@DarthAlgar - It was a deep.

@Nomis929 - I liked him in Daredevil but Wasn't a fan with how he was written in his show though that ain't on on the actor. If I had any complaint with his portrayal it would be when it comes to fighting he ree's way too much like an autistic child, I prefer the Punisher when he's quiet.

@Nomis929 - I think Punisher works really well as a vigilante type that gets the job done no matter what. But I agree, he shouldn't be divorced from villainy. That said, he's not the kind of villain who is bad for the sake of being bad. He is a villain because what he does has collateral damage, and he doesn't care.

He should never be redeemable or heroic. That isn't to say he can't do heroic things at times, but he is not a hero.

I think the PTSD angle works well, as does the murdered family, but that should be the extent of any sympathy Frank gets. He shouldn't see the "good" in people or "save" people, unless it helps get him closer to his target. Frank Castle stopped being human when he became The Punisher.

@bkmeijer1 @SheepishOne - I agree with both of you. Frank is not a "good" guy (at least in the same sense as Spidey, Cap, Cyclops, etc.). Frank to me is more in a gray area like Logan, which are characters that I've always been attracted to going back to when I was collecting comics as a kid. They are conflicted individuals, which was something that to me (at least as a kid) differentiated Marvel from DC. Like I've never really been a Superman fan (that's just me) because he's typically portrayed as the "Boy Scout" kind of character. Maybe it's just me, maybe it's my personal experiences in life that have colored my view on things, but to me things are rarely "black and white". There's a lot of "gray" there. Now where a person exists within that "gray" is what makes them interesting.

Frank tends to be in the "darker side of the gray" gradient, but he's not totally what I would call a "villain" per se, as he still has his humanity. He's just a deeply troubled and damaged individual, which makes him somewhat sympathetic. However, when we look at real life there are many examples of deeply troubled individuals (especially here in the US) who have chosen to take out their issues on innocent people instead of criminals, as Frank does, which makes Frank "heroic" in a certain sense. But at the end of the day, he's still a vigilante and ultimately a murderer. And he knows this and somehow deals with it because he believes he's doing it for the greater good.

At the end of the day, it's a difficult line for a person to walk and one which is sure to cause a person to be conflicted and add to the existing mental issues, and I think that Bernthal captures all of this VERY well. You can see the pain and sorrow that he's dealing with and how he'd rather not have to deal with things the way that he is, but he still has to. It kind of reminds me of when you get SO sad/upset about something happening (like a close family member passing) that you end up punching a hole in a wall. It's happened to me before and I'm sure it'll happen again. It's just that, ya know, for me it's a wall and not a warehouse full of gang members with guns. 😉

@bkmeijer1 - Totally. Also I've always found Frank's humanity to be his actual weakness (well, that and his lack of actual superpowers (typically)). The fact that carries around that guilt and compassion about his dead wife and kids is, in a certain sense, his Achilles heel. For example, as a guy with 2 little kids myself, I literally can't watch ads for St. Jude's Children's Hospital (which I donate to annually) because seeing those images of little kids with cancer and thinking of my kids being like that just breaks my heart and I think the same is true with Frank.

Like, he has no problem blowing away gangsters, Mob bosses, even aliens or super-villains because in his mind he's defending the innocent people (like his dead wife and kids) and saving them in a way that he couldn't for his own family. I don't know if Gerry Conway was married with kids when he created the Punisher, but I suspect that he was because it's interesting how your perspective on this type of stuff (especially having kids) changes when you actually become a husband and father. Personally, I idon'thave any military training, but if (God forbid) anything ever happened to my family as did with Frank's I'd sure as hell be out for revenge. And more revenge. And then more revenge... Because it's a hole that can never be filled.

And that, to me, is what makes his character so compelling. And any actor who can capture that (like Bernthal) to me IS the Punisher.

@bkmeijer1 - Yeah, when/if you have kids you'll see what I mean. I didn't used to be so sensitive to that kind of stuff (I wasn't an insensitive bastard either), it just didn't affect me the way that it does now because I couldn't really relate. But once you have kids and you could picture them in some horrible situation, whether it be violence, disease, death, abuse, poverty, etc. it hits you a whole different way. Like (and I'm NOT trying to be political here because I try to avoid doing that at all costs on this site) but some real-world examples that come to mind are going back to they were doing family separations at the US-Mexico border and all the footage of little kids in cages (plus that infamous "Time" cover of Trump looking down at that little girl who looked a lot like my oldest daughter at the time) and now with the stuff going on in Gaza and hearing about kids losing limbs and such. Can't watch that stuff. It's too easy to see my kids in those situations like with the St. Jude stuff. The same goes for animal cruelty stuff (although the only pets I currently have are fish I grew up with dogs and cats).

I remember when I was younger my mom could never watch that kind of stuff. My dad was a POW in the Vietnam War and couldn't ever watch war movies, especially Vietnam ones. I didn't have any problems watching that kind of stuff and I didn't understand why they did at the time but now I do. You'll see what I mean one of these days. It really gives you a whole new way to see Frank (or at least it does for me).

@bkmeijer1 - Well, my whole point in going through that unnecessarily long and personal diatribe was to try to explain where (from my perspective anyway) Frank's mind is at (at least to some degree) and why the actor who portrays him needs to be there as well, which I think that Bernthal does really well. It's one thing to have him portrayed as an unstoppable killing machine who's out for revenge and justice (and I think that most of the actors who've portrayed Frank so far have pulled that off just fine), but it's another to portray him as a husband and especially father who's been through that trauma and continues to deal with it every day of his life. Like I said, no matter how many bad guys he kills it will never fill that hole in his life, and you need an actor who understands that and can portray it, which I think that Bernthal has done the best so far.

But, hey, that's just my 2 cents (actually $1.74 with inflation these days). 😉

@bkmeijer1 - Well I hope that as part of the revamp of "DD:BA" (and the creative direction of the MCU in general) they do a lot more of "what the fans actually want" than "what we think the fans will like". Now, granted the fans can be quite the fickle bunch, but if you take the time so read/listen/watch the feedback from the fans and look for commonalities, you'll start to get a picture of what they actually want to see.

I think that originally when Marvel Studios first got going, there isn't a MCU fanbase to listen to. So the creatives like Feige, Favreau, etc. would just do what they thought the fans wanted. And for the most part they were quite accurate because they were fans themselves so they did what they wanted to see, which also happened to be what the fans wanted. But then, as the MCU became more and more successful, the creatives started thinking that they didn't need to listen to the fans because they were being so successful without it.

But then, as they say, "pride comes before the fall" and here we are (not that I think the MCU has "fallen" or anything, but you know what I mean). They started off Phase 4 going completely (or close to it) based on what they thought the fans wanted (i.e. tons of new characters and content ASAP) and weren't really listening until it became obvious that their approach wasn't working. And here we are. So, as I said, hopefully with "DD:BA" we'll see them listening to the fans and give us the DD, Punisher, Fisk, etc. that they know WE want, and not them.

I think that the first indication of that's going to be "DP&W". They know what the fans want, and based on that first trailer they're going to give it to us. Ever since that trailer came out from time to time if I need some background noise while I'm working or whatever and I've already listened to the news I'll pop on a reaction video for that trailer and based on those alone, Marvel is finally listening because the fan reaction has been through the roof. Now let's just see if (1) they deliver and (2) it's not a one-off. Fingers crossed.

@bkmeijer1 - Well, to be clear, I wasn't saying that what we got post-Endgame wasn't what we wanted (I personally was quite happy with what we got overall). But to your point, I think it was too much too fast and the quality suffered. It kind of reminds me of that old, classic "I Love Lucy" episode where she's working at a candy factory and the conveyor belt starts speeding up and the chocolates start coming out faster and faster and she can't package them fast enough so she starts eating them and practically chokes on them.

To pick up on your analogy, I like chocolate chip cookies as well (although I don't have much of a sweet tooth). And when I have one, I want one of those big, fat, kinda-soft-but-not-TOO-soft cookies that just came out of the oven, not a bag of f**kin Chips Ahoys. I think that post-Endgame the folks in charge at Disney (i.e. Chapek) figured that we fans love chocolate chip cookies SO MUCH that they could just give us bags of Chips Ahoys and we'd be just fine with that. But it turns out that after sucking down bags of Chips Ahoys you tummy starts to hurt and you just want that nice big, fat, kinda-soft-but-not-TOO-soft cookie and that's hopefully what Marvel is going to go back to giving us.

Damn, now I need a big, fat, kinda-soft-but-not-TOO-soft cookie that just came out of the oven. And some ice cream. Thanks bro! 😉

@bkmeijer1 - I'm chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream all day long (seriously). But I'll eat whatever's in the freezer when I wake up in the middle of the night with craving (and with 2 little kids there's always plenty to choose from). 😊

@TheMetaMan - yep they have…

I still enjoy Thomas Jane’s version but Bernthal is definitely my favorite

Never saw Stevenson’s (RIP) or Lundgrens

@TheMetaMan - likewise. I will say Stevenson looked the part far better for me, but that movie was all over the place. I hope he has his skull and longer hair in this. Wasn’t a fan of the buzz cut.

@AliX - Yes Bro! More violent Marvel characters! And those are also my favorites!!

@valmic - Exactly, Punisher needs to be taller and he's like 5'9" and it shows. He wants to be Wolverine by the way he yells, Punisher should be more contained in his emotions.