Emotionally Raw: An AppleWorm Punisher Rant

Yeah... I finished this series and have LOTS of thoughts to get through. The upcoming AppleWorm Podcast will be about the second part of Justice League thoughts and the thoughts on the Punisher because of how much I need to get my thoughts out on these 2 amazing marvel and DC productions.

Ok now the real and serious stuff:

One of my best friends from Denmark and I were talking about why we hated Iron Fist, why we are growing tired of the CW soap opera way of depicting superheroes in Flash and Arrow and how or if that had something to do with why we loathed Suicide Squad. Many of you guys out there might have many reasons, and so did we: bad character development, monotonous tone, horrible editing, poor/lazy writing of the plot, etc. etc. So since we could not find one specific reason, we went more general, thematic, resolute with our reason to dislike on different gradients the series mentioned before (excluding Suicide Squad which is a movie). And OUR conclusion was:

The greater the series or movie, the greater the questions you are left with

the deeper the emotional journey you are taken through.

On that note I saw the 13 episodes of the first season of The Punisher and LOVED IT. This series is the most raw and unapologetic I can remember.

I have always been more of a DC comics guy so, even when I love the Marvel movies (most of them at least), I have not read up many comics on their respective heroes, anti-heroes and villains. That fact helped me be a more surprised audience member of the series as I did not know what The Punisher's villains names are and NO IDEA who Jigsaw is and so on and so forth. There is so much I likes about the series that the only thing I can kind of say I did not like about the series is the fact that the Punisher script explores a character that seems trapped in a circle in which we believe he will grow or change, to ultimately end up back in square one, while everyone around him has grown, changed, evolved or devolved.

That being out of the way, I loved how this show pulled no punches, just like the punisher. It does not adapt to an audience or to an idea of what a character should be... IT JUST IS. The themes that it makes us meditate about range from family, to gun control, to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), to military ethics and veterans treatment by society and even loneliness. Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle is nothing short of brilliant, his portrayal of a character is so much more than the "memento mori" skull that characterizes his destructive anti-hero method of dealing with life after great trauma and suffering both physical and mental. You get to see through his and others' eyes that when someone tries to suffocate evil with the truth in a world where the truth is malleable (specially if you have the right friends and power), everyone around you is in danger. 

The characters of Lewis Walcott and Curtis Hoyle are two stand outs of the PTSD/veteran aspect of the series that truly hit me and made me sink into a contemplation of a subject truly foreign to my life. I must clarify that as a Costa Rican, the whole army and troops ideology that is core to the United States and other military countries is odd due to the fact that we have no army so the veteran, military service to your country experience is only something I know from american and danish friends that have served as soldiers of their respective countries.

You either die a hero; or live long enough to watch yourself become the villain.

That phrase is something that resonated in my mind as Lewis and Curtis both lived their present and talked/pondered about their past. One side losing control of their mind and having to blame external factors for a war he was still fighting inside his mind and soul; while the other sacrificed and understood that he would have to find a way to live with his past, his scars and in that journey everyday of waking up to trying to sleep, helping others that could benefit from the answers he had and the questions he still lives with everyday.

Frank Castle's Punisher is not a light of hope and example of righteousness the way other DC and Marvel superheroes are. He is a reflexion of the society we live in: a balance of good and evil where there is much more good than evil, but that evil is a truly dark piece that we have to learn to live WITH and not IN.

More in depth thoughts in the upcoming podcast this week soon. 

All in all this series has taken the #1 spot of Marvel Series de-throning Daredevil Season 2.

Look forward to episode 15 of the AppleWorm Podcast just in time for thanksgiving.