Maybe follow everything that Clancy has created on the characters and just have a total different story lines. Where the hardcore fans will just say where does it fit in at all on the timeline. Could also be that it everything how Clancy created the characters, but just in today’s time and Not the novel’s timeline at all. I would think those are the best two ways to go about it. I’m kind of a hardcore fan, but not a 100% one.
Considering this is the third ‘young’ Jack Ryan we’ve had in a row, it’s be nice to have an old one for a change.
I only found out recently when I read the Wikipedia page that Ryan becomes President!! That did make me laugh!
It was in the mid 90s that Ryan became President. In the novel Executive Orders, after Japan Airline plane crashes into the Capital.
This is perhaps one of the major problems with adapting Ryan for tv following Clancy closely: some books already made it to the big screen successfully - Red October, Patriot Games - some fell flat like Sum of all Fears. And finally you’d turn it into Designated Survivor; all in all not the best perspective for a production that will effectively only see its contract renewed every year for a couple of episodes.
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Those Prison Break vibes you got were indicative of the goal, it seems;
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Wow, they actually want to make it worse!
Sure that’s a subjective opinion and I could just as easily say they want to make it successful, like PB. Which means aiming square at the lowest common denominator with constant cliffhanger and tease ad infinitum
I actually enjoyed both seasons…
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I agree.
Lowest common denominator, btw, does not mean “nostalgia”, as I’ve seen some describe Danny Elfmans use of his own score, or general language for thriller;
It means fart jokes.
The ACTUAL thing that Every. Audience. Member. Can relate to!
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I’ve only seen the first season so far. But I’d say doing Clancy’s Ryan today is always going to be a hard sell to Clancy fans, simply since Clancy’s source material has now been overtaken by reality. And the characters themselves in the books don’t exactly scream to make it to the screen. Krasinski is actually doing a very good job to update Ryan and make this relatively bland cardboard 80’s yuppie a relatable, likeable figure.
But that’s the main problem of the series: the die-hard Clancy enthusiasts will be disappointed that this is a very loose adaptation - while the average watcher may not find enough originality in this series to watch more than a couple of episodes. After all, how many CIA/Seals/SAS/Marines types have we already seen hunting terrorists with gun in hand? Who has been waiting for yet another one?
Personally, I liked the first season. But I can see how the series will have to struggle to stand out in a particularly heterogenous market that offers many varied shows, some of them high quality and targeted to just the audience Jack Ryan also wants to get on board.
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I’ve been enjoying season 2 more than the first season. A huge part of the appeal is Krasinski, who makes the character almost instantly sympathetic. It’s still dumb as all get out, but who cares? The production values and intrigue are there. Looking forward to season 3.
Not so much that they relate to it, but respond to it positively. We all relate to a fart joke, but it doesn’t make us all want to come back for more fart jokes.
While some feel the tedium of diminishing returns, the target demographic of Prison Break, of which there are evidently many, savour the Groundhog Day of reliving the same cliffhanger over and over.
I like Krasinski - he offers a perspective other than the usual genre fodder. But he’s hamstrung in season 1 by very obvious plot and character development.
And as good a casting as he is he’s still second to Baldwin’s bookish out of his conform zone Ryan. But Glengarry Gkenross’ movie stealing star is always going to be a hard act to follow.
That’s a spot on observation - but I think the real problem are not so much the actors taking on the role than the role itself. Jack Ryan of the books is just not a terribly interesting or relatable character.
The only time I really found him entertaining was the out-of-comfort-zone adventure of Red October. And even there the film intensifies and improves the element of the analyst out in the field because he’s seeing things his peers and masters don’t. The fact is, Clancy wrote Ryan as a version of himself, had his dreams of a military and intelligence career worked out. But as a character Ryan (and most others that people Clancy’s books) is strangely dull and uninteresting, lacking any kind of trait or conflict that would interest me as reader.
This is a guy who stumbles into a Provisional IRA attack on Charles and Diana and, of course, foils the dastardly assault with USMC vigilance - but I couldn’t care about Ryan or any other character in the book. At. All. The Ryan of the books is a functionary of intelligence bureaucracy - and practically nothing else beyond.
Taking Ryan from there and giving him actual character resonance in an original series is already a task. The first season seemed to me to establish this quite successfully, of course with room for improvement over future seasons.
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I just finished Season 2 of Amazon’s Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan and while I liked the first season, this one was severely derivative and disappointing. Season One did an admirable job of updating the series’ characters (they made Greer a Muslim) and it showed off Ryan’s intelligence. The video game chat was great! I accepted John Krasinski as Ryan and they set up Cathy Mueller as his romantic partner (one of Shadow Recruit’s few bright spots was Keira Knightley as Cathy Ryan.) I was really excited for the second season as they were off to Russia. Maybe we’d get a Cardinal in the Kremlin novel adaptation or a topical take on Russia’s election interference.
But they abandoned all that with the first episode of the second season. Suddenly, we’re in Venezuela, and the reasons aren’t that believable. They still tried to address voter fraud with a dictatorial president fixing an election against his female opponent. Cathy Ryan is nowhere to be found, it’s like she never existed, and Ryan is hooking up with Noomi Rapace, a mysterious foreign agent. Ryan’s intelligence is nearly non-existent as they’ve turned him into a James Bond/John Rambo type. And the season was basically a rehash of the film Clear and Present Danger from the first episode’s assault on an SUV motorcade in South America, to American soldiers stranded in the jungle, to its resolution of escaping in a helicopter, and finally having a high ranking American government official face some legal justice. This after expending dozens, neigh, hundreds of Latino soldiers but then getting righteous when two American lives are lost. Both Greer and Ryan do things wildly out of character (dismemberment), not just from the books, but from what we knew from the films as well. It’s also wildly cavalier about dispensing vengeful justice as the “good guys” act as judge, jury, and executioner. I get that Tom Clancy is right wing, or at least conservative, but this season was downright reactionary and somewhat racist. Even Clancy had some liberal characters that were intelligent and representative (Ding Chavez, a gay senator whose name I forget.) This season lacked any interesting characters. Even the villain was dull and predictable.
They had an opportunity to adapt some story elements of the novels not filmed–the aforementioned Cardinal, Debt of Honor, Executive Orders, The Bear and the Dragon. But they seem too willing to discard all that and update the characters with new stories. It’s extremely violent too. I get they’re going for realism, but this was gratuitous to the point where the viewer was numbed and the effect was lost. As mentioned in this thread, Clancy wasn’t great at creating characters and developing them, but his stories were very logical and pursued a cause and effect narrative that was quite fascinating and addictive. Amazon has replaced that with an emotional brute force character. I’m fully aware of Clancy’s weaknesses, but this was a letdown, even more so than Sum of All Fears and Shadow Recruit. I hope season 3 is better, but from what I’ve seen posted here, it doesn’t look it.
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That’s what I thought about the first series… oh dear! Might give S2 a miss.
If it helps, the show runner has been replaced for season 3.
I suppose it was inevitable that Jack Ryan developed more along the lines of the typical standard genre fare. After all the show was always intended to appeal more to fans of 24 and the like. Difficult to balance when traditional Clancy fans were disappointed by the liberties the show took with the source material - while another part of the potential audience avoided it because of the Clancy moniker. Sooner or later the show must decide what it wants to be.
Season 2 was one of the highest rated Amazon shows ever. Which goes to prove what mass audiences really want to see.
I also liked it…
As cgebby spoiled, they removed one of the most intriguing characters from season 1 entirely and totally missed out on the opportunity of exploring Ryan’s time in Russia. Those two mistakes (mistakes at least IMO) carried a heavy weight on my enjoyment of the show. That said, I’ll still remain faithful unless I get drop-kicked again next season with a mediocre effort.
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I haven’t seen it yet so my pondering is entirely theoretical. But as @secretagentfan already said, if nothing else the success at least proves it delivers what Amazon’s audience wants from it.
I actually just finished season two a few minutes ago and I definitely liked it more than the first season. I’m not looking for much with this series, just some fun international intrigue and quality action. Looking forward to season 3.