On the same day that Tom Clancy died, Paramount Pictures released the first poster for Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, their big reboot of the Jack Ryan film franchise. One day later they released the first trailer, meaning in a 48-hour span we learned that Clancy had died at the age of 66 but has attained immortality in that his most notable artistic creation, Jack Ryan, lives on. Let’s try to see the timing of all this as a positive thing as opposed to truly crass marketing on Paramount’s part, a tribute rather than exploitation (or honest-to-goodness unintended coincidence).
Jack Ryan will continue on as the CIA analyst-turned-bad-ass-field agent, except this time Shadow Recruit is an entirely original idea not adapted from an existing Tom Clancy novel. That is a certainly curious decision considering there are 4 Jack Ryan novels yet to be adapted into movies (although after 9-11, the climax of Debt of Honor makes it unfilmmable for the foreseeable future), and even five novels centered around Jack Ryan’s son. However, Shadow Recruit actually looks like a perfectly enjoyable spy thriller.
Check out the trailer below:
Chris “James T. Kirk” Pine is now the fourth person to play Jack Ryan, after Alec Baldwin (Hunt for Red October), Harrison Ford (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger), and Ben Affleck (Sum of all Fears). For that matter, Keira Knightley is the third actress to play Jack’s wife Cathy Ryan, after Anne Archer (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger) and Bridget Moynahan (Sum of All Fears). Pine might be harder to believe as a CIA analyst as he is as an action hero, and the whole keeping his secret agent life from his spouse is a trick he proved incredibly inept at pulling off convincingly in This Means War. As for Knightley, the trailer heavily hints there might be more to this version of Cathy Ryan than prior interpretations.
However, raise your hand if you had no idea this film was actually being made.
Is your hand raised? I clearly have no way of knowing. It’s not like we’re chatting on Skype. Screw it, my hand is sure raised. There has been talk of doing another Jack Ryan film for over a decade, after Sum of All Fears grossed $118.8 million domestic/$193.9 million worldwide on a budget of $68 million in 2002. That would be like grossing $167 million domestic at current ticket prices, more than The Heat ($158 million) but less than World War Z ($202 million), i.e., good but not quite good enough. A sequel again starring Ben Affleck slowly morphed into a complete franchise reboot centered around Chris Pine, which is funny considering that as a prequel released 8 years after Clear and Present Danger Sum of All Fears was supposed to reboot the franchise as a series of films featuring Affleck in the title role. That didn’t happen, but the same seemed to be true of the Chris Pine version as well. Sam Raimi left the project as director, and then his replacement, Jack Bender, quit somewhat last minute. The screenplay went through five different writers, the only one of whom (Steve Zaillian) who had any prior experience with the Jack Ryan films (he wrote Clear and Present Danger) quit after only a couple of weeks. This was a serous case of development hell.
However, it obviously finally got made, directed by Kenneth Branagh no less who also double times as the Russian (?) villain. The trailer highlights a Bourne Identity-esque fight scene at the beginning followed by lots of standard spy-thriller tropes, i.e., the villain with a heavy accent (Branagh, and general air of distrust. Kevin Costner is around as the badass CIA agent who recruits Jack Ryan, and the word is that Costner’s contract calls for him to play the same role and fill the same function for a planned companion film, Without Remorse, centered around Clancy’s other big character, Jack Clark. From the looks of the trailer, Costner may yet prove to be the best part of Shadow Recruit, making a return appearance in Without Remorse an enticing proposition.
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is due to be released on December 25, 2013. What do you think? Does it look like a spy thriller worth seeing? Just hope Chris Pine is at least marginally more convincing a Harrison Ford-replacement than Ben Affleck? Let us know in the comments.
