Welcome back to new rock stars, I'm Eric Boss, and here on the Road to Avengers Doomsday, one of the most punishing, but also one of the most rewarding stops, is here in episode 8, 2004's The Punisher, in 2008's Punisher Warzone, the first starring Thomas Jane, and the second starring the late Ray Stevenson, both of them as Frank Castles, who reintroduced film viewers to the Marvel Comics vigilante after Dolf Lungren's version in the 80s,

now to audiences in the aughts who are seeking super extreme R-rated thrills.

But both of them in interesting ways that's set up John Berndthal to redefine the character again a decade later.

And all of these Punishers get referenced in Deadpool and Wolverine, so that makes them MCU Canon. What's interesting that we talk about in this episode is there is some mystery fifth Punisher out there who gets referenced by Deadpool. And we're going to talk about who that is. There's just a lot of very cool things in these two movies that are worth revisiting. So Berg and I teamed up for this one and you're going to love our conversation. By the way, here is the schedule for the road to doomsday for the remaining days of this month. Next up will be episode nine, The Incredible Hulk 2008 that releases Wednesday the 25th, followed by episode 10, Ghost Writer and Ghost Writer the Spirit of Vengeance coming next Saturday. And then after that, here is our March schedule so that you can get started watching those movies. But in this episode, join Berg and I as we go down, down, down the road, down the

doomsday road.

Punisher version.

There's a world in which this became the blueprint for Marvel instead of Iron Man.

And you can see that vision.

Didn't it feel kind of like Commando?

It's campy, it's gritty, it's kind of doing its own thing.

It feels almost like a John Wick movie. It just got overshadowed by how successful Kevin Feigey's film division was. Yes, absolutely. Its legacy is that it was like unappreciated for its time and just kind of swept under the rug. Marvel's the Punisher. John Bernthal took over the character as a traumatized and grieving vet haunted by a ghost son who screams,

Get him, daddy! There was Thomas Jane fighting

John Travolta in a movie filled with better X-Men actors, and then a very underrated

Ray Stevenson Punisher War Zone in the short-lived Marvel Knights era. Dolf Lundgren was also

part of that history.

But here in this episode, we endured some punishment, so you don't have to.

In episode six of The Road to Doomsday, I'm here with Berg.

Hello, Berg.

Hello, Eric.

Thank you for having me.

We were chatting just before this episode was a really fun excuse to watch one movie that is fun bad and one movie that is

boring bad yes absolutely yes and it's um unfortunately the box office and legacy don't reflect that

...