Somewhere in Los Angeles right now, Thomas Jane is sitting back in a leather chair, possibly smoking a cigar with one hand and holding a goblet of wine in the other, tilting his head back in a very satisfied state and whispering out loud… “I TOLD YOU SO”.
The 2004 version of “The Punisher” (in which Jane carried the big gun) failed to impress a large audience, but although the movie had some major flaws I ended up having some fun with it and thought the potential was there for an improved sequel. A sequel seemed unlikely considering the lack of box office success that the studio was looking for… but that never stopped Thomas Jane from advocating and campaigning for a sequel. He really liked the character and believed that another Punisher film, with the lessons learned from the mistakes of the first one, could be something pretty special.
Then came the news… there would indeed be another Punisher film… but quickly after that news came he first sign that the project was doomed to fail as the biggest cheerleader for the movie, Thomas Jane himself, thought what he saw coming together was so bad he had to drop out, even though no one wanted the movie more than he did. How badly did he want this movie? This is what he said at the time he dropped out:
“I can’t tell you how completely broken up I am about it. After busting my ass at the gym four days a week for almost two years, watching every character driven action pic that any fan would ask me to watch while I was standing in line buying egg whites and Tuna fish after countless Saturday nights making notes and drinking soda water and munching on seaweed sticks while my daughter slept on my lap to the sound of automatic gunfire, (now she can’t sleep without it. I had to make a tape of automatic gunfire to play in her room at night) after hauling myself to any ‘Guns! Knifes! Ammo!’ show in any small town that I found myself in shooting Killshot or The Mist or Mutant Chronicles, after torn ligaments, screwed up rotator cuffs, thousands of $$$ on ridiculously huge vitamins, overly long conversations with frighteningly tall men about The Fastest Way To Kill Someone With Your Bare Hands, and after a dude refused to sell me a Fatburger at 2am on Santa Monica Blvd, I am, sadly – no, make that heartbrokenly – fuck it – just rip out the heart and stomp it into the pavement a couple of times – pulling out. Punisher fans are already fighting an uphill battle as it is. And I’ve always felt a responsibility to fight that fight for them and with them so that Frank Castle gets the treatment he deserves.”
Now let me be clear here… I’m NOT saying the Prunisher looked doomed because the great Thomas Jane wasn’t going to be in it… I saying that it looked doomed when the guy (whoever that is) who was the most enthusiastic about getting the movie made decided it was looking too horrible for even him to participate in it. That was a BAD sign.
But like all things in Hollywood and the rest of the planet, life moved on and “The Punisher: War Zone” started to take shape. An interesting development with Lexi Alexander coming on as the director (kinda cool to see a woman director fora comic book based action flick) and Ray Stevenson was added as The Punisher himself… but everything else has been dark news.
Early script reviews came out sounding abysmal… the first teaser trailer came out and looked stupid as hell and just failed to capture the Punisher feel… and then came the big hammer… the studio canned the director. Lexi was taken off the project and the editing has been handed over to other people to finish up. YIKES! Can you imagine how bad this thing was looking?
Then at Comic Con they put the Punisher stuff at the most awkward times (an 8pm panel??? Who the hell goes to panels at 8pm?). A press reception at 4pm in the afternoon? It was almost like they were hiding the Punisher at the Con, but didn’t want to flat out cancel their appearance there.
Look, I haven’t seen Punisher: War Zone yet, so I can’t say the movie will suck, nor can I say the movie will rule for certain. However, I can look up at the sky, see tons of dark clouds forming and take a guess that it’s going to rain. Punisher has a lot of dark clouds surrounding it with sounds of rolling distant thunder. I think it’s a pretty safe bet it’s time to pull out your umbrella.
