10 Comic Book Characters Who've Never Had A Decent Movie

You can say this for Marvel: if at first they don’t succeed, they try and try again. 1990’s The Punisher (with Dolph Lundgren) was such a stiff it was never released theatrically in the US, so after the success of X-Men, Spider-Man, Hulk et al, the company rebooted the franchise in 2004.

Thomas Jane looks the part as Frank Castle and gets a decent nemesis in John Travolta, but writer/director Jonathan Hensleigh’s script is too by-the-numbers for the film to succeed so when Frank returned in 2008’s Punisher: War Zone, it was with a different creative team and Ray Stevenson in the lead. Bloodier and more tongue-in-cheek than its predecessors, War Zone was an improvement on its predecessors but Frank was still little more than a growling vigilante.

The best incarnation of the character to date by-passed multiplexes in favor of Netflix, where Jon Bernthal convinces in the lead. Tough, mean, and capable of killing a dozen guys with his bare hands, TV’s Frank isn’t missed on the big screen.