Superhero Media: The Punisher - Extended Edition (2004)

As far as I'm concerned, The Punisher from 2004 is the best live-action adaptation of Frank Castle ever made. However, that one comes with a caveat. If you want the best version of this film, you need to track down the Extended Edition from 2009, which I believe was only ever made available on a DVD now long out of print. Whilst the 2004 version has plenty to recommend it, it was cut quite heavily for release by the studio and, as such, has quite a few plot-critical scenes missing. The Extended Edition restores many of those scenes, but due to the lack of funding, the sound isn't polished and a lot of the score is repeated. Returning home after a sting that got out of hand, FBI Agent Frank Castle is looking forward to a family reunion and a life away from violence with his wife and son. Unknown to Frank, however, the person who died in the sting was the son of Howard Saint, a wealthy Tampa money launderer. After cancelling the debt of Frank's gambling addict former partner, the entire Castle clan is eliminated in brutal fashion; with Frank the only survivor.

The Punisher is a somewhat slower burn than other films featuring Frank Castle, but serves as an origin that doesn't merely demonstrate The Punisher's ability to deal death, but how he can construct and execute a plan to make Batman jealous. Rather than simply killing Howard Saint and his entire organisation, Castle executes a long-term operation that drives Saint to kill his own wife and best friend in a fit of jealousy, break off with his major business partners and make a series of poor decisions that place him at the mercy of The Punisher. Thomas Jane is brilliant as Frank Castle, carrying the intensity of the role whilst still being a believable human being. For those still amazed that Leo ate raw meat, check out the commentary for The Punisher; Jane did just about every stunt, learned how to use every weapon, got thrown into a brick wall, had a prosthetic wound sewn onto him but kept going to not spoil the take, and even learned to stunt drive. Jane loved playing Frank Castle so much he made a fan film about him with his own money (which we'll get to in time). It is a great performance, with few cheesy one-liners or quips.

Actually the whole cast is great, even Travolta, who is a competent actor, and the action scenes are done well, especially the car chase with Harry Heck and, of course, the fight with "The Russian". Honestly one of the best examples of fight choreography I've seen out of Hollywood, the Russian fight is paced out to "La Donne Mobile" and has plenty of visual gags to go along with the bone-crunching action, portrayed by two actors who can use their physicality to best effect. Seriously, watch the fight on YouTube at the very least. Yes, I will defend this version of The Punisher for as long as I have breath in my body, warts and all, as it's the one that best represents the character as I perceive him, and I would happily have Jane come back to the role in the MCU, if that was at all on the cards. Hell, get Jane back, adapt some of the Garth Ennis MAX comics and put the team from the John Wick films on it.

Drokk the Law!! - Part XXIII

This time, Game Day with Andy kind of snuck up on me, and I didn't have anything ready. I packed up my terrain and my Renegade Robots and figured it might be fun to just roll some dice and not overthink things. 

No further progress on the table, but I think it will be good when it's done. I'm saving up plenty of greebles to make the detail pop and the broad expanses of most buildings should be well and truly covered in graffiti, lending the whole thing some colour. 

Game 1 saw Blood in the Machine going up against the Brian Ansell Blockers in a Getaway mission, with my robots trying to escape with their loot from a recent heist. 

My gang started in their crashed truck (the reason for hoofing it through enemy territory), surrounded by Blockers eager for easy loot and spilled oil. 

There was plenty of cover to be had, so that with my better armour should have put me in with a chance, so long as I could keep Andy's Spit Guns busy. Victory only required I get at least 3 of my 4 models (one of my Junkers broke down before the game) off the table, so I pushed towards Andy's guns to return fire and gain some cover. 

Sadly, today was the absolutely hottest I've ever seen Andy roll and I couldn't pull off a single trick. In short order, Vendi, Call-Me-Kermit and Handy Mandy were shot off the table and by the close of the second turn, I only had my Demolition Droid leader, Haro2-Goodbye, still standing. 

Maybe it was petty, but this wasn't a campaign game, and I hadn't really done anything all game, so I sent Haro2 on a rampage through the Blockers for some revenge. With the crowded table, Andy had to do some clever maneuvering, through buildings and across roofs, to get any real shots on me, so I chewed through a couple of gangers handily. 

As I said above though, Andy was rolling hot, so my rampage ended all-too-soon. But hey, we're not having anything really develop or games count for anything, so I can do silly plays without consequences. 

Game 2 was the long-awaited debut of the Fatty Stampede! We hadn't had a chance to try the Fatties yet, but they looked nasty on the page, so I deployed cautiously to avoid getting too many charges against me. 

Taking advantage of the Fatties' inability to climb or negotiate terrain too much, I deployed my guns in positions to hopefully chip away at the many Hits on the Fatties before they got too close. Fatties have a lot of Hits, so focus fire is really the only way to bring them down short of heavy weapons. 

Knowing that Haro2 was my best chance of taking some Fatties out, I finally attempted the charge at the advancing stampede. We made a big mistake with the rules here, as the first counter-charge from a Fatty really should have taken Haro2 right out, but even with that aside, I probably wasn't going to win this one. There were just too many Fatties on the table and I couldn't deal enough damage with what I had. 

Haro2 was brought down for a second time in the same day and the game wrapped up with another win for Andy. Turns out Fatties are really nasty and a wave of them like this is pretty much unstoppable without enough big guns on the table and I'll be sure to be painting mine up sooner rather than later. This was actually going to be our last game for a while, but we finally have some more interest and should be introducing some new players in the new year. Hopefully I get some terrain done before then. 

Superhero Media: Split

When Split was released, I was studying my Graduate Diploma of Counselling, and it seemed all of the lecturers and students had an opinion about how "damaging" the film was by portraying an antagonist with Multiple Personality Disorder [MPD]. Now, as of the time of writing (February 2021), MPD doesn't "officially" exist, in that most Psychology researchers, practitioners and workers know that it does exist, but there isn't enough peer-reviewed evidence for it to appear in the DSM-5. I've read an entire Post-Doctoral thesis on MPD, and I still don't really understand it, so I'm willing to give screenplay writers a bit of leeway, and, having watched the film a few times, I'm pretty sure Split isn't actually trying to represent MPD in any real way. Spoiler alert; The Horde is a supervillain and he has some kind of powers, so it's clearly not MPD in the same way that Venom doesn't have multiple personalities of any kind reminiscent of reality. Oh yeah, remember that Split is a backdoor sequel to Unbreakable? Because a lot of people were oddly mad about that at the time.

In all the jokes and memes, it's easy to forget that M. Night Shyamalan has made several really good films, Split being one of them. Split is tense, atmospheric and thrilling for most of the run, even in the closing segments where The Beast is out and displaying super-strength, bulletproof skin and wall-crawling powers. James McAvoy is brilliant as all 24 members of The Horde, even managing different mannerisms for most, and Anya Taylor-Joy does an excellent turn as Casey, blending strength and vulnerability better than most young actors in thrillers. Where Split does fall down though, is in its representations of Mental Health, not so much any conditions but in the practice and lived experience of those with a history of trauma. Throughout the film, Casey flashes back to her younger self, learning to hunt and suffering sexual abuse at the hands of her uncle, and it is through these experiences that she is able to survive captivity and the Horde. Quite literally in the climax.

The Beast's agenda, that only the "pure" can survive, turns out to mean that only those who have suffered are worthy of life, so when he sees Casey's scars, he backs off. Yes, it's the old token of "suffering makes you stronger" and, speaking as a Psychotherapist, no, trauma doesn't actually make you "stronger" in any sense. There are also concepts of Mental Illness giving a person superhuman powers, but that bothers me less, as it's essentially just The Horde to whom that applies, and the old chestnut of a therapist being more focused on their career than their client. Given that neither Split nor Shaymalan is unique in their unhelpful take on Mental Health Psychology, I really can't muster up much anger over it, though I can understand how some people get quite offended by it. As is, Split is a solid thriller, and I would like to see more films constructed around a super-powered antagonist menacing normal people. Someone like Deatwatch, Razorfist or the Dollmaker would be really interesting.

Thinking Out Loud: Insane Clown Removal

I both watched and read Under the Red Hood again recently and found myself musing a particular question; why hasn't Batman killed The Joker? Putting aside metafictional reasons like wanting to keep popular characters around and general thoughts about content, the idea that Batman has so much blood on his hands for letting Joker continue to run around is pretty hard to escape. Now, I think it's pretty clear that Batman can't just kill Joker himself; there's the whole moral code thing, and the fact that he is invested to the point where he wants to torture and maim the Clown Prince of Crime kind of means that it's generally a bad idea for him, but that shouldn't be the end of the conversation, right? Undergraduate arguments about utilitarian maths being put aside, (because we're pure postgrad here baby!) even a strident humanist would be hard-pressed to argue that Joker being dead wouldn't be a net gain for society.

In a world where Batman decided he needed to kill Joker, for whatever reason, is there a way he could feasibly get it done? Now, he could just do the job himself, and has in some interpretations, but if he's so concerned about the "slippery slope", then why take the risk? Though his time as a superhero, Batman has connections with plenty of assassins, vigilantes and bounty hunters, from allies like Vigilante (not the cowboy one), Peacekeeper and Huntress though to outright antagonists like Lady Shiva, Deadshot and Bane that could probably take the job on, a few I feel would even have a decent chance against the Smiling Psychopath, or even rival his body count. But Batman can't just ask a friend, colleague or enemy to kill Joker for him, it would wound his credibility pretty badly and remove the moral high ground that enables him to be such a jerk to everyone. Though if Batman can't, maybe Bruce Wayne can?

So I guess this was a "The Pitch" all along, but this is kind of where I ended up with this question. If Joker isn't a problem that can be ended by Batman, why not have Bruce Wayne try? Say Bruce put himself somewhere where he could be potentially be harmed by Joker deliberately, though of course gives himself a decent out and minimises the risk. After surviving the 'attack', Bruce plays up being shaken and works to get Joker put away properly whilst "secretly" putting a reward out for his death. There's no reason Bruce couldn't be genuine in wanting to put Joker away more securely, but if an assassin actually manages to claim the bounty, hey, why not? In most media, the circle of people who know Batman's identity is pretty small, so whilst there would be major personal fallout for him, professionally as a hero, he would still be held in high regard. Being comics of course, any story like this would only last until the next writer wanted Joker back, but I still think it would be a fun story for a little while, and certainly nothing much like your traditional Batman fare.

Superhero Media: The Punisher MAX by Garth Ennis

When asked what the best Punisher comics to start out on are, I answer The Punisher MAX run by Garth Ennis with no hesitation. Across sixty issues, Ennis tells several of the best Punisher stories ever written inside the absolute best Punisher story ever written. Whilst I'm usually against comics and superheroes being excessively violent, in The Punisher MAX the gore and murder punctuate the story, and are rarely gratuitous. From a simple beginning, tying up some loose ends of canon and introducing the tone, Frank soon finds himself embroiled in international intrigues, sex trafficking and even a government coverup. The series climaxes with the story "Valley Forge, Valley Forge", which discusses the Vietnam War as is demonstrates the contention that the conflict was the start of the American military turning into a for-profit corporation. That's some pretty full-on content for a comic book about a guy who shoots people real good.

Due to being an adult comic of a cult character, the art is sadly not consistent in The Punisher Max, but most of it is great, especially the covers done by Tim Bradstreet, who my older readers may recongnise from his work with the White Wolf World of Darkness books in the 1990s. The Frank Castle we are shown is the same Vietnam Veteran that first menaced Spider-Man, but thirty plus years on, he is a slab of scar tissue and muscle, driven on by unending rage and nihilistic focus. In the closing story, "Valley Forge, Valley Forge", a team of Delta Force are unable to capture Frank, and when the question of how a man twice their age can keep out of their grasp, the response is "He never goes off duty. That's the difference." The concept, well executed, is that Frank Castle has just kept waging his one-man war on crime for decades, becoming something less than human in the process, to the point that he feels unequipped to even relate to other human beings.

If you've heard of any stories in this series, it is probably "The Slavers", in which Frank takes on a people smuggling ring that forces women into prostitution against their will. It is a powerful story, with no real happy ending and lots of extreme content, so can be a challenge to read, but is well worth it. Obviously the story elements of sexual assault can be triggering, and there is also talk of the Serbian genocides, so discretion is advised, even in the context of the already Adult MAX imprint. I own all ten Trade Paperback volumes of this series, and there are several methods of reading it all, it really is a must for any serious Punisher fan, or comic reader who wants to see Frank at his best. Whenever I asked what an adaptation of The Punisher should look like, it's this series; grim, violent, nihilistic, but never heroic. A Greek tragedy with a huge bullet count. Seriously, just adapt "The Slavers" or "Up Is Down and Black Is White" for the big screen.

Thinking Out Loud: Convergent Lepidoptery

My partner has not seen Stranger Things, so we've been watching through seasons 1 to 4 in preparation for the final installment dropping in a few days. When we got to Stranger Things 4 and Eleven travels in her own mind back to Hawkins Lab and her childhood as an experiment in psychic weapons, it triggered a memory in me. If you're a few years either side of 40 and did your primary schooling in Australia, there's a decent chance you came across the 1992 Brian Caswell novel, A Cage of Butterflies. Now, it has been several decades since I have so much as thought about A Cage of Butterflies, let alone read it, so I'll be working from memory and internet resources, as I couldn't lay my hands on a copy and this is pretty time-sensitive. In the novel, seven teenagers with genius-level IQs form a Think Tank at a government institute where they discover five seven-year-old subjects with psychic abilities known as "the Babies". Our heroes rescue the Babies with the help of two teachers and the novel goes basically where you'd expect for the era. Oh, and the Babies all have shaved heads. 

Now, that's a pretty bang-on description of Hawkins Lab as presented in Eleven's memories in Stranger Things 4, and there's a butterfly reference in season 1 (blink and you'll miss it though), so just how deep do these similarities go? Well, not that much further. None of the child or adult characters in A Cage of Butterflies truly have an analogue in Stranger Things and the latter clearly owes a lot of its DNA to popular films of the 1980s as much as cult and pulp stories. I really don't believe that the Duffer Brothers would have so much as heard of A Cage of Butterflies, as tied-in as it is to a specific time and place for so many. No, I believe both works are more likely drinking from the same well of influences, from the obvious 1980s films like Firestarter and Village of the Damned to real life conspiracies like MK Ultra and the Montauk Project, the latter being so obvious as to get name-checks in Stranger Things. Of course, creepy psychic children goes at least back to The Coming Race, but the fact that both these texts landing on the same visual language is pretty interesting to analyse. 

Brian Caswell was born in the 1950s, so he's certainly a "Baby Boomer", whereas the Duffer Brothers are around my age, so "Elder Millennials", one would think that their influences in media would have led to an at least somewhat different interpretation of essentially the same concept, but somehow it didn't. It's like how almost all cosmic horror owes some debt to Lovecraft, even unconsciously, but with creepy children and hospitals. One might even draw comparison to the "Black Eyed Kids" of popular conspiracy mythos and be pretty comfortable in that assertion. As I don't spend a lot of time with the horror genre, I can't be sure just how widespread these tropes are, but from my metafictional readings of Stranger Things, I feel they may be pretty standard. Stranger Things is an obvious bricolage of ideas and concepts that came together really well, it's really no surprise that other versions of similar ideas are floating around out there. I don't remember A Cage of Butterflies all that well, but the fact that an entertainment juggernaut of the 2020s reminded me of a book from the 1990s that I had to read once felt worth at least noting. 

(PS. One of my overriding memories of reading A Cage of Butterflies is that one of the teen characters goes on holiday with his family at some point. In the middle of the action, one of our leads disappears for a chapter or two to visit Queensland. As a child it baffled me that this guy would just bugger off during a daring operation to free exploited children, but that may be my memory fogging with time.) 

Superhero Media: Godzilla Vs King Gidorah

Considered one of the best Godzilla films of it's era, Godzilla Vs King Gidorah is almost an excellent place for non-fans to jump in and attempt to enjoy the King of the Monsters, but not quite. The Heisei era of Godzilla (running 1984-1995) is typically considered to not be the best era for the world's best known Kaiju, with the mid-1990s being the first time in history where the Gamera franchise took over as the biggest in the genre. For the new era, Godzilla Vs King Gidorah attempts to reposition Godzilla as an anti-hero within his own universe, much as the Legendary films would years later in the West. Struggling to endure yet another Godzilla rampage, the Japanese government is offered a lifeline from an unexpected source; the future. Yes, this Godzilla film features time travel and more references to hit 1980s Western Action Films than you would expect, all with plenty of monster fights to keep the pace up. So yeah, it's a blast.

I notice that a lot of people that only watch Western Kaiju films tend to complain that there's "too many humans, not enough monsters", which leads me to think that they've never seen an actual Japanese Godzilla film; which is just full of interesting human characters doing things to drive the plot. As much as I like the parts of Kaiju films where the monsters are hitting each other, if the entire film were just that, it wouldn't be interesting and Godzilla wouldn't be one of the biggest pop culture exports Japan had ever managed. Godzilla Vs King Gidorah strikes a good balance, with a solid core cast that helps build the mythos of Godzilla, confirming his nuclear origins, but codifying the idea that he was a surviving dinosaur on a small Pacific Island and that it was specifically the Bikini Atoll tests that began the creature known as Godzilla. Throw in a robot for The Terminator references and a sprinkling of predestination paradox, and that's a solid Science Fiction core for your silly monster movie.

Even though Godzilla Vs King Gidorah was made in 1991, it feels a little dated for that time in terms of effects, as the Japanese film industry lagged behind Hollywood's tech boom. Still, the model work is great, and except for the odd flying scene, the incredibly complex King Gidorah suit/puppet is a marvel to behold in motion, but for those more used to CGI, it can be jarring and look a little goofy until you acclimatise. When describing where Godzilla Vs King Gidorah fits in the overall franchise, it may be fair to call it a kind of "soft reboot", a lead-in to the Heisei era that sets the tone for what will come, and, as such, it can be a good place to start if you want something closer to modern cinema than the older Godzilla outings. Oh, and this film is the origin for Mecha-King Gidorah.