One Last Kill’s Dog Scene?

Spoilers follow for The Punisher: One Last Kill, which is available on Disney+ now.

It’s a rough one, to be sure. About four minutes into the new one-shot special The Punisher: One Last Kill, writer-star Jon Bernthal and writer-director Reinaldo Marcus Green deliver the short film’s first kill: an adorable little dog that is thrown in front of an oncoming truck, much to the horror of his owner (and the viewers at home).

The scene is made all the more troubling by the fact that the dog owner (played by John Douglas Thompson) appears to be unhoused and partially disabled. (He’s billed in the credits as “Old Vet.”) He’s also assaulted by the roving gang of criminals right before they kill his dog. It’s quite a way for Marvel to begin what many fans thought might be the set-up for Frank Castle’s upcoming appearance in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, where a no doubt kinder, gentler Punisher will be trading one-liners with the wallcrawler.

Of course, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has had its share of traumatic and/or heartbreaking moments, but they’ve usually been rooted in the world’s sci-fi/fantasy leanings – half of our favorite characters disappearing into ash as a result of the Snap, the Illuminati being slaughtered by the Scarlet Witch, Rocket’s origin story, etc. But The Punisher, as a “grounded anti-hero” of the MCU, exists in more of a “real world” scenario that we, the viewers, can believe could actually exist (more or less). As such, when a moment as heinous as this cute little pup being senselessly murdered happens, it hits hard.

Never mind that John Wicking the dog is an easy – perhaps even lazy – setup to establish how horrible the streets of Little Sicily have become in Frank’s world. The intent on the part of the filmmakers is to shock us and make us root for Frank to put his Punisher armor back on and take revenge. And worry not, because about 40 minutes later we get exactly that (the One Last Kill of the title, I suppose).

It’s interesting, though, to consider that not only is this a Marvel production, which has largely stayed in the PG-13 lane, but it is of course also a Disney production. (One Last Kill has a television rating of TV-MA.) It used to be that Disney just didn’t mess with R-rated material, and in fact it wasn’t until the mid-’80s when the studio’s production label Touchstone Pictures began to release R-rated films like Down and Out in Beverly Hills and Ruthless People. (Touchstone also handled most of the Mouse House’s PG-13 titles back then as well. The phrase “you don’t put the castle in front of that stuff” was largely the reason Touchstone was created in the first place.) By putting the Touchstone name on its films which had sex scenes or drug use or, gasp, characters saying the word “fuck,” Disney was protecting its more family-friendly brand. (Heck, Disney itself didn’t even release a PG-rated movie until 1979’s The Black Hole!)

Now, the MCU Punisher was spawned in the Netflix days of Daredevil, where bone-crunching violence was the name of the game – and it’s continued in that vein in the spin-off series Born Again – so it’s not surprising that One Last Kill would be so hardcore. (The short seriously plays like a third-person shooter once Frank unleashes in the second half, resulting in some thrilling stuff.) But the dog killing is indicative of the special’s inclination to take things a bit too far, perhaps.

Indeed, it seems as though One Last Kill is set in an alternate version of the MCU, one where refugees from 1979’s The Warriors are running amok and the streets of New York City just aren’t safe at all. We see what appears to be an ordinary day in Little Sicily as criminals roam wild, a cop car is burning while another high-tails it out of there to get away from the marauders, and a simple store owner (Andre Royo from The Wire) has to contend with serious danger. I’m usually happy to let the MCU shows and movies do their own thing, never asking the “Where’s the Avengers” question whenever a character gets in a jam, but seriously, where are, if not the Avengers, at least the New York-based heroes who we know are active, like Spider-Man? As my colleague Jim Vejvoda said today, “Are Ned and MJ sheltering in place somewhere during all this!?” Even the Thunderbolts are in New York and without their asterisk last we saw.

And as I said earlier, we’re just a couple of months out from Spider-Man: Brand New Day. We’ve already seen Bernthal as Frank in the trailer for the film, with Spidey playfully webbing up The Punisher’s mouth before he can finish saying “motherfucker.” But try as the wallcrawler might, he just can’t web away the tonal whiplash between that version of The Punisher and the one we last saw in One Last Kill.

Look, I liked The Punisher: One Last Kill just fine. Like I said, the action is pretty great, and it’s always nice to catch up with Bernthal’s take on Frank Castle. And hey, if you want to kill a fictional dog to motivate a character (or an audience), more power to you. Sometimes a move like that works (again, see: John Wick), and sometimes, in part thanks to how well it did work in John Wick, it feels like a gratuitous shortcut. If only Disney could roll out its Touchstone Pictures label again…