Dammit, Disney. You haven't made me exactly love this character, but you've made it complicated.
All right, so first bit, I gave my overall rant on how MAGA has pretty heavily co-opted Punisher, and my beliefs have evolved away from any manifestation of war and gunplay, so I'm kinda done with the character.
Then I re-reviewed the three films, and overall decided that "War Zone" is enough of a comedy to give it a pass. Like Deadpool.
But I left out the Bernthal Netflix show.
In that first rant, I said...
When looked at properly, in my opinion, the Punisher is a tragedy.
You're supposed to learn the lesson, that yeah, Frank Castle killing these bad guys may "clean up the streets" but it gives him mega PTSD, and places him outside of society, and takes away his ability to have a normal life.
There's no real Punisher, because no one would make that sacrifice.
And when you do get some incel with nothing to lose that shoots people up, it's never the mafia, or a terrorist cell, it's some girl who jilted him, and everyone else who gets in the way.
Or Kyle Rittenhouse.
Ain't no "good guys with guns" coming.
You're not supposed to go "yeah, the Punisher is all fucked up, but I wish someone would do it anyway".
That's the opposite thing you're supposed to take away.
The Bernthal version captures the tragic aspects of the character better than any of the movies, and leaves no wriggle room.
Doesn't slow down MAGA one goddamned bit.
Nothing does.
Their craniums are on auto-pilot.
Anyway! Disney has brought Bernthal-Punisher back for season 4 of Daredevil, his own special, and....
That's where it's complicated.
I'm not necessarily boycotting Punisher, so I can go ahead and watch the flick just fine.
And "Thunderbolts" leaves no doubt Marvel's philosophy totally isn't "whheee!! Killing is great!".
And it's a frigging Spider-Man movie. Come on.
So I've got nothing to worry about there.
Unless fucking Frank Miller wrote the thing; but after "Sin City: A Dame To Kill for" and "The Spirit" Hollywood knows not to touch him with a 20 foot pool skimmer.
So that's not even a blip on the radar.
If it's really, really good, and I love it, are the MAGA whackos gonna think I'm brethren?
Y'know what? Fuck it. Fuck them. Cross that bridge when I even get there.
I was dumb to let their bullshit even get in my head.
Forget this whole post. *Goes to delete it, and stops*
Oh, all right, let's redeem it somehow.....
Let's use it to talk about Disney vs Trump.
ABC (owned by Disney) gave Trump $15 million bucks because....he raped E. Jean Carroll, and someone told the truth about that. Hey, you don't wanna be called a rapist, stop raping people.
But no, let's give the rapist free money.
You know how much food you could buy for starving kids with $15 million?
Jesus Fuck.
P.S. release the goddamned Epstein files.
THEN!
ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel because Trump's FCC chair made mafioso threats, and they caved.
Then a few million people cancelled their Disney plus, and cost them a few billion, and they put him back on air.
And that's the good news. These big giant corporations are cowards in the face of fascists, but they're MORE scared of us and our buying power.
How does this connect to Spidey 4?
Well, Israel didn't like how the Israeli character Sabra was depicted in "Brave New World" so they sabre rattled, and Disney flinched, and did reshoots, and those reshoots were part of the long-ass delay.
So, that plays into how Punisher is depicted in Spidey 4.
Will we get "please don't hurt us!!! ðŸ˜" Disney?
Or "fuck you! Jimmy Kimmel is back! 🦸♂️" Disney?
If it's the former, we get shallow MAGA Punisher.
If it's the latter, complex emotionally damaged Punisher.
"Thunderbolts" gives me optimism it just might the "fuck you!" Disney.
5 comments:
All I want to know is whether or not this new Punisher series has a hilarious "nail the bad guy scene" like when they killed John Travolta at the end of that last one.
On a stunningly positive note for humanity, the announcement that Rush's new drummer is female has been met with, as far as I can tell, not a single sneering note from any CHUDs or MAGA retard types screaming "woke!!!" or anything stupid like that. It did however lead to a joke that this is the first time any woman has ever attended a Rush concert
Re: Punisher. Oh, you should have seen John Bernthal Punisher season 1. He grinds the final guy's face across a broken mirror again, and again, and again. Re: Rush. Well, it IS progressive rock! Screaming "woke" about prog would be like...*fails at an analogy because people really do all the stupid things*.
*Crickets* whelp, I pissed off Billdude somehow....
No that's not it. I'm starting "The Dispossessed" right now. Will update you with any interesting findings.
I don't have much interesting to talk about right now. Watched the 1997 "Funny Games" and didn't get much out of it. I'm too old to really be blown away by the "breaking the fourth wall" bit towards the end of the film. It's also yet another entry in the long list of films that people claim are so painful to watch that they had to stop watching them, or were throwing up or whatever, just total torture...and then, "Men Behind The Sun" excepted, they never come close to living up to their reputation.
Trying to watch a number of lesser known Marlon Brando films and I'm coming to the conclusion that while he certainly was talented his reputation rests on only about three films that everyone agrees he was masterful in ("A Streetcar Named Desire," "On The Waterfront" and "The Godfather"; "Last Tango In Paris" is a quirky film by today's standards and has been marred by the accusations that Maria Schneider was mistreated, and plenty of people, though I'm not one of them, think he ruined "Apocalypse Now" and always have.) Watched the new meta-movie "Pavements" about the 90s slacker band Pavement, but I doubt you'd ever be into them in the slightest.
This year's "bands I'm trying to dig through their entire discography" include Frank Zappa, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix (live stuff and outtakes that I never bothered with before), Game Theory, Queens Of The Stone Age, Pere Ubu, The Tubes, Love, The Apples In Stereo, The Longpigs and The Soft Boys. If you want me to discuss any of these bands I will!
TV - Rewatching "Mad Men," "The Sopranos" and the first season of "True Detective." "Marble Hornets" came back for five new entries this year, but it was a greatest hits live, basically.
Oh, and I beat the Aztec Temple level on 00 Agent difficulty in "GoldenEye 007" for the N64, for the first time since 1998. It wasn't anywhere near as hard this time!
The steak nuggets at Arby's are pretty good but they're $10!!! Also they'll clog your arteries. I don't go to Arby's much. KFC has probably gone down the tubes too.
Ah! So you've been busy! I'm halfway through Arthur Machen's "The Three Imposters" which is kind of like his "Creepshow". Actually, the stories weave all together like a cork-board conspiracy maze, so it's more like "Trick R Treat". The creepy parts are creepy, but he lets himself have more fun getting there. Unlike Lovecraft who goes out of his way to be mirthless. Also already finished "Helen's Story". I knew that to be a rebuttal to "Pan" it had to be chock full of sex-positive feminism. Surpassed expectations. Wowsers!
Post a Comment