25 Things You Need to Know about The Punisher on Netflix
By Shawn Lealos
23. Dolph Lundgren First Brought Punisher To The Big Screen
15 years after making his debut in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man and just four years after getting his solo series (the first issue of The Punisher came in October 1985), The Punisher got his solo movie. The Punisher movie arrived the same year as Tim Burton’s Batman but was nowhere near as revered or respected.
This reaction is mostly because the movie starred B-movie icon Dolph Lundgren as Frank Castle. While Lundgren’s most significant role came in Rocky IV as Ivan Drago, he spent the rest of his career starring in straight-to-video action movies and never rose even to the levels of a Steven Seagal or Jean Claude Van Damme.
In The Punisher (directed by Mark Goldblatt, whose only directing credit was Joe Piscopo’s Dead Heat), Frank Castle has killed 125 criminals in five years and is an ex-police officer instead of an ex-military man. The mob killed his family, and The Punisher lives in the sewers and kills every mobster he finds.
The film then takes The Punisher and forces him to team up with the man who killed his family to save the killer’s young son from kidnappers. It is an interesting take but a B-movie at heart with all the baggage that comes along with that label.