'PUNISHER: WAR ZONE' Q&A WITH RAY STEVENSON
The New Punisher actor takes aim and fires back about the flick that hit theaters this weekend
By Rachel Molino
Posted 12/8/2008
Sure, there were the explosions, fight scenes and shoot-outs, but what really knocked out actor Ray Stevenson was Garth Ennis.
"Marvel made everything available to me, which was great," says the man playing Frank Castle in Dec. 5's "Punisher: War Zone." "I took as much from the visualsfrom the work of Tim Bradstreet, the cover illustratoras much as I did from the writing of Garth Ennis, who just knocked me out as a writer."
Four years after Tom Jane played the Marvel antihero, Lionsgate and director Lexi Alexander ("Green Street Hooligans") have rebooted the franchise in the fashion of this summer's "Incredible Hulk," injecting a fresh plot with a hard R-rating and stylized violence. We chatted with new Punisher Stevenson to get the scoop on filling Frank's combat boots, Alexander's superpowers and where the first film went wrong. (Florida!)
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WIZARD: I watched the trailer for "Punisher: War Zone," and it scared me. I think I saw you punch your fist through a guy's face, run a chair leg through a dude's eye and then explode a whole room of assassins.
STEVENSON: I think it's true to the MAX series. The way in which the violence is dealt with is definitely keeping within the comic book genre. We're not selling out to make something that is 100 percent realistic. It's from a comic book, and you get the sense that you are watching the pages come to life. The books themselves don't pull their punches and neither do we, but I don't think it's as abrasive as one might think because it's not done in a hyper-real state. But yeah it's scary. It's about violent men doing violent things to other violent men. But the "War Zone" is as much internal for Frank Castle as it is external, and we get to show that there's a price to pay for this.
It sounds like you went through some Punisher source material.
STEVENSON: All of it. [Marvel] builds a brand loyalty with their characters and the details beneath them, and [fans] would be the first to hold Marvel to task if they veered off, because the audience is dipping their hands in their pockets every month and deserves respect. They set the bar very high.
Having been exposed to this material, have you been inspired to pick up more comics, perhaps other things Ennis has written?
STEVENSON: Yeah, I certainly am more aware now, that if I see something, I will pick it up and have a look. Garth Ennis' writing was fascinating and a lot more in-depth than screenwriters often get into it. And I have worked on projects before where I've had directors, producers and even writers turn around and say, "Yeah, yeah, don't look too deep," because they haven't answered the questions, and any question you may bring up, they haven't got the answers to. They do it in these comic books, and it's very inspiring.
You're a tough guy actor. Who are some of the toughest guys in Hollywood to you?
STEVENSON: People I look back to would be Lee Marvin, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood. We haven't really seen "the tough guy" portrayed in a long time. The "tough" guys have been sort of bullets-bounce-off guys. I think what's happening now is the tough guys are allowed to be human. There are some things that Harrison Ford did, some choices he made which made him one of the tough guys. He didn't always get it right. He did get battered and bruised. Viewers watching him could think, "Given the right circumstances, I could see that kind of thing through."
Have you seen either the Dolph Lundgren or Tom Jane "Punisher" movies?
STEVENSON: I saw the Tom Jane, and it was an interesting film. I think the script didn't serve them very well. After I had read the whole MAX series, I was let down a bit by the script and the placement of the film, in Florida. In our movie, he doesn't drive around in a GTO. He's a nighttime predator, and he's almost clinical in his military precision, but he's definitely a predator at night on the streets of New York, and I think all that helps the direction of the piece, so I think the setting down there was wrong. Also, the script didn't serve them that well; you never really got inside Frank. You left being more informed about John Travolta's character than you were about Frank's character. They had an uphill task, but the film held together. It was fine but I can see why the fansit wasn't really giving them what they deserved.
What did Lexi Alexander bring to the film that could have been missed by another director?
STEVENSON: Are you familiar with Lexi's history? She's an ex-world champion kickboxer. What she brings to the film is that mindsetwhen you really think about it, when you step into a ring with somebody else and you know that person is gonna hit you as hard as they can, and you're gonna try and hit that person as hard as you can, there's a mindset that goes on that there's no way out. This is it. This is combat. When you train and you're determined to progress a course of action, there's a mindset and a heart that goes into the fight, and that's what she brought: a realism, that she was able to expose the inner workings, the warrior spirit, as well as the outside action.
Have you ever had any weird interactions with fans?
STEVENSON: Yes. I've had one in particular. It happened at my very first Comic-Con, at San Diego. I'm on the Marvel stand, I'm sitting next to Tim Bradstreet, we're signing posters. There's a great line and I've got security, which is new to me but it's America and whatever. The security is standing off and people are coming through like, "Can you sign this to John?" and this one guy walks up with a plastic bag all excited and says, "Would you sign my gun?" and he pulls out a sawed-off shotgun! Thankfully it was a plastic one with an orange cap on the end, but that's the only way you'd know. So I go, "Yeah sure, f--k it, I'll sign whatever the hell you want!" So that was pretty intense. Not a flinch from security. I signed his gun and he went away happy.
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