Netflix’s roster of Marvel shows often sagged in the middle due to episode counts that were maybe a little longer than they needed to be, but the comic book adaptations almost always delivered when it came to action.
In a huge stroke of coincidence, all of the platform’s New York City residents tended to find themselves in danger when they were trapped in a hallway of some description, forcing them to fight their way out in expertly-choreographed fashion.
Unlike Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist, Jon Bernthal‘s Punisher had no issues simply blasting his foes into next week with a pistol, shotgun or rifle, so he was never really too concerned with looking cool in his hand-to-hand showcases.
Bernthal is no slouch when it comes to the action genre, though, and he explained what he wants to see from his set pieces during an appearance on YouTube’s Hot Ones.
“I really want to be with the characters. I don’t want it to be one note. I want to see when there’s fear. I love that, when they feel like maybe someone’s getting the better hand; desperation. But I think, at the end of the day, what everybody’s really craving in those scenes is that you buy it. It’s the physicality of both delivering and selling the blows. Or, if you’re playing somebody who doesn’t have those kinds of skills, you just gotta play the emotionality of it. You gotta kinda meld all those things together. When you get a group of guys that trust you and that you trust, you can take it to a higher and higher level.”
The actor is correct in saying that there needs to at least some level of emotional or physical stakes on display, otherwise you’re just doing cool stuff for the sake of it. Of course, Frank Castle was never one for getting his big hero moments, when the vigilante was only out to dispense his own unique brand of street-level justice in the most straightforward possible fashion.
