ATOMIC REACTIONS: MARVEL COMICS ON FILM Now Available on Kindle!

The Kindleversion of ATOMIC REACTIONS: MARVEL COMICS ON FILM is now available for purchase at Amazon. I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out.

Here’s the KINDLE link and here’s the PAPERBACK link.

Taken from my reviews here, MARVEL COMICS ON FILM contains every single one of my Marvel reviews, and covers every single instance of Marvel Comics on film that I’m aware of.

Here’s the book’s Table of Contents:

Table of Contents

Fade from Black

Part One: The Marvel Cinematic Universe
1. Iron Man (2008)
2. The Incredible Hulk (2008)
3. Iron Man 2 (2010)
4. Thor (2011)
5. Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
6. Marvel’s The Avengers (2012)

The Avengers Reactions
1. The Hawkeye Reaction
2. The Agent Coulson Reaction
3. The Black Widow Reaction
4. The Nick Fury Reaction
5. The Maria Hill Reaction
6. The Captain America Reaction
7. The Chitauri/Thanos Reaction
8. The Hulk Reaction
9. The Thor Reaction
10. The Loki Reaction
11. The Iron Man Reaction

Marvel One-Shots
1. The Consultant, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor’s Hammer, and Item 47

Part Two: Spider-Man
The Sam Raimi Trilogy
1. Spider-Man (2002)
2. Spider-Man 2 (2004)
3. Spider-Man 3 (2007)

The Marc Webb Relaunch
4. The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

Part Three: The X-Men
1. X-Men (2000)
2. X2: X-Men United (2003)
3. X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
4. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
5. X-Men: First Class (2011)

Part Four: Blade
1. Blade (1998)
2. Blade II (2002)
3. Blade: Trinity (2004)

Part Five: The Punisher
1. The Punisher (1989)
2. The Punisher (2004)
3. Punisher: War Zone (2008)

Part Six: The Fantastic Four
1. Fantastic Four (1994)
2. Fantastic Four (2005)
3. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)

Part Seven: Ghost Rider
1. Ghost Rider (2007)
2. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012)

Part Eight: Daredevil & Elektra
1. Daredevil (2003)
2. Elektra (2005)

Part Nine: The Non-MCU Avengers
1. Captain America (1944 serial)
2. Captain America (1990)
3. Hulk (2003)

Part Ten: The Nexus of All Realities
1. Howard the Duck (1986)
2. Man-Thing (2005)

Part Eleven: The TV Movies
1. Captain America (1979)
2. Captain America II: Death Too Soon (1979)
3. Dr. Strange (1978)
4. Generation X (1996)
5. The Incredible Hulk (1977 pilot)
6. The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988)
7. The Trial of the Incredible Hulk (1989)
8. The Death of the Incredible Hulk (1990)
9. Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1998)
10. Power Pack (1991)
11. Spider-Man (1977 pilot)

Part Twelve: The Marvel Animated Movies
1. The Invincible Iron Man (2007)
2. Doctor Strange: The Sorcerer Supreme (2007)
3. Hulk Vs. (2009)
4. Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow (2008)
5. Planet Hulk (2010)
6. Thor: Tales of Asgard (2011)
7. Ultimate Avengers (2006)
8. Ultimate Avengers 2 (2006)

PUNISHER: WAR ZONE: I’m Gonna Get My Applesauce Back

Punisher: War Zone (2008) – Directed by Lexi Alexander – Starring Ray Stevenson, Dominic West, Julie Benz, Colin Salmon, Doug Hutchison, Dash Mihok, and Wayne Knight.

It’s fitting that Jigsaw is the villain for PUNISHER: WAR ZONE, as we have a third film starring the Punisher that just falls short of being something special, and more pieces for fans to pick from to assemble their ultimate Punisher film. Each of the three films – 1989′s Dolph Lundgren PUNISHER, 2004′s Thomas Jane PUNISHER, and now 2008′s Ray Stevenson WAR ZONE – are good movies, but all of them fall just short of being something truly special.

Yet there is a sense among Punisher fans, if you talk to them long enough, that all of the right pieces are here to make that really special film, they’re just not in the wrong place. For me, I think swapping Lundgren and Stevenson’s villains would improve both films, as Lundgren’s burnt out approach to the Punisher would benefit from the balance Dominic West’s cartoonish Jigsaw would offer, and Stevenson’s more focused, but shaken Punisher would benefit from being paired off with Jeroen Krabbe’s cool mobster. Perhaps the same could be said for John Travolta’s Howard Saint and Krabbe, too.

The more interesting question for me is whether we can argue that the Punisher has proven himself the most successfully adapted Marvel character to the big screen? Financially, of course, this is far from the truth, but if we look just at the quality of lead performances, the Punisher has starred in three rather good films made by three different directors and starring three different actors. Even if we factor in the TV movies, Captain America has been played by three actors, but only Chris Evans’ film has reached this level of creative success. Spider-Man has been played by three actors, too (even more when we factor in The Electric Company and Japanese series), but the Nicholas Hammond TV version iteration falls far short. Nick Fury has been played very well by two different actors, but Sam Jackson hasn’t been asked to carry a film, yet. Blade was played very successfully by Wesley Snipes and then … well, I haven’t seen the TV show, so I can’t really comment on Sticky Fingaz’s performance

Only the Bruce Banner/Hulk combo really stands in the Punisher class, as Bill Bixby, Eric Bana, Edward Norton, and Mark Ruffalo have all played the Green Giant’s alter ego to varying degrees of success, though Ruffalo has not yet been asked to carry a solo movie.

PUNISHER: WAR ZONE is much like the Lundgren PUNISHER film in that it is an era-specific genre piece. The differences between the late ’80s and the late ’00s creates a different aesthetic in the film, as WAR ZONE is a slick, highly-stylized action flick that moves fast and hits more violently. WAR ZONE is a darker film in terms of its style as the graphic violence has been significantly turned up (we see face half-blown off, chairs jammed through people’s skulls, knifes jammed straight through the top of heads), but not in terms of its content. Lundgren’s Punisher was a man near the end of his rope, while Ray Stevenson’s Punisher is a man not quite there.

None of the three Punisher movies are purposely tied to one another, but if you can get past the variation in origin (here, we’ve got Frank Castle’s family killed at a picnic and not in a Puerto Rico massacre), the proper viewing order would go Jane, Stevenson, and then Lundgren, and I think that makes a pretty solid trilogy.

Actually, the proper viewing order would be: the Jane/Saint subplot, then Stevenson, then the Jane/Joan/Bumpo/Spacker Dave sequence, and then Lundgren.

Get on that, movie people.

WAR ZONE sees a Frank Castle in the prime of his killing life, but when he accidentally kills an undercover FBI agent, he decides he wants to quit. He tries to give the agent’s wife some money but she won’t take it, though he does start to develop a bond with the agent’s daughter. All of the acting they require Stevenson to do is in his wheelhouse, because Frank’s overall demeanor means he’s going to stand there looking angry and a bit forlorn 95% of the time, no matter if he’s cracking a joke, making a threat, or talking to the woman whose husband he accidentally killed.

The film builds its emotional core around the relationship between Castle and the little girl, and it’s effective. She reminds Castle of his own family, which makes him sympathetic without being heroic – a tact that the Jane film kept forcing on us.

Dominic West plays Billy “the Beaut” Russoti, who gets dumped into a glass shredder by Castle, and ends up with a mangled face, and he recasts himself as Jigsaw. Jigsaw is the worst part of the film, as he and his brother, Loony Bin Jim (Doug Hutchison) are sadistic, cartoonish killers. That’s not the problem. The problem is that they’re not all that much fun to watch, and they never really feel like proper threats to the Punisher.

There’s some good secondary characters here in the form of Detective Soap (Dash Mihok), Agent Budiansky (Colin Salmon), and Microchip (Wayne Knight), and really, when the Punisher and his cast of characters are on the screen, WAR ZONE is a highly enjoyable action film. It’s when Jigsaw and his minions are on screen that the film takes a nosedive in quality.

That doesn’t detract too severely from the overall quality of the film, however. I really like WAR ZONE’s dark story and its slick presentation. Some of the killing sequences are wonderfully rendered and provide the perfect mix of violence and over-the-top style. Ray Stevenson does an excellent job walking in Lundgren and Jane’s footsteps, and for the first time in all of the films, I get really excited at the idea of the violence to come. The brutality of what happens here hits home, and WAR ZONE gives just enough emotion to make this about more than simply killing a bunch of bad guys.

PUNISHER: WAR ZONE is like the perfect “back issue” movie. If I went to a comic shop and bought a bunch of PUNISHER back issues, WAR ZONE is exactly what I would want to find.

THE PUNISHER (2004): God’s Gonna Sit This One Out

The Punisher (2004) – Directed by Jonathan Hensleigh – Starring Thomas Jane, John Travolta, Will Patton, Roy Scheider, Laura Harring, Ben Foster, Rebecca Romijn, John Pinette, Samantha Mathis, and Kevin Nash.

THE PUNISHER is one of those movies that I enjoy the less I think about it. If I just sit and watch the film, THE PUNISHER is a really solid, really enjoyable action film, but when I start to think about it and pick it apart, the film loses some points with me.

I wonder if, in part, THE PUNISHER serves as something of a Rorschach test about one’s own happiness. When the film came out, I wasn’t all that crazy about it and spent a good amount of time talking about how dumb it was, but now I find I like it quite a bit more than I did back then. Some of this, I think, is a difference in the amount of superhero movies. Now that we’ve gotten all those Avengers’ films, the sheer amount of Marvel movies lessens the burden each individual film has to bear. I would be dishonest, though, if I didn’t acknowledge that I’m a lot happier person now than I was back in 2004. I have a much better sense now of who I am and what I want, and that singular contentment in self means that I’m less reliant on other people to make me happy. If you’re happy with who you are and what your situation is, I think its possible that a movie like THE PUNISHER will allow you to focus more on the positive aspects of the film and less on the negative.

Which isn’t to say I watch THE PUNISHER in some dopey identity cocoon that filters out all of the bad stuff so I can blindly love the good stuff.

The movie takes way, way too long setting up the Punisher’s origin, giving us an elaborate and elongated back and forth that sets up the feud between Frank Castle (Thomas Jane) and Howard Saint (John Travolta). We’ve got to sit through a sequence where Castle is pretending to be a German arms dealer in a bust that goes wonky and ends with the death of one of Saint’s twenty-something sons. We need this scene to establish that this is Castle’s last assignment as an undercover FBI agent, and to give Saint a reason to have Castle’s family murdered, but only after Saint has to identify his son and go to the funeral and ask his goons to get him information and … deep breath … decide to kill Castle until his wife (Laura Harring) says she wants Castle’s entire family killed. That means we’re not just talking Castle’s wife (Samantha Mathis) and son, but his dad (Roy Scheider), his mom, his in-laws, and a whole bunch of other people who are nameless and faceless and simply here to be gunned down. Which they are, in another elongated sequence that has Saint’s men, led by his right-hand man Quentin Glass (Will Patton) kill everyone. Then there’s a chase sequence in which Castle’s wife and son try to get away from Saint’s men, and Frank gets on a bike, and then his wife and son get run over and he gets shot and then punched and then tossed off the pier and then shot again and blown up and … another deep breath … then he washes up on shore and is rescued and gets a crutch and goes back for his dad’s guns which will not play a role in the film whatsoever and tosses his crutch away and heads back to Tampa for some revenge.

Seriously? We need all that just to get to the Punisher killing mobsters? Why? The 1989 Dolph Lundgren-starring PUNISHER film didn’t need that, so why does this movie need all that?

I think it’s because this PUNISHER film is a little ashamed of who the Punisher is and what he’s doing.

There’s several occasions in the film where the filmmakers try to soften the blow. I think they thought we needed all of that set-up so we’d be on Frank’s side when he started killing bad guys.

We don’t.

Well, I don’t. I don’t want to speak for you because that would be rude.

Another problem with this prolonged origin sequence is that Frank is declared dead and then comes back and tells everyone, “I’m alive!” He seriously shows up at the police station and accuses two high-ranking police officers of not making an arrest in the murder of his entire family. Why? Why have this scene? These two characters are never seen from again, so the most obvious reason seems to be that the filmmakers think we need to know that the cops aren’t doing their job, so Frank is even more justified to go on a murderous killing spree. It would be one thing if we were seeing this because Frank was unsure of what he was doing, but he’s not. He knows and we know and even Saint knows that Frank Castle is going to try and kill every single person involved with the Saints.

This elongated origin also mucks up Frank’s living situation. Frank moves into a run-down apartment building that has three other tenants: Joan (Rebecca Romijn), Bumpo (John Pinette), and Spacker Dave (Ben Foster). All three of the existing tenants live their life out of the mainstream, but they’ve managed to put together a nice little family unit here, and Frank’s arrival disrupts that. They aren’t hostile to him, however, but curious, as one usually is when a new neighbor moves in next door. They try to domesticate Frank (especially after he beats up Joan’s abusive ex) and while the scenes themselves are well-written and well-acted, they don’t strike me with much emotion, and that’s because those scenes would work infinitely better with the Lundgren Punisher. The Jane Punisher doesn’t really feel all that disaffected with life; he’s just a guy out for revenge (even if he says he isn’t). The Jane Punisher isn’t unstable, no matter how many shots we get of him sucking down Wild Turkey.

Both the origin and the apartment sequences work on their own, but I don’t think they work very well together.

There’s all kinds of plot holes and plot contrivances here but they’re not offensively present. They’re here mostly to allow both halves of the film to co-exist. The filmmakers could spend more time with the revenge plot, but it’s clear they’ve chosen to over-simplify that plot in order to over-complicate the revenge itself, giving quick glimpses of Frank spying on the Saints and making things in order to pull off a twisted revenge that gets Saint to kill both his wife and Quentin. We don’t get to see much of that planning because Saint sends two different contract killers after Castle, one of whom plays a guitar and the other who looks like a crewman from the Nautilus. The first battle isn’t very good, but the second is, as Castle and the Russian (Kevin Nash) destroy Frank’s apartment in a thunderous brawl.

When it comes time for the final act and the over-complicated plan to go into effect, Frank gets Saint to do most of his dirty work, and then puts a bomb on a weight so Saint’s one remaining son ends up killing himself. The only man that Castle kills (because some flunkies) is Saint himself, and then he does it by tying Saint to the back of a car and setting off bombs that leave the Punisher’s logo burning brightly in the parking lot.

Why? Castle has plenty of chances to kill all of these people but he waits and waits and waits and does something theatrical because that makes for a better film, I guess. Pre-Punisher Frank is given to a bit of theatrics with his undercover work but it’s a long jump from dying your hair blonde and speaking in a funny accident to rigging enough explosives in a parking lot to create the Punisher logo. That’s what I mean about over-complicating the revenge.

When I start thinking of all this, I start having less fun with the movie, and that’s too bad because when I just watch it I do like this film quite a bit. Tom Jane is the best Punisher we’ve seen and it’s a shame that the film was hampered with a smaller-than-usual budget for a movie like this. That doesn’t excuse the burps in the script, but it does suggest more could have been done to take advantage of two great performances from Jane and Travolta. Likewise, the three misfits are all solid and Rebecca Romijn is surprisingly good ringing some emotion out of Joan’s predicament.

I like THE PUNISHER. It’s not the smartest of all the Marvel films, but the performances are good and the action scenes are decent. Mostly, though, it’s Jane’s intelligent, focused, somewhat theatrical conception and execution of Frank Castle that keeps bringing me back.