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Post by crazyoldhermit on Aug 17, 2015 6:29:49 GMT -5
Re: Punisher War Zone
I'm not familiar enough with Jigsaw to know if he was way out of character for this film or not. I did take note of how much the movie borrowed from the first Keaton Batman picture - the Alexander Knox-like stand-in, the mob doctor unveiling the new Billy Russo, the "You look great"/"I didn't ask" vs. "Do I do your makeup for you" scene, and so on - so I suspect that Jigsaw too, was influenced by Jack Nicholson's Joker, but I looked at the film the same way I view Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein - as long the Punisher (the monsters) get played straight, I don't care how cartoony other elements become. Like I said, not knowing enough about Jigsaw (the only comics I've read with him in them is the six-part Jigsaw Puzzle from the 80's/90's Punisher series and his appearance in the 1986 Grant/Zeck series) may actually help if his appearance here is drastically different from the comics and I guess my ignorance of that difference isn't going to exactly sway anyone's opinion (anymore than comparing him with Abbott and Costello, I suspect) but, I don't know, it felt like whatever liberties taken with the source material itself, for once paid off onscreen which is a rarity for superhero films.
I will note that Ennis' run had a lot of humour - I mean, the first page in his first issue opens with the Punisher telling a drug dealer to "Get a haircut" and the Russian is clearly a darkly comic villain. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Just to clarify, I wasn't criticizing Jigsaw for acting out of character, I was criticizing the movie for being so inconsistent in tone. The movie could have worked as a full on Marvel Knights-style comedy, where Jigsaw's characterization would have been right at home, but they weren't committed to it and they just didn't have the writing. The Marvel Knights series was hilarious but with the exception of one scene the movie's gags fell flat. Things just weren't pushed hard enough and when it comes to comedic Punisher things needed to be pushed to the extreme. Ennis's influence for the Marvel Knights run was Looney Tunes, with Frank playing the role of Bugs Bunny going up against Elmer Fudd, Wile E. Coyote and Yosemite Sam. It really just seemed like someone told Lexi Alexander that Garth Ennis wrote good Punisher stories so she went out and bought Welcome Back Frank and The Slavers and just combined them without realizing they're meant to be different things. Weirdly enough, the Thomas Jane movie had the same problem with the Russian being completely out of place in the otherwise dour 70s revenge flick throwback. |
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Post by batlaw on Aug 17, 2015 14:51:44 GMT -5
Re: Punisher War Zone
I'm not familiar enough with Jigsaw to know if he was way out of character for this film or not. I did take note of how much the movie borrowed from the first Keaton Batman picture - the Alexander Knox-like stand-in, the mob doctor unveiling the new Billy Russo, the "You look great"/"I didn't ask" vs. "Do I do your makeup for you" scene, and so on - so I suspect that Jigsaw too, was influenced by Jack Nicholson's Joker, but I looked at the film the same way I view Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein - as long the Punisher (the monsters) get played straight, I don't care how cartoony other elements become. Like I said, not knowing enough about Jigsaw (the only comics I've read with him in them is the six-part Jigsaw Puzzle from the 80's/90's Punisher series and his appearance in the 1986 Grant/Zeck series) may actually help if his appearance here is drastically different from the comics and I guess my ignorance of that difference isn't going to exactly sway anyone's opinion (anymore than comparing him with Abbott and Costello, I suspect) but, I don't know, it felt like whatever liberties taken with the source material itself, for once paid off onscreen which is a rarity for superhero films.
I will note that Ennis' run had a lot of humour - I mean, the first page in his first issue opens with the Punisher telling a drug dealer to "Get a haircut" and the Russian is clearly a darkly comic villain. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Just to clarify, I wasn't criticizing Jigsaw for acting out of character, I was criticizing the movie for being so inconsistent in tone. The movie could have worked as a full on Marvel Knights-style comedy, where Jigsaw's characterization would have been right at home, but they weren't committed to it and they just didn't have the writing. The Marvel Knights series was hilarious but with the exception of one scene the movie's gags fell flat. Things just weren't pushed hard enough and when it comes to comedic Punisher things needed to be pushed to the extreme. Ennis's influence for the Marvel Knights run was Looney Tunes, with Frank playing the role of Bugs Bunny going up against Elmer Fudd, Wile E. Coyote and Yosemite Sam. It really just seemed like someone told Lexi Alexander that Garth Ennis wrote good Punisher stories so she went out and bought Welcome Back Frank and The Slavers and just combined them without realizing they're meant to be different things. Weirdly enough, the Thomas Jane movie had the same problem with the Russian being completely out of place in the otherwise dour 70s revenge flick throwback. Yeah, inconsistencies is another flaw of this movie. Soap for example goes from being simply meek and clumsy to full on special needs by the end. Don't know when or why ennis version became considered he quintessential one, but he sure doesn't define the character for me. |
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Post by Trevor on Aug 17, 2015 16:44:28 GMT -5
I don't get bothered by "incorrect" characterization in my comics or comic movies. I figure that I could probably find inconsistencies and contradictions in every other page if I really tried, so I just relax and enjoy each arc/version/issue for what it is. I think Punisher War Zone was one of the best comic book movies ever, at the time of its release.
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Post by Paste Pot Paul on Aug 18, 2015 16:55:15 GMT -5
I dont get Usagi Yojimbo, Ive tried a number of times because so many here rave over it, however...hmm.
I feel like I would be better reading Lone Wolf, maybe its the anthropomorphic thingy, Im not really into any cartoony books (bugs, scrooge, or turtles etc) and find that hard to get past, but what I did read seemed ... boring.
I now expect to get well and truly flamed.
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Post by Rob Allen on Aug 18, 2015 18:39:10 GMT -5
We don't flame here, we just try to explain why something appeals to us, so maybe you can look at it again with fresh eyes.
If you like Lone Wolf & Cub but not Usagi Yojimbo, then you're right, the anthropomorphic animal aspect might just be a deal-breaker for you. In Usagi, the people all look like animals. Other than that, it's a samurai story like LW&C.
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Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
Making comics!
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Post by Crimebuster on Aug 18, 2015 19:09:19 GMT -5
I now expect to get well and truly flamed.  |
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 19, 2015 20:41:23 GMT -5
I was sure when he typed flamed, there would be a pic of Liberace.
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Post by Paste Pot Paul on Aug 19, 2015 21:53:20 GMT -5
We don't flame here, we just try to explain why something appeals to us, so maybe you can look at it again with fresh eyes. Sounds like my Lady and I, we dont argue, we just heatedly discuss exactly where I went wrong. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 24, 2015 15:34:45 GMT -5
I dont get Usagi Yojimbo, Ive tried a number of times because so many here rave over it, however...hmm. I feel like I would be better reading Lone Wolf, maybe its the anthropomorphic thingy, Im not really into any cartoony books (bugs, scrooge, or turtles etc) and find that hard to get past, but what I did read seemed ... boring. I now expect to get well and truly flamed. I think the beauty of Usagi takes a while to realize. If I had just picked up a couple random issues, I might not have stuck with it. First off, I personally love the art. Yes, they're animals instead of people, but the details are amazing. It's NOT a cartoony book at all. If you got that impression, you read the wrong stories. There are a couple mainly for comedy stories, but 85-90% of them are just as serious as Lone Wolf and Cub. Then there's the actual storytelling. The fact that their animals instead of people doesn't make them less well developed. LW&C, for all that it's a good, intense story, doesn't have the character development. Finally, there's the historical references. If you don't want to learn about what x idol means, or how kites or soy sauce are made, fine. I love those touches. LW&C has a bit of that, but not as much. Usagi certainly owes some (as Stan Sakai has often said), to LW&C, but I'd say he surpassed it.. there's a wealth of interesting characters (not just 2), and the historical information you get is amazing... especially if you take the time to read the liner notes. I can totally see being put off by the animals though.. the characters aren't that well-differentiated visually.. especially the non-important ones. That's a problem LOTS of artists (human drawing or otherwise) have. No flames here, btw, you're welcome to your opinion, even if it's wrong  |
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Post by Warmonger on Aug 24, 2015 18:21:39 GMT -5
Punisher Warzone was shit all around
From the shitty CGI gore, to the goofy chandelier scene, to the horrible screenplay, to the incredibly hammy performance by Dominic as Jigsaw, to Ray Stephenson breaking down and weeping as Frank on like 3 different occasions.
Hands down the worst of the three Punisher movies IMO.
Even the old straight to video movie with Dolph Lundgren was better. If just for the monologues alone.
Hopefully Jon Bernthal will really do the character justice in the 2nd season of Daredevil.
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Post by Ozymandias on Oct 14, 2015 17:52:06 GMT -5
[Moore] admitted that ABC and 1963 were in part a refutation of his past opinions on superhero comics. I seem to remember he was trying to undo, the damage that came afterwards, as a result of copycats. Most of his followers and various imitators never seemed to learn the lesson that superheroes break down and stop working when held up to the mirror of grim and gritty reality. The lesson they never learned, was that there is something else to reality, other than "grim and gritty". That's the only difference they could appreciate, so they focused on it. Civil War would probably top my list. What makes it particularly heinous in my eyes is that it's not a thoughtful deconstruction, like Watchmen, but is instead an admission by the creators that the idealization of the heroic ideal is no longer a valid concept. Agreed on it not being a deconstruction per se, but I don't think it was trying to invalidate the whole concept of heroics, just putting it in a "somewhat" more realistic context. Mainstream superhero's, for me at least, work better as a sort of safe-haven for those ideals. Just because that sort of thing isn't sexy for a lot of writers to deal with, doesn't mean that it should be scrapped altogether. That's lazy and not seeing idealization for the broad-stroke thought experiment that it could be. Once you suddenly have the government say "Hey, shouldn't these guys be registered?" you can't help but feel that these guys are taking the genre far more seriously that they should. We're already accepting a lot of silly (form a real-world perspective) conventional conceits with the superhero genre as is and trying to force this level of stark, real world, psychological realism into the mix, for sake of topicality, simply acts to accentuate those conceit-based absurdities, paradoxically making the genre even MORE absurd. I'd say that the ideal, has been explored in the superhero genre for quite so time, enough to say that the thought experiment, has already birthed all the philosophically relevant offspring, it was capable of procuring. In the process, some authors have taken the genre as seriously as it can, which I wouldn't label "too much". As for that effort, being responsible of generating some absurdities…. Stories like that should be told, but in the framework of creator-owned universes designed from the ground up to display a different psychology and philosophy. The last 30 years or so Marvel and DC seem to have been constantly trying to fit square pegs into round holes. … I can see how it could be viewed in such a light, when trying to force reality into some well-stablished characters. |
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Post by berkley on Oct 14, 2015 21:53:49 GMT -5
We don't flame here, we just try to explain why something appeals to us, so maybe you can look at it again with fresh eyes. If you like Lone Wolf & Cub but not Usagi Yojimbo, then you're right, the anthropomorphic animal aspect might just be a deal-breaker for you. In Usagi, the people all look like animals. Other than that, it's a samurai story like LW&C. This certainly applies to me: comics is a visual medium and the look of the artwork, the stylistic choices made by the artist, can be a deal-breaker for me. Making all the characters anthropomorphic animals doesn't work for me in this kind of story, where I'm looking for a heightened sense of drama and excitement. It seems to me the funny animal appearance of the actors in this action-drama will work against all that - so much so that I question the motivation behind that decision and the reason why so many readers enjoy it (no offence to the artist or to individual fans intended, of course) |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 14, 2015 22:03:56 GMT -5
We don't flame here, we just try to explain why something appeals to us, so maybe you can look at it again with fresh eyes. If you like Lone Wolf & Cub but not Usagi Yojimbo, then you're right, the anthropomorphic animal aspect might just be a deal-breaker for you. In Usagi, the people all look like animals. Other than that, it's a samurai story like LW&C. This certainly applies to me: comics is a visual medium and the look of the artwork, the stylistic choices made by the artist, can be a deal-breaker for me. Making all the characters anthropomorphic animals doesn't work for me in this kind of story, where I'm looking for a heightened sense of drama and excitement. It seems to me the funny animal appearance of the actors in this action-drama will work against all that - so much so that I question the motivation behind that decision and the reason why so many readers enjoy it (no offence to the artist or to individual fans intended, of course) Do you feel the same way about art spiegleman's Maus? Just curious. -M |
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Post by Icctrombone on Oct 15, 2015 10:13:51 GMT -5
So, pakehafulla over in that 'what have you read' thread gave me an idea. What stories/comics just completely escape you, despite being sought after/acclaimed/revered by everyone else? Alan Moore's Lost Girls... I mean, who really does that with a horse? I love Moores stuff, but I'm afraid to buy Lost Girls... |
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Post by Icctrombone on Oct 15, 2015 10:17:49 GMT -5
If the death of the Swordsman doesn't wet your eyes a little bit, I question whether you have a soul. Meh. To care about a sacrifice, you have to care about the character. There are plenty out there that were moving... that just wasn't one of them for me. Agree with this. Swordsman wasn't a compelling character. The whole Celestial saga fell flat for me, maybe because the art was average to poor. |
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