How faithful to the comics was it?

[Beelze]

I've never read any Punisher story (only recently I ordered the "Welcome back, Frank" GN), so I wouldn't know. How faithful would you say the movie was to the comics/The Punisher's origin? What did it get right and what did it get wrong?

 

[Kable24]

The movie was very accurate to the core of the character and took most of the storyline from Welcome Back Frank, Punisher Year One and the first couple issues of Punisher War Zone as it's source material.

What they got wrong: Franks military background and what he was doing before he became the Punisher. He was never an FBI agent. He was a marine during the Vietnam War. His family. In the comics he was married to Maria and had a son named Frank jr. and a daughter named Barbara, but I believe now it was changed to Lisa. They were the ones who were killed by a mob hit where they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn't his entire family like was shown in the movie.

 

[Beelze]

Such unnecessary changes always pisses me off, and I've not even gotten truly attached to The Punisher's world yet! Changing it so that his entire family was killed sure made more of an impact though. That's not a bad change, IMO.

 

[Kable24]

No it wasn't a bad change and it gave it more of an impact on Frank's stability. It also makes sense because if it's just his wife and child killed, he still had family for support. This way, he has nobody. The FBI angle bugs me to a point. Frank wasn't a fed in anyway. He was a battle hardened Marine and they should have just kept it at that.

 

[Beelze]

Now that I've read "Welcome back, Frank", I gotta say that I'm not sure I like the way the film inserted Frank's neighbours into an origin story just like that, since it seemed it was one of the places he stayed at after his career had been going on for a long time. I liked his interactions with the neighbours a bit more in the GN, too. That in mind, and going off-topic, where can one read the official and/or original origin story? "Kills the Marvel Universe" was included in the GN, but I'm not sure if I am to count that. :P

 

[marcvader]

The only major problem I had with the movie was it didn't seem gritty enough. It definately should have been shot in NY and have been shot mostly at night. That whole Tampa thing really irked me, it gave it a southern fried feel. That's definately not Punisher.