f13.net

Not a drill... Netflix has given the greenlight. Date TBD.

(https://zippy.gfycat.com/FlamboyantUnderstatedGelada.gif)

Unless Netflix changes their stance on 2 Marvel shows a year, we aren't seeing this til like 2019-2020.

New materials out there, but still no release date... still expecting this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIY6zFL95hE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIY6zFL95hE)

I liked how they used Metallica on the trailer.

edit: and they flash a 2017 date at the end of the trailer  :awesome_for_real:

That looks great. I'll forgive using an Anti-War song for it.

Which song was the anti-war song?

Also, looks very promising!

One?

Yes. The story of Johnny isn't exactly extolling the virtues and machismo of sacrificing for cause and country.  It's based on Johnny Got His Gun and uses clips from the movie in the video.  It's absolutely meant as an anti-war song.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun

Many forget Metallica was called "the thinking man's heavy metal band" because so many of their songs had an underlying political or social message. "Master of Puppets" about the evils of addiction and specifically cocaine. "Blackened" is about nuclear war, "Ride the Lighting" is about the injustice of execution, "Leper Messiah" is a stab at televangelisim like "Make Me Laugh" by Anthrax, and "Disposable Heroes" is their earlier, less-famous anti-war anthem.  

ed: whoops, blackened is nuclear war not environmentalism.

My bad, I confused the songs and thought the song playing in the trailer was Master of Puppets, which as you mentioned, is about drug abuse.

Trailer looks damned good. The use of One is actually pretty perfect even though it's an anti-war song. After all, Punisher doesn't WANT the war, he just feels swept up in it. He's also pretty fucked in the head.

Yeah, that's an interesting take on it. I had a similar thought, but I wasn't sure it was the best choice for conveying that.  It is, however, the most kick-ass one.

Rule of cool over making absolute sense. Slayer's War Ensemble might have been more apt but it wouldn't have been as well known, nor have that difference between the acoustic arpeggios and the driving in your face shit.

Agreed!

/metal derail

That trailer was pretty sweet, though. 2017 date, yay.  Just in time for Christmas? A fun time for the whole family!  :awesome_for_real: :drill:

I'm going to watch it because I'm more committed to the netflix marvel shows than i've ever been to any person job religion or school but the trailer just looked like a generic 80s Schwarzenegger or Stallone action movie were the main character impossibly shoots down a million bad guys.

So it pretty much looks like The Punisher then.

I actually got the opposite of that.  The very few shots they have of him actually fighting show things more similar to Jon Wick style shooting.  Where they show he is very precise and methodical in his take downs.  Might not work out that way, but considering how amazing the fight coreography in Daredevil was, the action scenes have a lot of potential.  But again, they really didn't show very much, so could end up as you say.

The best takes on Punisher in the comics are when show that he is basically living every moment of his life as if he is still a special forces solider in a war zone.  His 'super power' is basically extreme mental focus (brought on by a severe psychological shock that broke him).  Every action has a purpose and just another step in the endless war he's trapped in.  This combined with his years of experience in black ops war fighting, puts him way ahead of most any criminal.

I was really hoping they would try to do an Afghanistan adaptation of Punisher:  Born for this, but looks like not.  :(

The intensity the character has in the comics is hard to maintain constantly on film without it bring flat, especially as a main protagonist. I am eager to see it, but I am going to temper my expectations.

The panel for this weekend where the date was likely to be announced has been canceled due to Vegas.  I'm wondering if they may push the series back a bit to 2018 as well.

November 17th Release Date.  I'm surprised they did not push it back after the LV incident.  Maybe they want to get it on the air before we end up going to war with North Korea.

If they put something back due to something as common place as a gun massacre, we'd never see it.

And then you'd be a sad panda.

True on Panda element.  I'm hoping this is of better quality than Defenders and Inhumans.  Not a high standard, there.

However, that shooting was more than the typical gun news event.  They already canceled the Punisher panel at NY Comic Con in response to it. 

Uh.. NYCC was the same weekend. Yeah, they canceled it.

There will have been a whole month and a half for the news cycle to bury it by Nov. 17th.

The spice must flow.

Man, you folks like to act like I have strange ideas when I say things that have been said a lot around the internet.  When they canceled CCNY, there was a lot of speculation they'd push back the series to 2018.

Ok, that's another trailer down and I'm not feeling this one.  It doesn't feel like Castle to me.

Just me ?

Edit:  Doh, just realized there is a brand new trailer out.  Have to wait till after work to watch it.

Yeah, I think it's just you. Felt like Punisher to me, and if you saw Daredevil Season 2, I thought that was the best TV/movie portrayal of the character we've seen.

Yeah, I did.  This, however, seems to be slipping away from that.

If WUA were still around he'd have shitloads of examples, with links, as to why you don't listen to the internet about business decisions. Firefly: Serenity as a success was his favorite, followed by the "destruction" of Star Wars as a viable IP via the Prequels.  Two things Nerds and Reality disagree on vehemently.

It matters not one drop what hundreds of thousands to millions of nerds collectively type in bravado on the ether.  It only matters where the dollars are, and what the average consumer's sentiment is.

IF the concerns had made it to the collective consciousness, then yes, it would have been pushed back. The collective consciousness of the US didn't link the two; only that subcategory of comic geeks and nerds.  Ergo; no, it didn't happen.

This is now out.  Just watched the first episode.  So far so good!  

I think the acting of some of the side characters and randoms is pretty spotty, but that's been a problem with most of the Marvel Netflix series.  Fight choreography was pretty good though, which is the #1 most important thing in a Punisher show.  Man, the way he kills the last guy at the end of the episode.   :awesome_for_real:

Looking forward to it!

Geesh, spoilers!  Now we know he kills someone.

Based on the first episode:  so much better than Iron Fist or Defenders but not really a superhero story.

Punisher was never really super. Or a hero.

--Dave

Only worrying critique is that it's a 6 ep story stretched to fit 13 which is worrysome but also kinda expected so every netflix marvel series, so I'm cautiously optimistic.

I doubt I'll watch this, but it's just because I've never liked the character even when he's been pretty well done in the comics.

Starts off strong, but it could have been pared down to 10, or even 8 episodes.  The ending was pretty hokey, but other than that, it's the Punisher.

Ok, one episode down and it's made me eat my words by taking them and stuffing them down my throat at high speed.

I was wrong.  Very wrong.

What a fucking great episode 1.

I'm halfway thru and it certainly feels far too drawn out for the story they have.

edit:finished it and the feeling remains; it was far too long for the story they had.

I haven't started watching this one yet (halfway through Iron Fist) and pretty much all the Netflix Marvel series have the same problem - too many episodes for too little story. Daredevil was the best about it but they all sort of start to drag around episode 8 because you can tell they are just padding the story. TV writers still haven't tipped to the idea that they don't have to make comic stories one entire season per story - it's ok to do some one-off episodes that have nothing to do with the main season plot.

I don't know, you don't even need that.  You'd think it wouldn't be hard to just write a god damn story that filled the target episodes you are given.  This isn't normal TV writing where they make up shit as they go through the season, on top of not having any set end date for the whole series.  You have an exact number of episodes handed to you.  Why in gods name do you need filler, unless you are just a shitty writer?  Write a 12 episode plot line you fucking twits.

Enjoying it so far, but yeah, they seem to be filling an awful lot of space with random stuff not Frank Castle for no apparent reason.  My only guess is other than the "shitty writes" theory is perhaps a budget thing.  Just having random people talk in a room is way cheaper than filming fight scenes and things being accomplished.  Daredevil probably had the biggest budget, thus why they didn't seem to shy away from him fighting and accomplishing things every episode.  All of these other series...... that's my only guess.

Sometimes, it's a lot harder to fill episodes even when you know how much space you have. Not only do you have the "can't think of something good" problem, you also have producers, agents and actors who will either 1) want more time for their actor/character, 2) want less time for their actor/character because they are busy filming a movie/other TV show/commercial, and 3) have a limit on the number of new characters you can introduce based on actor contracts.

Not saying the writers may not be shitty, just that there's a fuckload more to writing TV than I think any other type of writing.

The "everything at once" binge nature of the consumer may be an enabling factor. On a weekly schedule, a show can't have too many 'filler' episodes, because you'll lose the audience and might not get them back. Main character development and arc pacing has to happen in the cracks of an episode that must stand on its own.

Which can lead to 'villain of the week' in network TV superhero shows, and the Netflix shows may be trying too hard to avoid that.  But this really could have used an episode or two where Frank sees some asshole kick a puppy, so Frank murders his entire bloodline.

--Dave

Calling BS on this one. I binged game of thrones seasons 1-5 in a couple weeks a while ago and there were maybe 4 episodes I thought were truly filler, it kept my attention for the entire ride.  The netflix marvel shows ALL just seem to trudge along slowly and it's because each show only has one truly compelling character, the hero.  Ensemble cast shows can hold a series through multiple plotlines because there is no one main protagonist so you end up caring about many of the characters. 
No one gives a shit about the side characters in marvel shows and if you want 13 hour long episodes you cant have only a single character anyone cares about.

Hmmm.

No.  No, I'm not convinced.  Luke Cage had plenty, Jones had plenty, Daredevil had plenty.  If anything, you're just describing Iron First, which was just one other reason that it sucked the fucking marrow of the Earth.

Also, there's plenty of fucking filler in Game of Thrones.  Like, tons.

You're kind of making my point: GoT was written as weekly episodes. Almost every episode has an arc and a resolution (although it has a fair number of "phone booth" episodes where everything is dialog, even there they have rising tension and a denouement), in addition to that of the season as a whole and the series as a whole. The Marvel Netflix series are written as a single arc, and an entire episode can go by where nothing significant happens, then every sub-plot tries to complete at once.

--Dave

I'm only halfway through Iron Fist and I have to disagree. I actually care more about Coleen Wing than Iron Fist, probably because they are really weak on writing Iron Fist's character. Misty Knight, Felicia Hardy and Claire are all compelling characters, though maybe not strong enough to carry a series by themselves.

Also, Colleen Wing is stupid hot.  Made caring about her a touch easier.

Alas, also stupidly stupid.  While I cared about her character, I wanted her to just dump IF and run.

Preferably Baywatch style.

Nah. Netflix Marvel has 2 at minimum. The hero and a villain. I say A villain instead of the villain because Marvel Netflix usually gives us 2 and the usually pick the wrong one to focus on the most or allow to live for future storylines.


Billy Russo is a great villain and I'm glad it was only Agent Orange who was eliminated.

Besides the heroes and villains there is a side character that usually steals scenes but aside from Patty in Jessica Jones it always the wrong side character getting the most attention. Heck they killed off one of my favorites from the Dare Devil storyline.

Anyway I liked the Punisher. Was it 13 episodes of Frank Castle blowing away white guys with fake Italian ascents? No. Was it more anit-government than I remember frank castle stories being. Yes. Did it have side characters you didn't want to care about? No. Side characters made this work. Frank Castle isn't enough to make a whole series. Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Jessica aren't compelling enough by themselves to make a series, good direction and story generally fills in the gap. It didn't even drag in the middle like every other series (save IF that just dragged the entire time). Was as strong as daredevil no. Buts a pretty decent run, even consistent run that puts it some where in the middle of being my second favorite.


Oh and they gave frank a healing factor. The fuckers a mutant.

Just finished it and I liked it a lot.  I think they could have trimmed about three or four eps by dropping the pressure cooker bomber nonsense and not lost any narrative weight.  It was also awesome seeing Landsman from The Wire doing something.

Just finished it myself, thought it was great. My only problem was that the actor playing Billy Russo looked like a malnourished hipster instead of a special forces badass. Dude skipped leg day too many times.

Too much filler.  Way too much.  I fast forwarded too many times. Hope they make another series but needs to be tighter.  Good acting though and better direction than IF.

I liked the story line as a counterpoint to Frank's own journey, showing how they dealt with coming home damaged from their military service in subtly different ways.

It took me a while to finish and I only had time to watch when dead tired, but I felt this didn't live up to the potential.

How many times was he shot, stabbed, etc...? They took a lot of license having him stand, much less fight, with those injuries.

I do think it puts a different light on the question of how much violence Marvel/Disney would allow if they acquire the Fox rights and get back Deadpool.

Enjoyed this well enough largely due to Bernthal and some of the supporting cast. Liked the slight more humanized take on Castle, and in particular his interactions with Micro's family. I agree that there was a lot of filler but I was mostly had this on as background viewing while I was working on other things so it didn't bother me too much.

I enjoyed this a lot.  Alas, I'm forced to agree with JG that the suspension of disbelief was strained multiple times.  The guy heals faster than Logan ffs.

But it worked well for me, even if it didn't end exactly where I thought it would.

I have to agree.  I really enjoyed the series overall, probably second favourite next to the first Daredevil, but I felt it was a bit too long and drawn out and the amount of punishment (pun intended) Castle took was way too much for a superhero with no superpowers.

Season 2 renewal.  The biggest surprise there is that it is renewed for Netflix specifically - I thought Marvel's streaming service would be up and running and get in the way of Netflix having the second season.  The Disney Streaming should happen before late 2019, so I guess we're getting Season 2 of Punisher in early 2019?

Finished this.

Enjoyed it.

Didn't mind the number of episodes and enjoyed the way it started slow and accelerated, in contrast to DD and JJ which started too fast and then had to take a 3 episode time out in the middle.

Others have pointed out the healing thing - seems it could have been fixed here just by spreading the timeline out a bit. Writers these days seem to believe a series  like this has to play out over 7 days at most. But the story would have been fine told over a year or more.

Action was pretty great - the other series have been able to rely on melee combat to make them look good. Doing things this well with guns is unusual.

Back on January 18th.

So cancellation announcement on the 19th then?

They might delay an announcement on the fate of this show as it is not subject to the same agreement as the original shows.

Trailer for season 2 is up. Pretty great music pics they have.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwpFmqf--UM

This is the one Marvel Netflix show I hope sticks around. Disney wouldn't even be able to show that trailer on Disney+. Not to take anything away from the casting in the other shows because a lot of it has been great, but Bernthal is an absolutely perfect fit for the role of the Punisher and I'd like to see him get a least a couple more seasons with it.

This.  I actually think he is a fantastic actor.  I hated him in the Walking Dead, right up until I figured out that it was because he was so fucking awesome at being an unlikeable prick.  With Punisher, he becomes a likeable anti-hero prick.  The story barely matters.  For me, Punisher is almost as good as Daredevil, and I think DD is perhaps in my top three all time favorite series (only just started Season 3, so subject to change I guess).

I bet they will kill it on general principle, though.

To be fair, the casting of the Netflix Marvel shows have all been awesome with the standout unbelievable fail of Danny.

And I can't even tell if it's his fault there because the writing, show and character are so terribad.

The only thing I disagree with is that I think Daredevil is almost as good as Punisher.

On Bernthal, I think it turns out he can be cast as anything. Had exactly the same feeling about him on Walking dead. I hope he starts getting cast in things that give him big piles of cash.

I'm always happy to see him pop up in something I'm watching, and the guy has gotten to do smaller roles in movies by Scorsese, Villeneuve, and Edgar Wright so there's that at least.

Really liked the introduction of pilgrim and the miniarc in the middle of flyoverland. But the way the gang all get back together and Russo/Jigsaw gets put in the same place as Frank.... yeah, that crunched some gears.

Also, where I am in the show, Frank's hand has stayed broken for something like 24 hours! OTOH getting shot in the ass was healed in around 12 hours, so maybe the wolverine thing now only supports certain body parts idk.

This was fun but kinda pointless. I didn't hate watching it but they struggled hard to give a point to this season and ultimately decided fuck it there is none. Never has a netflix show tried so hard to go back to the status quo to very little fanfare.

It seems to lack a meaningful arc even if the individual bits are well done. 

Which I don't mind because all the arcs in Netflix marvel are pretty mediocre (except maybe Jessica Jones).


Other thoughts, they really pushed the violence, this would have been better set outside of new York purely for sake of variety, and Jigsaw is worst example of 'Hollywood ugly' ever.

Am I a horrible person for loving the women in the first episode being allowed to fight and get punched ?  For being just as mean and knifey as all the blokes ?

'Cause I loved it quite a bit.

There have been a few marvel netflixs where I've noticed that. They've had women getting punched by goodies and manage to film it so it doesn't seem problematic.

Nothing quite as full on as that though.

I think in part because the action is so well shot - it manages to avoid glamourising somehow.

Yeah, those women weren't "sexy fighting" like a Black Widow type or any femme fatale female villains, they were thugs like the men.

Yup.

I was wondering the same thing.  My own opinion was that they filmed it in such a way that they would have if it were a bunch of dudes, and that was a wise move.  Punisher cares about good and bad, not man and woman.

I liked Billy Russo, and also the actor that plays him, but yeah, he wasn't nearly ugly enough.  But then I thought, maybe that was the point...someone so in love with himself would be utterly destroyed by even that much damage to his good looks.

Overall, hard for me not to like this quite a lot, given my Bernthal platonic man-crush.  I don't need complex and nuanced story-telling in my ultra violent Punisher tv show.  Rather liked the last 10 minutes or so as well, good place to leave things in the likely event that it will get killed by Netflix.

Also, for the record - Agent Madani is stupid gorgeous.

This is known.

While at a friend's wedding this weekend, I got to meet a woman who worked as a stunt extra in one episode.  She had nothing but nice things to say about working with Bernthal.

Yeah, but the thing is what Castle did to him should have left him seriously fucked, way worse than what he was. My brother had a worse scar just from falling on his face while drunk, and a few laser treatments got rid of like 90% of that.

I know.  But that was the internal dialogue I had with myself to accept it and move on.  Shit, the beatings Frank took on a daily basis, only to be fit for fight time and time again? 

I check my disbelief at the door whenever watching superhero stuff.  It works well.

Just finished watching season 2 a couple days ago. Overall I thought it was a really good season.

Also Netflix canceled both Punisher and Jessica Jones (season 3 will air though, date tbd).

However, Loeb is making it pretty clear the intent is to see these characters return in the not too distant future, although it will require a 2 year break for most of them... perhaps not the Punisher. 

https://www.marvel.com/articles/tv-shows/a-letter-to-marvel-television-fans-from-jeph-loeb?linkId=63749654 (https://www.marvel.com/articles/tv-shows/a-letter-to-marvel-television-fans-from-jeph-loeb?linkId=63749654)

My bet: Without the showrunners for these shows returning, they'll take them in a bit of a different direction.  Heroes for Hire will return 104 weeks after Luke Cage ended, with a short season (or half season) that is followed up by a second half of the season 6 months later that adds Jessica Jones.  Both Punisher and Daredevil will return as their own shows.  I don't now if it will all be on Hulu, mixed on different platfrms, or what... but it seems likely (perhaps with some recasting required for people that get other gigs or should never have had a role i the first place).

If I was Disney and I'd just say fuck it and do a whole new version.

They need to stop giving so many fucks about continuity.

It was basically a given that Netflix would lose most if not all Marvel properties once Disney had its own streaming service ready.

I feel like if someone were to come to Feige with what he felt was a great take on any of the characters previously used by Marvel TV, he'd be more than happy to ignore all of the TV continuity and I can't see Disney saying no to him.

One of the reasons why Feige's Marvel Studios are successful and Disney's Star Wars properties aren't is that Feige is a stickler for continuity. The whole Marvel multiverse is an attempt to have the cake and eat it too by committing to in-universe continuity and then to do different takes an characters and settings by spinning it off into another one of the infinite earths. They only redesign when a comic run ends.

I don't expect him to scrap continuity inside one of the Marvel universes at least as long as the current Phase of Marvel content is not completed (so at least until after Avengers: Endgame, when they have to anyway what with all of the actors leaving)

There's also the risk of attracting the ire of the same mob of basement dwelling neckbeards that are all over Disney for "disrespecting" the lore and characters of Star Wars and Feige knows his fandom, he has been doing this for far too long not to.

Going forward I expect a lot more Disney properties to vanish from competing streaming services in order for Disney to use them on Disney+

All that being said about continuity, remember the the omics only heed continuity to an extent.  If someone decides the Hulk is a mystical being rather than a science fiction story, we suddenly get a retcon and the Hulk is a manifestation of the devil.

I could see them rebooting Tony Stark by having him modify extremis to make him young.   I could see them doing a Daredevil movie where a newly cast actor tells a non-origin story of Matt Murdock with little more than a nod to the TV series.  I could see them doing a Luke Cage / Jessica Jones / Squirrel Girl movie where the three of them ... no, wait.  That was a porn parody. 

In other words, just as with the comics, continuity is a tool, not a leash.

Hell there was one story where the Punisher became a Holy Avenger for Heaven complete with Holy Guns for slaying Demons. They instantly dropped it the next issue.