Comic Con: 'Punisher: War Zone' looks a little lackluster
Jul 25, 2008, 01:14 PM | by Dafna Pleban
Categories: Comic-Con 2008
Not a remake, not a sequel, Lionsgate and Marvel
Studio's new Punisher: War Zone looks to do the same
for Frank Castle as the recent Hulk did for ol
Bruce Banner. The only difference is, unfortunately, that at this point, War Zone kind of looks, well, bad.
Now played by Ray Stevenson (2004's Punisher movie starred Thomas Jane), Frank Castle is back in New York, and smack dab in the middle of a turf war started by the grotesque Jigsaw (Dominic West). Yet despite the fact that the folks behind the film repeatedly promised the audience that this Punisher reboot will play to the fanboys -- the story is based on Garth Ennis' work; there'll be cameos by comic-fan favorites Microchip, Martin Soap and Budiansky; the look will closely resemble Tim Bradstreet's artwork; and, as producer Gale Anne Hurde put it, there will be "ruthless, ultra-violent, vigilante justice" -- the clips shown here at Comic-Con failed to inspire.
Maybe it's the newly cut, candy-colored teaser they showed us -- Frank looked great...it was everyone and everything around him that was questionable -- or maybe my geek hackles were raised at the producers' tired insistence that everything we saw was straight out of the comic. From the badly situated press section, where the podium not only obscured Hurde's face, but part of the projection screen as well, you could've fooled me.
The weird angles, the super-saturated colors, and the stilted dialog combined to leave me feeling deflated: I wanted to get stupdily excited for this film, both as a comic geek, and a TV snob who wants Titus Pullo and Detective McNulty to get the financial and critical success they deserve.
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