2000 AD Online Forum

WHAT IN THE HECK IS IT???????????????????????????

I watched it last night and could hardly sleep afterwards because I was so confused. I watched it late and consumed a whole bottle of wine while watching it so now in the cold hard light of day it feels a bit like a dream...was it really that bad?

Did they really attempt "comedy"?

When the bullets started to fly at the family get together and a woman in loose fitting "pants" fell over screaming, did Tom Jane really look up and out of the window and say "mom?" in such a way that it sounded like a giant ingot had fallen out of his mouth?

Please somebody help me, my head hurts.

No you werent confused it really is that shit.

Wasn't Kevin "Diesal" Nash great as the Russian?

Did it actually come out in the cinemas over here?

"Did it actually come out in the cinemas over here?"

Briefly.  Was gone before I could find anyone willing to go and see it with me.

"It's supposed to be totally shit" seemed to be the consenus of most friends I asked.

Well I enjoyed it :p

I enjoyed it too. BUt then, I was given a pirate copy for nothing by a guy in work, so never had to spend my hard earned money on it.

Well that makes us a right dodgy pair, although i would have been happy to pay for the cinema or rent the DVD but if i'd bought it i'd probably be a bit miffed

I too saw a pirated copy and still felt robbed. An hour and a half which I could have put to better use by just re-reading the comics.

I just flogged it to a bloke behind the counter in my kocal gamestation for ?8. But I'll never recoup the time. Bah.

Thumbs up from me, aswell.

Just saw it. It seems like someone loaded a shotgun full of cliches and fired it at my screen several times, but without any real sense of how to aim.

F

I still think the Older version(you know the one with Dolph in it)works better as a Punisher movie. Pah Icey pole BLowtorch and a Steak thats all I'll say to you. Speaking of Punisher anyone played the game yet, based on the Ennis run of comics it sound quite disturbing, its got sequences where you torture info out of hte bad guys but its really easy to go to far and just toss em into the garden mulcher(done through button presses) or push em face first into a pirahana pool...sick. Like the idea that as Frank gets more Phsycotic the music and in game sound fx start to get drowned out by the sound of Franks family getting slaughtered. anyone played yet?

CU Krestel

You can download the demo from Fileplanet and other downloady type sites (I've posted a link.) I briefly played it and it seemed quite fun, a bit like a poor man's Max Payne with added torture. You get to do the piranah bit straight away, ouch!

Pete.

Link: Punisher demo download

cool, thanks for the link pitty I only have access to this shitty little work PC. Like Max Payne cant be too bad..

CU krestel

Just saw this last night.  Unbelievable.  The first 30 minutes are a complete snore as we crawl through the whole wife-and-kids murdered by the mob origins story, and we suddenly get dropped into Garth's Welcome Home Frank storyline from the comics.

The bit at the end - "Let criminals, psychos, rapists and scumbags feat me, for I am....The Punisher!" etc had a strangely familiar-sounding ring to it...

"Let criminals, psychos, rapists and scumbags feat me"?

He's a strange chap, isn't he?

I reckon cutting out all the homoerotic machismo of the Ennis version was a mistake.  At least then it would have been funny.

Found it highly amusing the movie kills his entire family rather than just his wife & child. Aunts, uncles, second cousins the lot.

I listened to the Director's Commentary. Apparently there was major budget cuts right before shooting. At least that's his story & he's sticking to it.

Just like the Masters Of The Universe movie....

But the Masters of the universe was great. Right?

Thought Punisher was pretty good when I saw it, but after much rumination I feel it is another opportunity missed to present Frank to the public properly. Frank wasn?t quite driven enough, although he is only starting out I suppose, and reacting to his family?s death, rather than planning and organizing the mass death of nasty criminals. The bit at the end where he said ?check the newspapers every day? showed promise for punisher 2 if they make it, which they probably won?t. The humour was faithful to that story with bumpo and dave and all that, but I think that the film should have been darker. The flats were very light, he should have been in a dank dark basement, but again it was faithful to that story. Also I think frank smiled which seems wrong. It was an ok film, but I want people out there to feel the punisher story and character properly. I think that all garth ennis? funnyish stuff, good as it was, was maybe a bit wrong for the punisher. Read the new punisher stuff (also by ennis, he has changed tack) and you will see what the film should have been. In fact the first story arc ?called something like  ?in the beginning? (you can get this in trade) ? reads as the film perhaps should be ? frank Is getting old (55ish) and is a real life legend that the mob is shit scared of? we get a horrible flashback of the family?s deaths, then frank gets on with it in horrible realism, with much less humour. The art is also astonishing at times in the first arc, can't remember who (maybe gutierrez). would really recommend.

Erm... I don't know *quite* how to put this, but I was working from the assumption that Ennis was taking the piss with the more angsty direction of the Punisher relaunch on the Marvel Knights line of books.
One cliffhanger, for instance, had Frank getting shot in the face with a shotgun point blank - the next issue, he was alive and the guy who shot him explains that the reason Frank's still alive is because the guy 'used those bullets they used in Northern Ireland'.  Yeeee-ees...  Because nobody ever got killed by a rubber bullet in Northern Ireland, did they?  Certainly not several yards from my front door about fifteen years ago...
Anyway - Ennis is still taking the piss, that's all I'm saying.  It's just that now, he's taking the piss out of the half-assed Ennis-wannabes he's been responsible for creating with Preacher.

Although - taking the piss or not - the 'Kitchen Irish' storyline was one of the worst comics stories I've read in quite some time.

i don't know *quite* how to put this, but your assumption is not the revelation you imply it to be, merely another opinion, and not necessarily a correct one. i don't know garth ennis personally but i would be surprised if he changed the direction of a book just to 'take the piss', as you suggest. he would have to have no respect for punisher readers or comics readers in general.  I thought perhaps he was reacting to the movie, which he knew was going to be shit, and based heavily on his stuff. he made a mistake about the rubber bullets, ok (and was dodgy cliffhanger). but still ennis has made the punisher a good comic, and i saw the relaunch as suggestion that he is working towards the improvement of the character.

Hmmmm. I dunno.  The character seems to be in some kind of limbo at any given moment in the book.  Apart from Micro, there's been very little by way of continuity to the relaunch, but then the character precludes continuity by dint of the core essence of the book - killer vigilante wages endless war against the mob.  Not really much need for character development there as long as the book remains readable - which it is.  Very much so, in fact.
As for Ennis not having any respect for Punisher readers, surely that's a criticism better levelled at his first run on the character, with the Russian, and the comedy body-piercer, the big fat guy, and the first page Ennis ever wrote for the book even had a dig at guys with long hair.  By contrast, the current run is more or less identical to Mike Baron's run on the book about ten years ago, but with swearing and gore.
Saying he has no respect for comics readers is rather a subjective opinion, and one which begs the question why he's written them for over a decade.  Ennis is always entertaining, and my belief that he's having a dig at his (substandard) clones does nothing to change that.

Besides, as far as I'm aware, Warren Ellis is still monopolising the 'egomaniac comic-writer with contempt for his audience' tag.  Has anyone read his Invincible Iron Man yet?  A whole issue dedicated to having a hippy preach fifth-form pseudo-science to the reader.  Gripping stuff, I'm sure you'll agree.

bear, I did not criticise ennis the way you suggest. You should read have read my post properly before putting words in my mouth. I said that YOU were suggesting that ennis has no respect for punisher readers. I said that YOU were suggesting that ennis has no respect for comics readers. You suggest this by saying

 ?I was working from the assumption that Ennis was taking the piss with the more angsty direction of the Punisher relaunch on the Marvel Knights line of books? .

   Even if ennis is taking the piss out of other writers sometimes, this is surely not the driving force behind ennis? punisher.

As for ennis? first run, in my first post on this thread I also said that ennis first run was probably not the way frank should be done.
And I?ve just recently been re-reading that Mike Baron stuff and I found it quite different indeed in writing style. How you find it more or less identical I haven?t a clue.
And as for continuity, you seem to have successfully handled your own complaint there.

Are yeh wise?  Mike Baron's 'characterisation' of Frank pretty much pre-empted Ennis' interpretation - Frank was a psychopath, pure and simple.  A killing machine, with the human traits he sometimes displayed being no more than an almost mechanical reaction - rather than a warm predisposition - to, say, girlies or little orphans.  
How you can assume that a writer can't take the piss out of their chosen subject matter or other writers and still retain a respect for the intellectual standards of their audience is beyond me - it's perfectly possible to do both.  I wasn't saying Ennis had no respect for his readers - I was making a comment on his writing in *one* book in particular, a book which I've bought every issue of so far, which entitles me to give an opinion on it.  I've paid me cash, so I'll give my tuppence worth, if that's okay with you.  Mumblegrumble...

As for Ennis' first run at the Punisher - I realise full well that I'm probably in the minority in actually liking it, I was just pointing out that if you were going to criticise Ennis' Punisher, then the first few books were the place to start, as the mix of humour and ultraviolence gave it a more patchy feel than the current run, and I'll fight any man that says different.

From here, obviously.  Across the internet.  In the safety of my spare room.

am i wise? eh?

i said
"Even if ennis is taking the piss out of other writers sometimes, this is surely not the driving force behind ennis? punisher"

you said
 "How you can assume that a writer can't take the piss out of their chosen subject matter or other writers and still retain a respect for the intellectual standards of their audience is beyond me - it's perfectly possible to do both."

duh

you grumble that you should be allowed to voice your opinion cos you bought every issue so far - inferring that i am attempting to curtail your right to express an opinion. I find this ridiculous in the extreme. Look at my first post on this thread - i expressed an opinion and made a recommendation to people. You immediately responded with a post that began with a supercilious and patronising comment. As a newbie I have not expressed an opinion here many times, but when someone comes out and attempts to rubbish your opinion like you did, it makes the board seem a less appealing place.

 Mike Baron's Punisher often had relationships with women, gave money to people etc. He refused to kill animals, instead giving dogs drugged meat - whereas we see Ennis' new punisher just slashes the throats of dogs. I find the character very different personally. i think it may be closer to the steven grant punisher, which seems harsher than baron's to me.

 i like ennis 1st run even if its not perfect, in fact i said twice earlier that its a bit wrong - and that's about as far as my criticism of ennis goes. but i still love it.

How about this weather, huh?

(Check Bear's posts.  Grumpy bastard.  Always sarcastic.  Don't take personally.)

maybe i was a bit touchy - we clearly have a common interest in punisher so we should be having a good discussion about it, even if we have different opinions. i would have really enjoyed this discourse if it weren't for the negative side of it, as it's enjoyable to talk about comics (and other things) with other people in the know. so then bear let's just throw some poohsticks in the river and say that it's water under the bridge. deal?

irving, don't mind the bear.
He's alright really, but beware, he'll try and wind you up by accusing you of... things.

I haven't read the Punisher in 10 years or so, so I can't join in your 'conversation'.

Now that we've all calmed down can I say that I found Ennis first run highly amusing & its what attracted me to the comic for the first time. I'm now reading the Max series and really enjoying that too.

They are two very different beasts though and I'm not even sure how they fit into the same continuity or even if they're supposed to.

one indication of the continuity between the two runs would be that character 'yorkie mitchell' who was in both. we seem to have moved on in years though as frank is referred to as having been doing his thing for 30 years.
satanist, if u haven't got it, i can recommend 'circle of blood' trade paperback, first punisher miniseries from mid-80s (grant, zeck, beatty). little bit dated but it is what made the punisher what he is today. this story is also at the end of essential punisher vol.1 which contains all early punisher stories in b&w (spidey, cap america, dd stories)- the really early ones are sometimes quite dated and dodgy. if u like that get on ebay for 'return to big nothing' by the same team.

p.s. thanks rac

Oh look, Charmed is starting on UK Gold...

See what I mean..?

Funnily enough, 'Circle of Blood' is my current toilet book.
As you say, it's dated a bit, but there are some good chracter moments in there.

Irving9000, cheers for that. Just what I need, yet another comic to track down ;D