Jon Bernthal’s Punisher is one of Marvel fans’ favorite castings, starting with his debut on Netflix’s Daredevil. Needless to say, when audiences heard that Frank Castle was going to team up with Spider-Man in Brand New Day, the excitement was palpable. Thankfully, Frank’s new Marvel Studios Special Presentation, The Punisher: One Last Kill, streaming on Disney+, perfectly sets the stage for the character’s big-screen debut.
The Direct sat down with The Punisher: One Last Kill director Reinaldo Marcus Green to discuss how the Special Presentation will lay the groundwork for Frank’s big team-up with Spidey.
Green admitted that he feels like The Punisher: One Last Kill is “coming in at the right time,” allowing audiences to “know his psychological state before he goes into Spider-Man.”
The key component of Marvel Studios’ Frank Castle Special Presentation is how it starts with the Punisher at an all-time low. His drive for revenge has torn him apart, and with it complete, left him an empty shell. However, after the events of One Last Kill unfold, Frank has found a new purpose: killing bad guys to protect the innocent, not just for his own gain or to fuel his quest for vengeance.
This means that when Brand New Day begins, the Punisher will be a true, through-and-through vigilante, something unseen from his thus far in the MCU. Albeit a different kind of vigilante than Spider-Man, though, which is where all the character conflict and drama will arise.
More of The Direct’s conversation with The Punisher: One Last Kill director Reinaldo Marcus Green can be read below, including a deep dive into tackling such a mature story for Disney+ and bringing to life incredible action sequences.
How The Punisher: One Last Kill Sets up Frank Castle for Spider-Man 4
“I Feel Like We’re Coming at the Right Time.”
- The Direct: “We all know [the Punisher is] going to be in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Can you talk a little bit about how you feel that this special, by the time it finishes, perfectly sets the character up to be in that adventure with Spider-Man?”
Reinaldo Marcus Green: I love it. I mean, I feel like we’re coming in at the right time. I think, just as a fan of The Punisher and a fan of Jon [Bernthal], I want to see him more on screen. That trailer looks amazing. Daniel Deston Cretton is an incredible filmmaker. So just to know that I got Frank first, which is cool to get there before everybody else did, which, selfishly, is really great, and set him up… And we 1778671141 know his psychological state before he goes into Spider-Man. I couldn’t have asked for better timing for us.
So I think it’s just, it’s a lot of fun. I think people who are fans and people who are non-fans can still appreciate the special. You know, someone like my mother has never seen The Punisher, I think she can appreciate where Frank is in his headspace, and then maybe she’ll become a fan and then go watch Spider Man. So I’m hoping that we, we can get some new audience members.
Tackling a Dark & Mature Marvel Studios Project on Disney+
“He Wasn’t Going to Do a Special That was Going to Hold Punches.”
- The Direct: “The special goes to some very dark, mature places, which is different than a typical Disney released project. What were the conversations with Marvel Studios and or Disney about how to handle this more extreme adult subject matter [and] did anything specific need to be tweaked?”
Reinaldo Marcus Green: To be fair, I think those conversations happened before I came on. I think Jon [Bernthal] wasn’t going to have it any other way. I think he spoke about it publicly, that it was go hard or go home, so to speak. And you know, he wasn’t going to do a special that was going to hold punches. And so when he approached me, there was already a lot of that darkness in the character, in the journey of the character. He had already been thinking about this draft and the structure of the early drafts.
So, it came to me, and it was already kind of loosely pre-approved in that sense. And I knew that at least as far as I was concerned, Disney was on board, which I thought was bold and daring and fun. And I think that’s what makes it really cool, that it is a Disney+ special, because it’s not what you expect to see on that platform, and to see Frank Castle come back in this way, I think, was exciting because it’s a whole new audience for us.
Making That Incredible Action Sequence Happen in ‘One Last Kill’
It All Hinged on Having Someone “Who Understand the Character Better Than Everyone In the Universe.”
- The Direct: “Can you talk about filming the awesome Punisher action sequence throughout the apartment building [and] the New York City war zone, and also just offer your thoughts on what really made all of that unique compared to anything else that we’ve seen from the character up to this point?”
Reinaldo Marcus Green: Well, look—kudos to John, because he’s a terrific stunt man himself, on top of being a terrific actor. So that helps to have someone who’s willing to set himself on fire and jump from buildings safely. But certainly having an actor that’s willing to do all of it is super helpful. We also had an amazing stunt team, an amazing stunt supervisor and choreographer, Jude Poyer, who had done ‘Gangs of London,’ which I saw and thought was terrific. We worked with David Conk and some of Jon’s long-standing stunt men. So we had an incredible design team to help us kind of execute that.
The director explained that the locations they found, some inspired by his previous work on Top Boy, helped enhance and fuel the unfolding story:
Green: I think the locations that we found were terrific. We found [an] apartment complex, which I was sort of inspired—I had done a TV show years ago called ‘Top Boy,’ and it was sort of in London, and the apartment complexes have the interior and exterior spaces. And it really lent itself to that storytelling when he’s on the rooftop, and he’s seeing sort of the chaos in the courtyard. It was just like a terrific location that really helped us in the design of that. So I think the locations drove a lot of what the action was going to be like.
At the end of the day, Green admitted that the foundation of it all was “having a very willing and talented actor who understands the character better than everybody in the universe:”
Green: Obviously, the story was what was driving all of that action to kind of make it feel grounded. And then, obviously, we work with an incredible DP and Robert Ellsworth, a cinematographer, one of the greatest to ever do it. So just that [and the] combination of having a very willing and talented actor who understands the character better than everybody in the universe, I think, was a foundation for making really, really, really good action sequences.
The filmmaker offered one more fun tidbit about One Last Kill‘s production: they used real military personnel on set to help not just the fight sequences but also the psychology of Frank Castle himself:
Green: We also had access to real military on set, you know, ex-military who were also not just part of the fight sequences, but also part of the psychological character of where he was at that time… We had some guys who were really, really helpful in sort of making sure that Jon was doing all the tactical stuff with precision. And it’s all about stopping the threat. It’s never killing for the thrill of killing. It’s killing to stop the threat and what’s at his disposal when he’s out of bullets. What does he use? When does he use a knife? When does he use a pipe? When does he use a bat? All of those things were designed in the character, you know, the study of who Frank is and where he was at the time.
The Direct’s entire interview with The Punisher: One Last Kill director Reinaldo Marcus Green can be viewed below.
