This was just quoted this weekend on Dark Horizons.
In late 2006 came word that Paramount Pictures was planning to continue its successful Jack Ryan action franchise with a fifth film that would NOT be based on one of Tom Clancy's books.
Well, why not? I mean, Sum of All Fears wasn’t based on a Tom Clancy novel either (even though it shared the title). At the beginning of the commentary on the DVD, Tom Clancy says “Hi, I’m Tom Clancy, the author of the book they didn’t read.” How much more evidence do you need? They changed the villains, the location, the age and marital status of Jack, his position in CIA… at least they set off a Nuke at a football game, but they even screwed that up. Just sad…
“Clear and Present Danger” was just barely based on the book. Why did they make the Captain of the Coast Guard ship a woman? In the book it was a grizzled old sailor who had internal dialog about how there’s a new girl recruit on his ship now, and they have to have a female head (toilet), and times they are a changin’. I guess that just wasn’t PC enough for Hollywood… anyway.
Was Sum a good movie? Sure. Was it a Tom Clancy / Jack Ryan movie? No… not really. So why not make more movies with the Jack Ryan name? Because the Tom Clancy books were good… up until the Bear and the Dragon (that one was just lame). The couple of books that turned up afterwards were alright in my opinion… but I digress. The movies that come out with Jack Ryan in them have just gotten worse and worse. Red October was great, Patriot Games was really quite good, though in the novel he doesn't kill Sean Miller, and I've already discussed the other two. IF they make another, it's going to be so awful... well... it really can't be worse than Sum of All Fears, and I guess they wouldn't be pretending to be basing it on a novel....
If a new Jack Ryan movie comes out, and it doesn’t even have the title of a Tom Clancy novel attached to it, don’t go see it. If it DOES have the title of a Tom Clancy novel, you probably shouldn’t see it either, because it won’t be based on any novel that he wrote. They will just pretend it is. Send stupid Hollywood a message, stating that we won’t put up with garbage just because you pretend it comes from a good source.
What I'd really like to see is someone brave enough to make “Debt of Honor” and be faithful to the story and fly that 747 into the Capital Building… it’s not like it’s going to give the terrorists any ideas, and I think it would put a very real context into the movie, like yeah… this really could happen again, and what are we doing to make sure it doesn’t. Anyway… that being said, I really hope they don’t make any more Jack Ryan movies, because they are so changed and watered down, they are truly pathetic. This goes for John Clark as well, in my opinion.
2 comments:
"Send stupid Hollywood a message, stating that we won’t put up with garbage just because you pretend it comes from a good source."
Who are we kidding, you know we'll see it, and complain the whole time. Just because sometimes the air in the room smells like poop doesn't mean you can just chose to not breath. Paramount will serve us a steaming pile of poop, and we'll lap it up because, honestly, not doing so would be equivalent to boycotting air.
Very nice analogy... ech. I say we DON'T lap up the steaming pile of poop this time! FREEDOM!!!!!
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