Jon Bernthal Punisher

With the ‘Defenders‘ coming out later this week, not to mention all of the news about the Netflix/Disney split and the questions about the future of the Netflix/ Marvel MCU shows, a lot of folks might have forgotten that not longer after the ‘Defenders’ premieres, we will be getting the ‘Punisher’ series on Netflix (though the exact premiere date has not been released just yet). Of course, the property over the years has been fraught with missteps and bad movies, with Jon Bernthal and company being the first ones to really seem to get the character of Frank Castle right when he was introduced during ‘Daredevil’ Season 2.

Apparently, though, there was still some concern on the part of Bernthal about how they were going to handle the Punisher once he got his own show. Bernthal told Moviefone during a recent interview while speaking about the upcoming series:

“It’s an interesting predicament. To put [the Punisher] as the central character is interesting, I think that my big struggle with him is that one of my biggest kind of things that I’m always fighting for on set is, I always want to preserve the essence of Frank, and have the right and be bold enough to really turn my back on the audience, and not do things to win the audience’s favor, but rather stay true to the character and the essence of who he is.

So I think that’s the real challenge: being bold enough to not make him too heroic, at least ‘heroic,’ is important to me. That being said, I think there’s Frank Castle inside of everybody, I think being a father and being a husband, he’s a character that I deeply empathize with.”

It is true that Frank Castle is the darkest of the MCU heroes, but he does still have to be somewhat heroic and likable because that is really what people are tuning in to watch when they put on a comic book show. It is a fine line that Bernthal will be walking, but I have faith in him and the show runners to pull it off, especially if he has such loyalty to the character and clearly has worked very hard to make it as true to the comics as he can.

What are your thoughts on the matter? Does ‘The Punisher’ run the risk of alienating its audience by making Frank Castle too dark and unrelatable? Or will it be precisely those traits that make us love him all the more and differentiate him from all the other superhero shows/movies out there right now? Share your thoughts in the comments below!