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As seen in Netflix's The Punisher, Frank Castle has had quite a bloody history as one of the most dangerous vigilantes in the MCU. First appearing in Daredevil season 2 before getting his own show, it's recently been confirmed that Frank Castle will soon return to the MCU in Marvel Studios' upcoming Daredevil: Born Again series coming to Disney+, reuniting with Charlie Cox's Matt Murdock. As such, the new appearance can finally pay off where the Netflix show left the Punisher at the end of his second season.

Although the news that Jon Bernthal will be reprising his role as The Punisher in Daredevil: Born Again is very exciting, it's not yet known how Marvel Studios will be handling the preexisting history of Murdock, Castle, and any other character who first debuted on Netflix such as Vincent D'onofrio's Kingpin. However, the confirmation that at least three Netflix characters...

There's a confusing narrative surrounding 1982's "First Blood." Amid the mayhem of its bloody blockbuster sequels, the film either gets misremembered as a straightforward action flick, or is claimed to be a deep exploration of the psychological effects of war on returning soldiers. But the adaptation of David Morrell's 1972 novel is both.

As his franchise took off, Sylvester Stallone's John Rambo would evolve (or devolve?) into a more stereotypical action hero, cutting down entire armies with belt-fed machine guns over the course of four sequels. Stallone even thinks "Rambo 4" is his best action film. But in "First Blood" the character is more multi-faceted. A Vietnam vet who finds himself at odds with the society he believed he was fighting for, John Rambo doesn't directly kill anyone once he runs afoul of a hard-hearted small-town Sheriff and his deputies. Instead, he flees into the Washington State wilderness and...

There are very few pure action movies, a fact one only comes to appreciate once they try to compile a list like this. "The Expendables," "Commando," and the "Fast and the Furious" franchise are examples of such films in which the only objective is to blow things up in creative and satisfying ways. Instead, most action movies fall on a sliding scale and also incorporate thriller, horror, and comedic elements.

The same handful of Black directors pops up on this list again and again, in part because they are excellent directors but also because it's a shallow pool. Black directors just don't get as many opportunities. According to a 2021 report by the consulting company McKinsey & Company, less than 6 percent of the writers, directors, and producers of U.S.-produced films are Black, despite Black Americans constituting 13.4 percent of the United States population (per the same report). This discrepancy may...