THE PUNISHER Is Bloody and Relentless in His First Trailer

Wow.

If you are a fan of Marvel Comic’s Punisher than do we have a trailer for you.

After months of teasing us poor, eager fans with pictures, publicity stills and teasers, we finally have a trailer for The Punisher, which will feature Jon Bernthal reprising the role he created in the second season of Daredevil.

In the trailer, we first see Frank Castle dealing with the loss of his family. As his family is already dead, these are obviously flashbacks. We see Castle playing guitar with his daughter and watching his son play on a carousel before then cutting to what is presumably a nightmare of Castle seeing his wife get shot in their bedroom.

The trailer then cuts to a montage of Frank Castle loading a variety of guns and sharpening some blades. It’s … a lot of guns — a couple pistols, a shotgun, a minigun, an automatic rifle. The sound of each weapon adding a beat to the guitar riff underscoring the action. It’s as if the whole world bends to Castle’s will. It’s actually really cool. We also see some white spray paint presumably forming the anti-hero’s now-iconic white skull logo. This sequence ends with some mercenaries or soldiers, rifles up, searching for Castle as a man tells them to “Shoot on sight.”

But it’s Castle who answers, “With pleasure.”

From here, there’s a barrage of gunfire in various scenes that finally ends in Castle standing over a man on the floor. Castle grunts at him, “What do you know about my family?” The man simply answers, “I don’t know anything.”

Castle — “Fair enough.”

Then he shoots him.

We won’t narrate the trailer to you — you should just watch it for yourself — but the trailer is only :50 seconds in at this point, is already amazing and hasn’t even gotten to the good stuff yet.

That is, this trailer is pretty damn good for any and all Punisher fans and you should watch it.

We hear bits of the story that underlies the action — Castle was part of a covert CIA operation and now the man in charge wants him dead. So, of course, Homeland Security and the FBI — “…everybody’s a part of this,” as Frank says.

We get a brief glimpse of Ben Barnes as Billy Russo, the mafia leader who goes on to become one of Punisher’s biggest arch-enemies, Jigsaw. His story is that he was a ruthless and ambitious gangster with a pretty face, until Punisher completely disfigured him. We don’t see that mess here, but we can assume that it’s coming. Our guess is that the series starts off with the government cracking down on Castle, but he proves his innocence to the right people and then has to take on Billy Russo.

Also, we finally get to meet Micro, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who tells Frank that they both “want the same thing,” so they should work together. We’ve heard bits and pieces about this relationship in interviews. It’s a rocky relationship, one more akin to cellmates in prison than an actual lasting friendship and it only gets worse before it gets better.

From here, it’s a montage of some really incredible action, cool shots, explosions, gunplay and daring escapes, all underscored by Metallica’s “One,” which certainly cost a pretty penny for Netflix and Marvel.

Really, just about the only thing this trailer is missing is a release date, which the studios are still being tight-lipped about. It’s likely that we’ll finally get a release date in a couple weeks when Marvel and Netflix present at New York Comic Con, but the way things are going now, it’s entirely likely we’ll all just have to sit on the edge of our seats until they sneak it online under our noses and just sort of — drop it.

That’s pretty daring, but for this series that could actually be a good sign that they trust the word of mouth to get around so much that they are trying something new.

At least, that’s our hope!