tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-585323794423400780.post6595804592612801416..comments2024-02-10T10:52:58.614-05:00Comments on THE DIG: PUNISHER WAR ZONE (2008)cinemarchaeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13507603255666191405noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-585323794423400780.post-15084289725802915452009-08-17T14:34:02.769-04:002009-08-17T14:34:02.769-04:00Everyone seems always think that it was the random...Everyone seems always think that it was the randomness caused Castle to become a vigilante, when it actually had more to do with the failure of the justice system. Had the police done their job and brought to justice the men responsible there would be no Punisher. <br /><br />He knew who got his family in the comics, he eventually got them and that didn't stop him. Why does he keep going on? Maybe because he saw the inadequacy of the law, and doesn't anyone else to suffer what he went through. <br /><br />Whatever were going to have to agree to disagree on what constitutes shitty over acting, but I will say this. Will Patton was a better villain than anyone in either movie.<br /><br />I'll leave you with this quote from Frank Tieri who wrote the Punisher: Noir series.<br /><br />"The story of Frank Castle, to me, can essentially be boiled down to one phrase: it’s a story about loss and a man’s response to that loss."Mikenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-585323794423400780.post-9709184142904687002009-08-17T10:30:08.124-04:002009-08-17T10:30:08.124-04:00"As for being dull, you could say the same th..."As for being dull, you could say the same thing about PWZ as the whole middle section of the movie has nothing going on other than crappy accents and over acting."<br /><br />This was a complaint made by a critic who trashed the film at the time. Like his use of it, your recycling it only succeeds in begging the question of whether you've ever even seen PWZ, which is, in reality, a compact little movie that features <i>no</i> long stretch at the beginning, middle, <i>or</i> end, in which nothing is going on. I recounted some of the mayhem stuffed into the movie in a footnote. As lengthy as that is, it is by no means comprehensive (it certainly looks excellent in comparison to the 2004 borefest).<br /><br />The Dominic West comments beg the same question. If what he does is "overacting," then anyone wearing that make-up--the real source of that complaint, I suspect--would be overacting, no matter what they did. West's performance is no Shumacher Batman villain--there isn't a single scene or line of dialogue in which he even remotely approximates that approach to the character. He can fly into a rage, but, for the most part, he's calm, controlled, and, in fact, looks almost catatonic compared to the face-contorting madman of the comics.<br /><br />The changes to the origin did, in fact, remove any reason for the Punisher continuing past what we see. The killing of his family was random. It could have been anyone who just happened to be in that place at that time. That's why the crusade against all scum. In 2004, there was nothing random about it--he pretty much brought what happened on himself, then took out those who did it. End of the Punisher. The last scene, where he's mouthing pretentious platitudes about continuing, didn't make any sense at all in the context of what we'd just seen.cinemarchaeologisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13507603255666191405noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-585323794423400780.post-18151313308766142412009-08-16T00:43:30.783-04:002009-08-16T00:43:30.783-04:00I've read the Garth Ennis MAX run of the chara...I've read the Garth Ennis MAX run of the character since issue #1 came out back in 2004, and PWZ just didn't capture the feel of the writing from that book at all.<br /><br />Throwing in a bunch of unrelated villains who in their own right ranged from pretty interesting to very in their own right were shoehorned in to this movie so the creators could say "see it's based off the MAX comic look at all theses characters", Maginty reduced to parkouring meth head, Ink and Pittsy neutered background characters, the Bulats characters from probably Garth's best storyline reduced to pointless fan service MacGuffins.<br /><br />Yeah, Ennis' humor is black and has a lot of wit to it, this movie had no wit to it. <br /><br />As for the 2004 Punisher, read The Punisher: Year One (which Hensleigh cited as one of the main influences for the movie, among others), Frank Castle he mourns, drinks, he contemplates suicide and he investigates what the hell happened. Not to mention various other scenes from the comics were used as influence, and of course the Welcome Back, Frank story. The fire hydrant, I wasn't a fan of that either so fuck it, but as for everything else Frank Castle has gone the more cunning elaborate route before in the comics as opposed to all pray and spray all the time. <br /><br />As for the origin, I'll say this the how may have changed, but the why stayed the same. <br /><br />(Oh and here's an extra bit of trivia regarding the Punisher and Florida, Marvel Super Action #1, the Punisher goes down to Florida to kill the people responsible for the death of his family).<br /><br />"The horrendous excesses of Travolta from 2004 are not replicated here." Travolta reigned it the fuck in for The Punisher, if you want to talk about horrendous excess that is Dominic West sadly, a great actor giving such a shitty hammy performance, well that just makes me sad.<br /><br />With the advertising, for me I saw plenty of ads on TV and billboards and what have you as I did the 2004 film. And the 2004 film was released against bigger films like Kill Bill Vol. 2 and Man on Fire and still did decent at the box office, PWZ did get screwed in release date, I'll give you that, but still worse than Howard the Duck.<br /><br />IMDb is hardly the bastion of reliability, I've seen the budget for PWZ to be $35 million. And even then it's been quoted that The Punisher was only shot for around $13-$15 million, so that $22 million could just mean the shooting budget. Which means, again PWZ had more money to work with.<br /><br />As for being dull, you could say the same thing about PWZ as the whole middle section of the movie has nothing going on other than crappy accents and over acting.Mikenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-585323794423400780.post-37266727326622931182009-08-15T23:20:43.002-04:002009-08-15T23:20:43.002-04:00You're entirely wrong about the finished film ...You're entirely wrong about the finished film lacking the feel of the book, but since that's an entirely subjective matter, that must be chalked up to a lack of judgment on your part and put aside.<br /><br />What isn't subjective is the effort to bring the character and his world from the book to the page. A large portion of PWZ was drawn directly from the comics, particularly the MAX run. This wasn't just characters offered up for "fan service." Scenes, sets, lines of dialog, the experiment with the cinematography I mentioned, Ennis' black-as-pitch sense of humor--it's all there. PWZ's director, cast, and crew went out of their way to replicate the look and feel of the comic. The director, cinematographer, and star were in love with the source material, and that's obvious in every frame of the film.<br /><br />This certainly compares quite favorably to both earlier attempts at a Punisher film, neither of which showed much evidence that the filmmakers had ever even cracked a Punisher comic. The 2004 movie, for example, threw out the entirety of the Punisher's simple and to-the-point "origin" story in favor of a completely different, pointlessly elaborate, and very bad one that seems to have been written for no other reason that to pad the running time, and that removed any reason for the character to continue his crusade beyond what we see in that film. It wasn't much of a "crusade," either. The 2004 film is actually weaker than even the Dolph Lundgren vehicle in that respect. The Punisher is a blood-and-thunder, fire-and-brimstone, bring-down-hell-on-evildoers, grim reaper sort of guy. Most of the running time of the Thomas Jane picture is spent showing him doing things like moving that fire hydrant, stealing that jewelry, setting up that Travolta buddy and Travolta's wife. Very awe-inspiring. Very in keeping with what has made the Punisher a success.<br /><br />Actually, it's just very dumb. And dull. If it weren't for the killers sent to take him out, there would have been barely any action at all in the film. You can call that what you'd like--it ain't the Punisher.<br /><br />(If that film had worked, it wouldn't have mattered so much that the filmmakers had completely ignored the source material. It was dull garbage, though, usually <i>because</i> they choose to ignore the books.)<br /><br />The acting in PWZ is as solid as one could get in this sort of picture. The horrendous excesses of Travolta from 2004 are not replicated here. The actors are perfectly suited for their roles, without a single false note.<br /><br />As for box-office success, it's a measure that doesn't have a great deal of meaning when it comes to PWZ, because of the studio's treatment of the film. The studio spent a fortune advertising the 2004 film, and kept it in theaters for nearly 3 months, and, in that time, it only grossed its original budget domestically--didn't break even until the foreign numbers. PWZ, by contrast, was given virtually no advertising, and entirely pulled from theaters after only a few days, with only a cursory foreign release after (few countries ever even got the film). No one ever even had a chance to see it; few who don't make it a point to follow such things ever even knew it existed. IMDb reports that PWZ had a budget of $22 million, compared to $33 million for the unfortunate 2004 film.cinemarchaeologisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13507603255666191405noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-585323794423400780.post-17057089656966860212009-08-15T20:22:24.394-04:002009-08-15T20:22:24.394-04:00It was garbage, it was just a few decent looking a...It was garbage, it was just a few decent looking action scenes and pointless fan service, on top horrible acting. It did not capture the feel of the MAX series at all, well superficially, it had a bunch of characters from the comic shoehorned in for fan service and violence, but story wise it didn't even come close to having the feel. Just having someone getting shot in the head and saying in an interview it's meant to be darkly comedic like comic, doesn't make it so. The 2004 film had trouble with that aspect too, but it did have that dry/black Garth Ennis wit every now and then, more so than PWZ.<br /><br />To say no one saw PWZ because of the last movie, is BS (you may not have liked it but it is the only Punisher movie to financially successful) people didn't see it because it was released in December and probably because bad word of mouth.<br /><br />As for the budget thing, they were fairly the same, PWZ probably had a bit more actually. PWZ used mostly TV actors and sound stages/green screen/CG blood/CG explosions etc.... Whereas the Punisher did everything practically with only about $13-$15 million to actually shoot with (they didn't even have the budget to shoot in Canada). So it's actually The Punisher that cost less to make but still made back about double its budget. While PWZ did worse than Howard the Duck with the better budget.<br /><br />Oh and the 2004 film wasn't upstaged by a long shot, it has its issues sure, what movie doesn't? I've read plenty of Punisher comics and I see it as a pretty good representation of the character. Considering it was using the Year One story, the portrayal of Castle was pretty accurate to that book.Mikenoreply@blogger.com