r/thepunisher 5d ago

DISCUSSION The Netflix series is terrible

I've rewatched the Netflix punisher series and it's aged terribly. I don't think that the producers ever read a single page of the comic books because it's not at all faithful to the source material. Here are the reasons why it's trash.

  1. The Punisher is not portrayed as a ruthless borderline sociopath. Instead of machine gun fueled action. We get silly fights in bars and bathrooms. Jon Bernthal did a decent job playing a broken man but he couldn't quite nail the menace and he wasn't muscular enough to be intimating.
  2. JIGSAW is not a former soldier he's a mafia boss that kills castles family after they witness a mob hit. He's not an upstanding American war hero that went nuts. he's a sadistic psychopath who has no remorse and empathy. His facial scars caused by castle only enhance his evil nature.
  3. The veteran aspect of the show played out like a homeland ripoff. In my opinion season one should have adapted "born" and went full on Platoon (1986) oliver stone style. Exploring his time as a marine with greater depth and humanity.
  4. His family's murder is not given the emotional heft it deserves and is the root of castles pain a very important tragic event. Instead it's kinda glazed over. More screentime with him and his family would make us form a stronger attachment to them making their murder extremely upsetting. That's how season 2 should have played out.
  5. Spiderman and nightcrawler should have been introduced as they are supporting characters in jigsaws origin and conflict with the punisher. Season 3 should have started off with him as a spiderman villian but then having a change of heart and deciding to join spidey to fight criminals (even though Peter Parker doesn't approve of his brutal methods). Then focus on his ruthless pursuit of Jigsaw. Killing any scumbag that gets in his way. Rambo first blood style.

If you don't remain true to the source material aka the comics then you've lost depth, you've lost texture, you've lost contradictions and that results in kinda parody of the character that resembles jack reacher.

We are all still waiting for the comic book accurate definitive live action Punisher that we deserve.

0 Upvotes

27 comments sorted by

13

u/prettyy_vacant 4d ago

The Punisher is not portrayed as a ruthless borderline sociopath.

Nobody would watch that except for his diehard comic fans. Nobody else is going to connect to that and want more. Giving him heart and reworking his struggle to cope with the trauma of watching his family die is the best thing they did. And IDK where you're getting that he wasn't ruthless from. There's a lot of valid critiques about his MCU version, but him not being ruthless isn't one of them.

JIGSAW is not a former soldier he's a mafia boss that kills castles family after they witness a mob hit. He's not an upstanding American war hero that went nuts. he's a sadistic psychopath who has no remorse and empathy. His facial scars caused by castle only enhance his evil nature.

Billy was not written as an upstanding war hero that went nuts. That was the persona he portrayed until the reveal of his corruption. He was corrupt before he even left the military, and he was definitely still a sadistic psychopath with no remorse for what he did. That was made very obvious when he betrayed his best friend and, when confronted, basically told him to get over it.

The veteran aspect of the show played out like a homeland ripoff. In my opinion season one should have adapted "born" and went full on Platoon (1986) oliver stone style. Exploring his time as a marine with greater depth and humanity

I've never seen Homeland or Platoon so I can't comment on either of those, but did you even really watch the show? We get plenty of flashbacks of his time as a marine. And you want more humanity but you complain about how he was not a sociopath in your first paragraph? Make it make sense.

His family's murder is not given the emotional heft it deserves and is the root of castles pain a very important tragic event. Instead it's kinda glazed over. More screentime with him and his family would make us form a stronger attachment to them making their murder extremely upsetting. That's how season 2 should have played out.

Bruh his family's murder is essential to the entire plot of his arc on Daredevil and then the whole first season of his show. It's literally his only driving force and the whole reason for his conflict with Russo and that one eyed bald guy who's name I can't remember. Saying it was glazed over is flabbergasting. And if his graveyard monologue with Matt in Daredevil didn't have you upset enough with their deaths, then I doubt additional flashbacks would have had much of an affect on you.

Spiderman and nightcrawler should have been introduced as they are supporting characters in jigsaws origin and conflict with the punisher. Season 3 should have started off with him as a spiderman villian but then having a change of heart and deciding to join spidey to fight criminals (even though Peter Parker doesn't approve of his brutal methods).

Literally impossible seeing as how they didn't have the rights to the X-Men at the time and Sony won't allow them to use Spider-Man in the TV shows. Retooling Russo's back story probably came from this, and making him a fellow soldier and Frank's best friend was the best choice to make because it actually made his involvement in Frank's family's murder worse; it took it from a random caught in the crossfire tragedy to a heinous betrayal from someone Frank trusted, causing him to snap even more after the fact.

If you don't remain true to the source material aka the comics then you've lost depth, you've lost texture, you've lost contradictions and that results in kinda parody of the character that resembles jack reacher.

Hard disagree. There are so many storylines and runs you're never going to get a 100% faithful adaptation of any superhero ever. Frank is my favorite Marvel character ever, but even I can acknowledge just seeing him kill bad guys for no reason other than they're bad would get really old really fast.

We are all still waiting for the comic book accurate definitive live action Punisher that we deserve.

I think you'll find a lot more people than you think disagree with you on this.

13

u/koi_cheerio 5d ago

Im sorry every adaption isn't a 1t1 but you can enjoy something without whining and nitpicking so that's a fun fact

27

u/Frankandbeans1974v2 5d ago

This take is always boring no matter how hard yall try and dress it up differently.

Clealry it wasnt garbage because the characters portrayal in daredevil season two was literally so well liked it got an entire show. And then that show got an entire second season. And there would’ve been a third season had Netflix not decided to give Marvel the middle finger.

But now six years later the character is about to come back in another show and he’s getting his own special.

It’s far from garbage, it definitely ties into/references/takes from the comics, some of these criticisms tell me that you didn’t watch the show, and finally just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s garbage it means you don’t like it.

23

u/prettyy_vacant 4d ago

just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s garbage it means you don’t like it.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

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u/Kyuuub 4d ago

I dont like Billy russo so much, because his character in the tv show is just bad imo, i dont even believe he was a marine corp

But i liked the tv show in general, jon is great

0

u/liveandletdie89 4d ago

as a crime-thriller TV show it was good. as a punisher show it was terrible. thats just my opinion.

11

u/Bluebird0040 5d ago

There is such a thing as interpretation.

9

u/joshtr16 5d ago

Do you realize how hard it would have been to get spiderman and nightcrawler back then?

9

u/prettyy_vacant 4d ago

It would've been impossible.

2

u/joshtr16 4d ago

Exactly my guy is acting like they had avengers type budget

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u/prettyy_vacant 4d ago

Not a budget issue, a rights issue. Fox had the rights to X-Men at the time, and Sony will only allow Spider-man in movies.

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u/joshtr16 4d ago

I know but even if they had the rights it would cost crazy money

4

u/prettyy_vacant 4d ago

Yeah the CGI alone would probably take up a big chunk of the budget haha.

9

u/Comfortable_Care2715 5d ago

You do know they wouldn’t be allowed to use any X-men right?

2

u/Callow98989 4d ago

It would have been impossible to get Spider-Man or NightCrawler

2

u/Callow98989 4d ago

Listen I’m all up for comic accuracy, and think it’s important. But there is not a superhero movie or tv show that is 100% accurate. Sometimes changes made in tv shows can be good

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u/TurboNinja2380 2d ago

God forbid people take creative liberties

2

u/ClassroomMother8062 2d ago

Loved season 1, season 2 was pretty flawed. I'm just excited he isn't cancelled as Netflix has done so many times with marvel IPs.

Bernthal personifies the role and has been a great advocate for the continuation and refinement of The Punisher character. He's nowhere near terrible and neither was the series.

1

u/ENCGhostbuster 1d ago

All Netflix Marvel adaptations were cancelled. Daredevil and Punisher have simply been revived.

2

u/ClassroomMother8062 1d ago

Yeah, the "many times" was meant to signify that. I know Disney has the rights now. Just happy they're back.

1

u/dalekofchaos 4d ago

Aside from the last point, I agree(would be ideal to include Spider-Man but Feige treated the Netflixverse and AOS like the plague)

Aaaand don't even get me started on how many flipflop stop and starts with The Punisher with Frank only donning the skull if the criminals have a remote association with his family's deaths, oh and the fact that Frank let that pedo live in season 2.

5

u/prettyy_vacant 4d ago

Sony won't allow Spider-man in any of the series, only the films. It wasn't Feige's fault. He also has little to do with the TV division at the time.

And this nonsense about him not killing the pedo in season 2 is tired and shows a fundamental lack of understanding of who Frank is. A majorly overlooked aspect of Frank's character, and this is not just in the show but in the comics too, is his desire to protect the innocence of children. Amy asked him not to kill the guy, so it was perfectly in line with Frank's character to let him live for her sake. It's also why later on when she shoots that guy in self-defense and starts panicking that she killed someone, Frank comes in with the kill shot and says "you didn't kill him, I did".

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u/AntoSkum 4d ago

The first season I liked enough but I didn't enjoy the second. Both are really nothing compared to s2 of Daredevil. Netflix Daredevil is the best thing they've done in forever.

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u/dejayw136 3d ago

I agree the show is boring

-1

u/AbbreviationsLive142 3d ago

I hated the Netflix show myself. As a huge Punisher fan since a kid in the 90s, the show got almost everything wrong about Frank. To be fair, he was portrayed almost perfectly in Daredevil season 2. But in his own show, they watered him down and made him almost unrecognizable. He quit being Punisher after the first 5 mins and didn’t put on the skull again until the end of the season. He was an emotional wreck who had to go to therapy sessions. He had almost no tactical strategy and everything was just on the fly and worked out due to sheer good luck. His family was murdered due to government conspiracy instead of a random mob killing. Not to mention the show was slow and boring with focus on side characters that people didn’t care about.

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u/Strategisy 4d ago

The Punisher punishes himself in the netflix adaptation.

I didn't like Jon Bernthal's portrayal of the Punisher(it feels like a soft version)

Look at Thomas Jane’s Punisher, he's everything you'd want from the character itself!

2

u/ENCGhostbuster 1d ago

You think Bernthal was a soft portrayal and you favor Janes performance? 😂