Catwoman has grossed more than The Punisher?!

[Jack Sawyer]

Because it's shallow, and I don't care about the characters or their motivations, nor is there any real attempt to make me care. It's full of itself, over how many homages it can fit in, how many "look at this!" moments. Wow, attractive women do martial arts and fight with swords! Yawn.

The entire film, including vol. 2, is an overlong ego trip. It's an experiment in just how masturbory a piece of film can be. Vol. 2 is better though, for at least slowing down a bit and giving some time for a few nice moments between characters (though not without some truly annoying geek moments, like where Bill all of a sudden has to go on an unneeded talk about comic books).

Overall though, total overrated shit. I can say the same thing about Tarantino in general, actually. If I have to hear one more fanboy say Pulp Fiction is better than Shawshank or Schindler's List or <insert better movie here>, I'm going to lose it.

(Not that The Punisher or other films have crazy depth to them, but those films aren't trying for Academy Awards, like Quentin wants).

[slothian]

I know for a fact that Catwoman has also been advertised like mad over here as well - you know a studio really wants you to see a film when it get's it's own bus advert.

I should've seen Hellboy & Punisher in Banff but it lost out to more family friendly films. Hellboy's getting a lot of ads as well - three short trailers before a showing of Spiderman 2.

[S-T]

Here's another reason Catwoman took in more money than the Punisher: Catwoman is rated PG-13, while Punisher is rated R. Generally speaking, movies tend to make less money the higher the rating is. Someone said in the commentary for Resident Evil that they knew there would be pressure to make it a PG-13 film to make more money. Even Alien vs. Predator was PG-13. (Which was pretty dumb.)

[Yarrik]

Am I the only person here who liked Punisher for what it was? It's wasn't a bad movie by any means, it just wasn't Spider-Man in terms of greatness. Same can be said of X-Men, Hulk and Dare-Devil for that matter.

I think those movies were all supposed to be movies anyway, to introduce the these super-heroes to today's main-stream world, as opposed to that of the 70s.

X-Men wasn't the greatest film ever, but X-2 improved greatly. Surely the others can do the same.

But this is my opinion.

[Missy]

Upon first viewing, I enjoyed The Punisher. But I'm not so sure it will fare so well a second time. It was just kind of there. I think setting it in Miami took a lot of its grittiness away, as did making Travolta the villain.

[S-T]

I rented The Punisher over the weekend. While it was significantly better than the horrid 1989 version, it was not anything special.

Don't get me wrong, here, for an action movie, it is pretty good. But the problem with translating "The Punisher" from comic book to silver screen is that you wind up with a movie not much different from dozens of others out there. While Spider-Man or The Hulk offers something unique, The Punisher goes over ground that has been covered many times.

Criminals kill Frank Castle's family, critically wound him, and leave him for dead. When Castle recovers, he goes on a whirlwind of revenge. That's basically the same plot as 1990's Hard to Kill. The "revenge" motive also played a large part in Death Wish, released thirty years before The Punisher.

[Fat DJ]

I agree with you both a little bit.