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As the summer season starts winding down and we look back at the list of superhero movies making their debut this year many will be leaving the upcoming Punisher War Zone movie off their list and for good reason. Between the laughable trailer the removal of the director by the studio and the addition of heavy metal as opposed to an original soundtrack this film is setting up to be the third-strike-your-out in the history of The Punisher.

Starting with the Dolph Lundgren 80s film, moving through the recent attempt by Thomas Jane to bring the vigilante killer to life and ending with this new attempt, nobody has managed to find that which makes Frank Castle aka The Punisher so appealing to legions of comic book fans. Castle started out as one shot character that has turned into a legend, so why can’t studios bring him to the screen without f***ing it up? I think I have some ideas.

First and foremost they don’t take the character seriously, which kills it before it even gets to the script mode. Tim Burton did this with Batman, by trying to turn him into a pop culture event complete with one-liners and a thumping Prince soundtrack. Burton and his cronies didn’t take the Batman mythos seriously and what we got was a big budget version of the TV show. Not until Chris Nolan came along did anyone really take Batman seriously.

I draw the parallel because The Punisher is an extreme version of Batman with no money. He lost his family, he has incredible gifts when it comes to combat and tactics and he’s hell-bent on dispensing justice. The only difference is Castle wants to kill and doesn’t have all the gadgets. Where the two arrive in a confluence is with their thought process, the thing that drives them to do what they do. Studios miss that opting instead to make this homage to eighties Schwarzenegger films. Frank Castle is a man in pain and he’s chosen the most extreme way to exercise his demons. That’s what needs to happen with The Punisher movie. Stop making him Arnold from Commando and start making him DeNiro from Taxi Driver.

As I see it the film should be gritty and violent the way Taxi Driver was. Open with Castle walking the streets of New York, not yet The Punisher but obviously alone and coming unglued. We should be introduced to his rudimentary life of working some shit job and coming home and drinking, pining for his dead family. Show his slow descent into madness through the same matter-of-fact voice over’s DeNiro did for Taxi Driver. Have him talk about losing his job the death of his family. Show the deaths in flashbacks or dreams with brutal realistic violence. Imagine these sad shots of Castle in a bad suit with a big tie in a courtroom watching as the men who murdered his family are let go on a technicality. He should seem like a small man swallowed up by circumstance, both sad and pathetic.

I see Castle spotting one of the killers later on and following him, stalking him as this killer lives a carefree lifestyle. He would approach the killer the way DeNiro approached Harvey Keitel’s pimp in Taxi Driver. The exchange should be more about the killer not even remembering Castle nor his family. Imagine being as lost and pent up as Castle is and hearing this man who gunned down your family not even remember, acting like it’s no big deal. That would send Castle over the edge, his self-pity turning to rage.

Castle kills the guy with a knife, stabs him several times in the stomach. When the killer’s hired thugs try to intervene Frank kicks into survival mode and kills them all. Bloody but alive for the first time Frank points a gun at the main killer’s head as he lays dying from the stab wounds. The killer screams, “You f***, this is murder.” And Frank, suddenly not alone and sad but very cold and determined says “No, this is punishment” and blows the guy away.

From there the film should be Frank designing his costume, have him make the skull on the shirt for whatever reason he needs to. Don’t try to explain it just have it there with his outfit. Frank should begin small, killing drug dealers and pimps and taking their weapons. The film should build with Frank moving up the ranks dealing out punishment.

Don’t start him taking on the mob show him coming back to the killer he was before he lost his job. The more he kills the easier it is and the more he feels like what he’s doing is right. The entire time we should be hearing only from Frank, the external characters should be just that, external not really part of the movie. No good buddies, no kind hearted people he meets in his building just humans who exist outside of his ability to deal with them.

When Castle finally finds the head of the mob family that murdered his family the vengeance should be brutal and unmerciful. Do away with the big action sequence that ends with cars blowing up in the shape of a Punisher skull, that’s stupid. That isn’t the character, that isn’t what Frank Castle is about. At the end of the film nobody is close to catching him, Frank only has the small amount of weapons he’s stolen and still lives in a shitty apartment, no cool car or awesome weapons or workshop or any of that. It’s just him and what he has inside that carry him through.

The only way a Punisher movie will work is if you humanize Frank Castle. We need to watch him start at point A and move to point B; we need to see him grow from disillusioned and depressed to vengeful and mercenary. If we care about the man then we care about the film and it will become a great movie not just a big budget first person shooter.