Girl Fridays

...on Tuesday?? UP IS DOWN, BLACK IS WHITE

Punisher: Bore Zone

Punisher: War Zone is a terrible movie.

Actually no, I take that back. It's an execrable movie, a work of such stunning incompetence that, after the relative highs of The Dark Knight and Iron Man, brings us back to the sobering reality that it takes more than just a previous appearance in a comic book to make an entertaining movie, it takes A-List talent. Sadly P:WZ has little of that. It's a goofy, inconsistent mess, too ridiculous to be taken as a serious action film but not nearly smart enough to qualify as satire, and filled with cringeworthy dialogue and juvenile visual motifs such as having every single character wear black or grey (way to undermine the iconography of your main character there, Lexi) and having garish neon tubing light churches, subways, and gun cabinets in a manner reminiscent of Joel Schumacher's Batman movies. The utterly banal story sees Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, accidentally gun down an undercover FBI agent while executing a factory full of mobsters, causing him to have a crisis of conscience and give up Punishing long enough to take responsibility for the dead agent's wife and child. Added to this are two mobsters with a vendetta against Frank, one a disfigured mob enforcer who names himself Jigsaw (played in embarrassing high camp mode by Dominic West, under five pounds of unconvincing rubbery prosthetics), and his brother Loony Bin Jim, a bafflingly absurd cliche "insane" character (meaning he regards everyone with a wide-eyed stare, speaks slowly and menacingly, licks his own blood off his hands, and smashes things while cackling). Jigsaw and Loony Bin Jim concoct a plan to kidnap the agent's family so that they can lure The Punisher to oh god who gives a shit.

One of the many problems (and this can be directed at the previous film attempts also) lies in trying to humanize The Punisher and make him sympathetic. He may go around punishing criminals but Frank Castle is not a hero - he began life as a villain in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man, as an example of vigilantism taken to its ugly extreme. Batman is also a vigilante, but he remains morally intact because he never kills his prey - but as we see from the volume of police reports in P:WZ, The Punisher has murdered literally thousands of people, far too many to balance the death of his family. He is a psychopath, his humanity long since stripped away. He's the protagonist but shouldn't ever be treated as the good guy, he should be played as Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers - a cold and implacable force of violence who stalks mobsters instead of promiscuous teenagers (indeed the only real entertainment I found in P:WZ was seeing Frank kill off thugs in various gruesome ways, much in the same way I find Friday the 13th entertaining - sadly even this is given too little screentime). He shouldn't ever be aided by the police, grudgingly or otherwise. He shouldn't ever hold hands with a little girl while her mother thanks him for his noble deeds.

The one bright spot is Ray Stevenson, who is perfectly cast as Frank Castle. It's a shame he couldn't have been in a better movie.

(I needed a drawing to accompany this post so I picked the scene where Frank appears at the mobster's banquet - shamelessly ripped off from Miller and Mazzuchelli's Batman: Year One but one of the few scenes I actually didn't mind.)

Quote of the sometime...Sort of

"Why so serious, son?"

Okay, so it's actually more of a random vandalization of my brother's website, but hey, that's what family's for, right?

Toy update at long last

Well, that was quite the hiatus, much longer than intended. Since I'm a fan of coin collecting, I took it upon myself to organize the production of a challenge coin for the Alpine Garrison of the 501st Legion. They look great, and we're quite pleased with them, but it meant that most of my free time for 2 weeks was taken up mailing them out to the various members around the world that ordered some.

Now that I'm done with that—for a while anyway, I was asked by the Imperial Gunnery Detachment to head up a run of coins for them, so we're currently taking orders and over Christmas I'll probably be shipping coins out like mad again, but my processes will have improved—I can get back to talking about toys and Batman: the Animated Series. First up, Toys!

Ninjas are cool. Very cool. One of the first Marvel Legends figures I was really interested in was Ronin, from a 2 pack with the assassin Elektra, because he was a neat looking ninja. When the 2 pack finally came out I roamed all over the county with my cousin in search of this particular pack, and was eventually rewarded with finding it. I don't think I ever posted pictures of it, so I'll have to do a review in the near future.

Anyway, I was even more pleased to learn there was a variant (apparently, a running change as opposed to a chase, thank the maker) with a slightly differently deco-ed Ronin, this time with a brighter, lime green instead of the dark, dull green before, and gold trim instead of bright yellow. A pal from the Fwoosh who lives up in Salt Lake found a bunch early this week and offered me Ronin, I having been vocal on the forums that I wanted him. Ronin was shipped yesterday and arrived today, and he's every bit as cool as I thought he would be, and is as much cooler than the original Ronin as I thought he would be. I'm even more tempted to get a second lime/gold Ronin than I was the original, and I'm even more looking forward to the upcoming re-release of this figure with a new hooded head (as a red Hand Ninja Assassin) in the second wave of 2 packs. I fully intend to get two—since the other figure in the set comes with an alternate head that turns Nick Fury into a generic SHIELD agent, so I need two of that figure as well—of the red ninjas, and if finances work out I can easily see myself grabbing four of them, because I can always use more ninja figures.

Extra Large Picture

Evil Cousin Rish Outfield took time out from his busy schedule of doing nothing to get himself a holiday job at Toys R Us, and was kind enough to help me out with one of the TRU Exclusive DC Universe 2 packs. I was able to get the Lightray & Orion pack thanks to him, which I was starting to get worried about finding, since they've been out for all of two weeks. There have been numerous complaints about these 2 packs, which I hope to go into in a quick review post about this set soon, but mine are mostly okay.

The Evil One also helped me obtain the entire set of Walmart Exclusive Marvel Legends Ares figures, of which I previously posted pics of Heroes Reborn Iron Man and Crossbones. I finally decided I wanted to build the complete Ares, so I did. I've arranged sales and trades for the figures I didn't need, so I don't feel I paid too much for him. He's a big boy, too, with a big ass sword.

Speaking of Walmart Exclusives, I finally obtained my first of the five elusive figures that make up the Metallo wave. Metallo is tied (with Kalibak) for the coolest Collect & Connect figure so far announced in the DCUC line, so I've been pretty worked up about finding this wave. I sincerely doubt I'll see them locally (at least soon enough to matter), so I've been begging and pleading with people on my forums (Fwoosh and SWAN) to help find me these figures. So far, I have the Riddler, who is one of my most looked forward to figures from this wave. He looks pretty cool, though his cane needs a nice coat of gold paint.

Returning to the DCUC TRU 2 packs, one of the other four sets in this first wave was one I was originally planning on getting, because it had a rerelease of Cyborg Superman, one of the hardest to find figures from last year's DCSH line. However, I didn't particularly need the rereleased Mongul, although he looked really great, and I think the blue of his pants was darker, and his boots more metallic pink, and really I would have been fine having a second.

But, some kind soul from the Fwoosh offered to send me the original DCSH release Cyborg Supes, and thinking of the many problems people have been experiencing with these two packs I jumped at the offer. He's paid more for shipping than I would have preferred, but it's probably worth it to have the original version. I have not yet released it from it's plastic prison to beat the crap out of Green Lantern, Steel, and Superman, but have no fear, I will soon.

Katie helped me open the shipping box, as she likes to do, and when we had Cyborg out, I asked her if we should open it. She looked at it and said, "No, I don't like him." "Why not? He's cool," I said. "No, he's scary." And I looked at him, and he does rather have a Terminator-esque, skeletal face, and I guess he is kinda scary.

And the final DCUC update today (since I'm ignoring the fact that my case of wave 4 arrived from CornerStoreComics a couple of weeks ago) is regarding the almost not produced variant from wave 2, Jason Roush as Firestorm. The modern version of Firestorm was suppose to be a running change when wave 2 originally shipped, but factory changes, and other delays cause Mattel to skip the second case assortment of wave 2 and jump ahead to wave 3, though they promised we would see the Jason case in December, and they delivered. He looks really cool, and I like him more than the classic Ronnie version, despite having a bit of nostalgia for Ronnie, since I had the Super Powers toy as a kid. Jason is a repaint of Ronnie (or rather, Ronnie is a repaint of Jason since it was sculpted with Jason in mind) with a new head, and knee pads. The deco differences between the two make the modern version really stand out, and I'm glad to have got him, even if he cost me about $3 more than Ronnie did. If only I hadn't sold my long haired, modern version of Aquaman I would have a complete set of wave 2, and as such I am looking for the modern Aquaman.

And for some reason, these scenes created themselves in my head, and I had to let them out.