. I was promised a Marvel comics show, and I didn’t get that. It’s like showing up for a party where pizza was promised, and instead they serve burgers. Maybe they’re great burgers, but I came for the pizza. And like Chris says, they had the whole set up ready from DD S2, and they threw it out to go with something completely different.
BTW, his fake name is Pete Castiglione, not Paul.
As for killing those guys, it felt right for the chararcter that he focused on killing them instead of rescuing Donnie, only doing that at the end, almost as an afterthought. That gave me hope for the show to get back to him being the Punisher… but that died down.
@1 – Chris: “It’s odd that the Punisher’s solo series so casually discarded the spinoff setup that Daredevil season 2 established”
Exactly. Also, the only interest I really had in this show was its connections to the rest of the MCU, at least this corner. I was not expecting a Defenders team-up, but at least give me a prospective Moon Knight, more about the pill-popping supersoldiers like Nuke from JJ, or something like that. Not a generic show.
I had nothing better to watch this weekend, so I almost finished the show, but more because I’m a completist, like you say, Chris, than because I was excited about it.
@6 – Mayhem: Which superhero show?
H.P. and Christopher: And even when New York did have the death penalty on the books (a period of about ten years or so), it was never used.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I actually rather enjoyed the opening shot (pun intended, with a bit of a reach since it’s a sequence rather than a single shot).
The construction workers were established as being a small crew that was willing to kill people for money and who were actively in the process of murdering somebody by a rather cruel mechanism (I for one would not enjoy being buried alive in concrete).
Several elements that stick out in the first three episodes are clarified by revelations further in, though I won’t say more than that.
I am up to E10 and am really enjoying the show. I will disagree and say that nowhere does this show show a “childish obsession with guns” – rather it shows a damaged and hurting man who sees things in a purely right/wrong view (even though he dispenses “justice” without really taking any grey into account) and uses whatever tools, knives, arrows, metal pipes, and guns. to right what he sees as wrongs.
Having close to a dozen combat tours there are things this series does very well in the depiction of returning home – I can tell you the isolation of coming home and seeing people worried about the most insane, foolish “problems” that are nothing more than an inconvenience or pure vanity (really, throwing a fit because a store is out of a brand of shampoo, or ads for a prescription for thicker eyelashes????) when life has been truly base for the last 15-24 months. Returning to find that people are spouting off about a war they have truly zero idea about other than the news – and I can tell you coming home on leave I watched the news and did not recognize for a second the way it was presented compared to actually being there – and heaping mostly Pavlovian thanks because it makes them feel good (and yes, that is a generalization and I know many do mean it) can get infuriating. This show deals with the pain, fear and true discomfort of returning in a very real and true way. Kudos.
I am not sure why some people are so hung up on the “comics” aspect – this a deeply flawed and tragic character, and I am enjoying the build as he returns to being The Punisher from being Frank Castle in hiding.
The reason Frank “is barely recognizable as the killing machine we saw in the cold open” is BECAUSE he felt his mission of revenge was over and was just trying to survive and come to grips with the death of everyone he loves. This whole story is the realization that his revenge is incomplete and the journey to truly becoming The Punisher.
As for the Central Park Reservoir, you see that through a New York lens, 99.9% of the people watching probably have no idea that’s where that was. I thought, watching, it was a waterfront by the ocean. But I WILL agree about Amber Rose Revah and Jaime Ray Newman, they are both fantastic. Very much so.
NickM: Fair point about the reservoir, but the point is, they obviously didn’t retrieve a body, and without it, why would anyone believe he was dead? Missing, sure, but one shot and no body would not mean a declaration of death. Especially when the people who killed him wanted to be rid of him, they’d make absolutely damn sure he was dead, not just kiss it up to the water currents.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@@@@@4. ChristopherLBennett
The main reason to not have capital punishment is due to the inadequacy of evidence more than anything else. Survey after survey in Canada, which hasn’t had capital punishment for a long time, demonstrates that if you are absolutely freaking sure someone did…a variety of things, then ya, cap em. The %s are often over 60% supporting the perpetrators deaths.
Governments are racist, lazy and corrupt, because they are run by people, who are also lazy, racist and corrupt, and while a great many people who work for the government are none of those things, it does not change the fact that the government has largely institutionlized those over time.
So, you are in the 32-40% of people who would not support someone being killed for a crime they definitely committed, I am in the other %.
I do not support capital punishment because I do not want the government or any other person frankly, in charge of that kind of decision. But the notion that some people should be killed as punishment for their actions feels right to me.
In this instance, they were going to kill someone, you are incorrect, a police officer would definitely be allowed to riddle these guys with bullets, even though they were white!
If the Punisher was a police officer, he would have been back on the job after some counseling a shit ton of paperwork and maybe a week of admin leave. Mostly because he killed some guys that were no longer able to fight back after he had beaten them to a pulp. What am I basing this on? The number of times police officers have beaten suspects to death who were in hand cuffs and proper custody at the time. Yes, our society sucks.
To Keith, I guess based on the kind of media I consume I don’t feel as though it so cliche. So, to a noob, it’s fine. I binged the show on Saturday night and enjoyed it.
@12 krad
I can’t disagree about that hole, and I did wonder myself. :)
@@.-@ and @9, while you are correct about the death penalty in New York, your point isn’t relevant to the matter at hand. Under New York law, physical force is not criminal when “[s]uch conduct is necessary as an emergency measure to avoid an imminent public or private injury which is about to occur by reason of a situation occasioned or developed through no fault of the actor, and which is of such gravity that, according to ordinary standards of intelligence and morality, the desirability and urgency of avoiding such injury clearly outweigh the desirability of avoiding the injury sought to be prevented.”
Another section of the penal code says roughly the same thing: “A person may, subject to the provisions of subdivision two, use physical force upon another person when and to the extent he or she reasonably believes such to be necessary to defend himself, herself or a third person from what he or she reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of unlawful physical force by such other person.”
That isn’t quite the point either, though, because we were talking about what they deserved, not what is lawful (law and morality are not the same). But the above largely holds, because the orthodox (and in my opinion, correct) view is that it is morally acceptable to use physical–even deadly–force in defending a third person’s life.
You might argue that Castle didn’t need to use deadly force in response, but New York law addresses that too: “A person may not use deadly physical force upon another person under circumstances specified in subdivision one unless: The actor reasonably believes that such other person is using or about to use deadly physical force.”
What about a duty to retreat? The New York Penal Code addresses that in the next sentence. “Even in such case, however, the actor may not use deadly physical force if he or she knows that with complete personal safety, to oneself and others he or she may avoid the necessity of so doing by retreating.” Even though Castle could safely retreat, he is under no obligation to do so because the guy in the process of being murdered can’t.
That may not satisfy the “Batman Rule,” but Batman’s rule is silly as a real world standard of morality (though it may make sense within the world of the comic, and as a tool for moral education integrated into a comic for kids).
@11/NickM: Granted, I don’t think the show is glorifying guns or gun violence. That was always going to be a tricky thing to deal with in this day and age, and while I still think the best way to deal with it would’ve been not to make this show at all, I feel they’ve ameliorated it as best they could, at least so far as I’ve seen at this point. A lot of critics mentioned how gun-heavy the opening sequence is, but — while this may be my own fervently anti-gun sentiments coloring my perception — it seems to me that the title sequence is depicting guns as something ominous rather than something cool or sexy. The shots of the expelled gases swirling from the gun barrels put me in mind of images of nuclear explosions.
Also, maybe part of the reason they got rid of that huge cache o’ guns from DD season 2 was to reduce the emphasis on guns. So far, we haven’t really seen Frank using guns that often, at least compared to what one would expect. And several of the action scenes so far have focused on things other than gunplay.
@15/H.P.: I’m just disgusted by the idea that anyone ever “deserves” to die. Death is not a good thing, ever. Sometimes it’s a necessary evil, but it’s still evil. And I think it’s obscenely hypocritical to say “You’re wrong to kill people and that therefore makes it right for me to kill you.” The very concept is self-contradictory. Other people’s evil is not an excuse to sink to the same depths. It’s an incentive to try harder to be better than they are. It’s not even about what they deserve, it’s about who and what we want to be.
That’s the difference between a hero like Batman and a vigilante like the Punisher. Batman is striving to stay on the side of justice and order; he knows that if he crossed the line and became a killer, he’d become as bad as the people he fights. The Punisher crossed that line long ago and doesn’t even care about his own morality. As far as he’s concerned, he’s already a lost cause.
I want to be careful in how I word this, but in watching the series and seeing the debate about if Marvel & Netflix should even have made this show, I had some thoughts.
First, in this show Frank castle does seem to try and keep others from doing what he does, and tries (unless it’s a thorough bad guy through-and-through) to get them to NOT take up arms and strike out. He tells them it’s not worth it and the amazing Jon Bernthal brings his struggle to the surface with great pain and feeling.
But I think there is something lurking here, why this series is a perfect series for our time, and I am not talking about the gun debate. I am talking about the justification debate. Here’s what I mean: Castle dispenses what he sees as justice pretty unflinchingly. He kills those he sees as “wrong” or bad, and does all he can to spare those he cares about. His “justice” is killing them.
In today’s social media world people regularly dispense with their own form of “justice” when, if someone has a different point of view or somehow crosses them – and it can be as simple as a disagreement about a band – they virtually do away with them, either by cyberbullying or unfriending them with what seems to be no introspection or taking the time to really think if this is something getting so angry about.
When we are now at the point where people are ending (killing) what may be years long friendships over a political or philosophical difference, it seems there’s a kind of electronic vigilantism happening. From people across all spectrum of ideology. This is not a left or right thing, it’s a cultural thing. I mean, I adore Keith, we have been together at conventions and he’s been on my podcast numerous times, and I admit I disagree with him about political things. A lot. But would I “kill” him by just disconnecting with him because of that? No. I believe in the dialogue.
So replace the knives, bombs and guns of the show with the knee-jerk reactionary culture we see on social media and I think The Punisher can open up a dialogue about why people react the way they do.
I hope this made some kind of sense, I admit I am trying to type this while at work and jumping in and out of composing it.
@11 – NickM: Without diminishing the experiences of veterans like you; people are “hung up” on the comics because this is a show about a comic book character, and to many of us, the result is too far from the character’s stories, enough as to turn him into another story that just happens to use a character with the same name. I’ve wathed most of the season, and I never saw him go back to being The Punisher. Frank Castle trying to get justice for what was done to him? Yes, but the same can be said about many main characters in lots of shows and movies with similar themes.
YMMV, you might have enjoyed the show; but some people actually wanted to see a comic book show. There are plenty of other shows or movies with similar themes that do not require licensing such a character and universe.
@16 – Chris: I never thought either that the intro sequence made guns cool or anything. It does feel a bit generic, compared to the DD, LC, and JJ intros… but it’s much better than the IF one. The theme music was a surprise, a good one.
@18 I get what you are saying, but this version seems most like the original version. I am sure there’s people that would be happy if they went with the “Purgatory” version where Frank Castle returned from the dead and was a supernatural hitman for angels and demons, but I think the version they have (and I am only up to E11 at this point) is in the spirit of the original 1974 version of the returning vet who becomes judge, jury and executioner.
PLEASE understand, I am not downplaying anyone’s attachment to a certain era of the character, but I think with a non-powered one like The Punisher this was the smart way to go, especially if they are going to build on it and incorporate it with Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist. These characters are all more “reality based” than, say, Iron Man or Thor, and fit with what I have been calling the Flixverse.
@19 NickM I enjoy this portrayal of the Punisher much like you do – the returning vet with no powers but an incredible stubbornness and huge tactical and fighting acumen. I just wish they could have had that AND made it clear that this was still part of the MCU. A piece of tv footage playing in the background somewhere that mentions the Devil of Hell’s kitchen or a strange vigilante with a glowing hand or a bulletproof man or even “the Incident.”
Hell, a story about the plane crash on Coney Island just a few months back would have been nice. Even if it were just a clipping on Karen Page’s wall or something. Maybe there were things like that and I just missed them?
I don’t think any of us wanted Frank to suddenly be superhuman (any more than he was by seeming to shrug off the immense amount of injury he encounters) – but this is a show set in the MCU, so let’s tie it in a little bit more than with flashbacks to Schoonover.
@20/Kalvin: How is this not tying into the MCU? Karen Page is a major character. Her boss Ellison appears. And, spoiling slightly beyond the first three episodes, Turk Barrett appears and there’s at least one mention of Wilson Fisk. Okay, it might be nice if there were a name drop for Stark Industries or Captain America, and it’s kind of weird to have a Netflix Marvel show without Claire Temple, but there’s been enough connection for me.
I have two episodes left but I am left wondering what the timeline is for this, i.e. pre-Defenders or post. Some small mention of when would have been good, but this series wasn’t originally planned until the reaction to Frank from Daredevil S2 was so positive and strong, maybe it was lost in the rush.
@22/NickM: Well, one episode does mention that it takes place in November, so presumably it’s set either around now or a year ago.
@21 Chris Yeah good point on Karen and her editor, but I’m pretty much always left wanting more tie-in when it comes to MCU. I want AoS to mention the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. I wanted Claire, during Iron Fist, to at least TRY to get ahold of Matt Murdock when they were about to try their crazy-let’s-go-to-China trip (or at least mention that she knows someone with a lot of experience fighting the Hand, only to have the thundering dumbass Iron Fist refuse to involve someone else).
I don’t expect guest-stars (though seeing RDJ make a cameo on AoS to reveal that he’s known Coulson is alive for some time would be awesome) but some more inter-Netflix-MCU-property tie-ins (via dialogue or graphics) would be nice.
@24/Kalvin: It makes sense to me, though, that Frank Castle has only a peripheral connection to the other characters. He’s not a hero. He’s not a protector or a champion. He’s not even a functioning member of society. He’s a fugitive who’s presumed dead and who operates in the shadows, not just in his “night job” like Daredevil, but all the time. So he wouldn’t cross paths with the others all that much.
Also, this is the most problematical part of the MCU for me. I’m not even entirely comfortable watching it. So I don’t feel any loss if the other shows don’t reference it much, or vice-versa. A show like this should be at some remove from the others, I feel.
Regarding the construction workers: they were trying to kill someone buy burying him alive in cement. So–a little more than just assholes.
Also, Frank does walk up to them and demand that they “turn it off.” I think that’s a pretty key point. Then, they attack him and he kills them. Pretty sure any decent attorney could easily argue self-defense here (even if it wasn’t in the case of the guy attempting to flee in the car)
I’m five episodes deep; so far, I like it. Not quite up there with Daredevil and Jessica Jones, but way better than Iron Fist and somewhat better than Luke Cage. (Which I really wanted to love but could only like because of pacing.)
Patrick – in terms of dialogue and characterization this is a massive step up from Daredevil and Jessica Jones as the script doesn’t nesseciate the formers camp. Therefore the characters, from primary to secondary, feel less tropey.
I just want to say Afghanistan has been the source of EARTH’s heroin market, producing 90% of the opium used. If you do research you can find out that the CIA is responsible for it. What Russo did to his mother is what the United States intelligence units did to not just Afghanistan but many other countries. Punisher decapitates our use of military might in a negative light. I’m all for proving the military industrial complex is the cause for why war is fucked up.
xbimpyx–I wouldn’t say a massive step up. They’re telling different stories, and the presence of superhero camp doesn’t necessarily affect the quality of the scripts or storylines. Daredevil is probably the most straightforward superhero story of the three. JJ is the story of surviving an abusive relationship with superpowers as a metaphor. Both of them suffered from slight bloat/pacing issues in the latter half of their seasons. I’m still only halfway through, but the Punisher seems to be an examination of PTSD within a military espionage thriller.
For me, the standout aspect of the series is the acting, especially Jon Bernthal. He is just knocking it out of the goddam park.
@28
Actually Afghanistan has only been a source of opium relatively recently – the poppies grown there are derived from plants originally grown in Bengal, which has been commercially growing poppy for over a thousand years. Up until 1960 or so, the soil conditions in Afghanistan were completely wrong, then US engineers built a series of hydroelectric dams in the country that messed with the water table and by the early 70s made the soil in many areas much more saline and unsuitable for wheat but ideal for poppy.
The prime source of illicit heroin for many years was Burma and Laos via the Golden Triangle – during the Laos and Vietnam wars, smuggling drugs in the bodies of dead soldiers was well known. By 1980 though that trade was in steep decline, while Afghanistan took off. .Ironically the Taliban suppressed opium production to nearly nothing, the resulting invasion in 2001 caused a massive rebound effect.
Second irony, global production primarily in Afghanistan only recently exceeded official British production in the 1800s – Opium alone provided between a quarter and a third of all income from India over the entire time of British rule, it was fabulously lucrative.
@30/Mayhem: “…then US engineers built a series of hydroelectric dams in the country that messed with the water table and by the early 70s made the soil in many areas much more saline and unsuitable for wheat but ideal for poppy.”
Wow. So once again, we blame the Middle East/Southwest Asia for problems that are really the West’s fault for incompetently meddling in their affairs in the first place. I shouldn’t be surprised.
I’ve not watched the whole series yet, but donwe see any traces of weird tech or (really minor) superpowers (apart from the über-hacker)? Even drugs that give a minor, temporary healing factor? That would at least provide hints of the fantastical world the series should be inhabiting..
Will: nope. None.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@31 – Chris: Keep us underdeveloped Western countries out of it, please. :)
I’m about four episodes in and keep thinking about a scene between Curtis and Russo. Curtis calls him a ‘man of wealth and taste’ along with a crucifix prominently in the shot…pretty sneaky using the Rolling Stones for foreshadowing.
I also agree that the acting on this show is next level so far.
AWFUL. It feels like an ABC crime drama. Predictable. Boring. Cheaply filmed. Frank Castle is incredibly unlikeable.
Mayham.
Sure Afghanistan has fantastic farm land?
But we can’t forget British soldiers forced Indians and Pakistanians to grow opium during WW1-2 in order to raise profit for outcomes of war. The CIA traded weapons in Nicaraguar for crack, which they then distributed in America. CIA trained the Mujahideen to fight Soviets while also getting Soviets hooked on heroin. The Mujahideen later renamed themselves Taliban once the same Soviets left. In 2000 they outlawed opium yes and one year later the heroin trade collapsed. But from 1995 to 2000 the CIA turned Afghanistan into the number one heroin producer on the market. then in 2001 America invaded. The US milirity and CIA overturned the Taliban’s ban. US occupied Afghan became something else. yeah opouim war in Viet Nam too gave way to this shit storm.
@@@@@ KRAD – really?! Then I’ll side with Team “Why did they even bother”. And will probably skip the rest of the episodes.
At the risk of simply rephrasing what other people have said, my expectations (and others, from the comments) from setting something in a shared sUniverse is to share elements of that universe. Easter eggs at a minimum, but the selling point of Marvel Comics originally was that it was our world but simplified and with a few bits of weirdness, which contrasted with say DC, which only had a passing resemblance to our world (same countries but different cities, vague geography and a lot of weirdness). One of the selling points for me for the Punisher is how he deals with the weirdness. This generally means shooting it the head – unless the gangster in question has an adamantium skull. I’m not advocating the full-on angelic hitman or FrankenCastle (save those for the later seasons when you need to shake up the format), just elements, or even hints, of weirdness should be in the first season.
There’s a scene from one of the early Anita Blake books that screams Punisher. Psychotic werewolf has been chased into a mall, and he retreats into a crowd of people in the food court. Smugly smiling, he holds up his hands in surrender, and then Blake shoots him. Shocked, he gasps out “Cops can’t do that” as she walks up, and she states “I’m not a cop.” Then puts a silver bullet in his brain from point blank range. That’s the kind of Marvel Universe Frank Castle I’d be expecting.
They did have very small easter eggs. I mean, there was a picture on the wall in Karen’s office referencing the Avengers….
@39/DougL: Those framed front pages on Karen’s wall have been there since it was Ben Urich’s office in Daredevil season 1.