Jack Ryan TV show, can the books happen in the present day?

[valkyrie013]

So, as of today August 31'st the new Jack Ryan TV series is up on the Amazon. From the trailer, it seems there doing a "war on Terror" middle east theme for the first season, Seamingly totaly ignoring the book series (again) and Jack just meeting his soon to be wife.. basicaly an "Origin Story" Now, my question is, are we able to do the book series Set in the present time? My answer, Yes!

The first book, time wise, is Patriot Games. In the book, Jack saves the royal prince charles and family. We can change this to William and Kate being saved. We can still use the IRA, or we can use some other alphabet terror group. Now in the the book, Jack is already married, has 1 kid, with #2 on the way at the end.

Second book, Red Rabbit. Well Russia is still a "foe" and a top official can still "Deffect" to the US. So yes, this book can also be done in present day.

Third book, Hunt for red october, Same as the previous book, Russia is still a "Foe" and a russian captain can still bring a "Technically advance"sub to the US.

Looking at the other books, they can be easily adapted to present day, may have to change some countries, but the "Core" of the book can be easily made. So why don't they? Whats so hard about "making the books"??

 

[Q2UnME]

^I believe the first book 'time-wise' would be Sum of All Fears. (?)

 

[valkyrie013]

Nope, Sum of all fears is #6
Patriot Games (1987)
Red Rabbit (2002)
The Hunt for Red October (1984)
The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988)
Clear and Present Danger (1989)
The Sum of All Fears (1990)
Debt of Honor (1994)
Executive Orders (1996)
The Bear and the Dragon (2000)

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

So Krasinski's not playing Jack Jr., then?

 

[Admiral2]

^I believe the first book 'time-wise' would be Sum of All Fears. (?)

No. Sum Of All Fears the book takes place after Clear and Present Danger, because Jack Ryan takes over as Deputy Director (Intelligence) after James Greer's death and the departure of the other CIA big names after the scandal of the anti-drug missions comes to light. Sum of All Fears the movie is a retcon.

I'm with the OP on this one. I can't stand it when people - especially those who haven't bothered to actually read the books - just assume that they can't be adapted into any time beyond the Cold War. It's simply not the case.

So Krasinski's not playing Jack Jr., then?

Unfortunately, no. This is Jack Retcon number three.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I can't stand it when people - especially those who haven't bothered to actually read the books - just assume that they can't be adapted into any time beyond the Cold War. It's simply not the case.

Putin's Russia is pretty much the Soviet Union all over again, so the Krasinski series could do any of those Soviet-era novels any time they wanted.

 

[valkyrie013]

Cont.
Cardnel and the Kremlin. Not all the books that deal with Russia, has to be about Russia. Could do a Chinese, or Iranian, or still Russian head of there "Secret Police" defecting.
Clear and present danger.. no changes at all, drug war book.. go after bad guys!
Sum of all fears.. Pick a city to nuke, and pick a bad guy to do it.. Simple.
Debt of Honor.. Now your getting in to politics and less CIA stuff, so maybe this would cap off the series? In the book its well conected Japanese that take over, and invade the pacific.. hmm.. at the end Have a President Ryan!

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ I would LOVE a President Ryan series. In fact, if this hadn't been another fucking reboot, they could have done both Jack Sr. and Jr. stories concurrently...

(in my headcanon I have Vaughn Armstrong as President Ryan. Just because. )

 

[Owain Taggart]

Wasn't the last movie starring Chris Pine essentially an origin story? I thought it was fairly good for what it was. I think there are certain aspects of the series that are just too deeply ingrained in the period of the times they were written in, such as Hunt for Red October. I think that'd be the hardest one to re-adapt to modern times.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I think there are certain aspects of the series that are just too deeply ingrained in the period of the times they were written in, such as Hunt for Red October. I think that'd be the hardest one to re-adapt to modern times.

I don't think so. The Kraz series could adapt Red October with very little re-writing. It would not at all be a stretch to suppose that there'd be defectors from Putin's regime, just like there were from the old Soviet Union. (Remember, Putin himself is a former KGB agent.)

Like I said...Russia under Putin IS the Soviet Union, in all but name.

 

[CorporalClegg]

I don't think it would be too hard to adapt any of the stories, if even just the basic plot details. Especially because they can fictionalize so much of the 'real world' to make it fit. And like MLB said, the Russia stuff is pretty easy. In fact, several of the stories (Card of Krem, for example) might be really interesting viewed from the perspective of Russia being an oligarchy instead of communist.

I do think they missed a golden opportunity, though. (Granted I'm on only episode 3, so far.) But I often wondered why the show spent so long in development. (Almost two years.) Because imagine if the show was released this time last year, with everything otherwise playing out the same - with maybe a few Russian baddies thrown in the mix. But each episode is given a date; the pilot would be August 31, 2017 and the events of the first season taking up a few weeks and the finale is dated October 20, 2017. (Or whatever.) And the season ends with Greer handing Ryan a folder marked urgent and tells him the Russian baddies they ran across are planning something in the next few days.

 

[Admiral2]

(in my headcanon I have Vaughn Armstrong as President Ryan. Just because. )

Okay, here's my thing: Whenever I imagine a President Ryan series my first thought is

Bring Back Alec Baldwin!!!

Yeah, I don't know for sure why Paramount ditched Baldwin for Harrison Ford, and I do know why conservatives can't stand him, but one of the reasons Red October is the single best adaptation of one of Clancy's books is because of Baldwin's performance as Jack Ryan. He nailed it, and if you're going to do a President Ryan series Alec Baldwin today is still the perfect guy to play him.

What I'd do is a West Wing style series adapting the later Ryan books. First season adapts Debt of Honor, Second season adapts Executive Orders (just to outshine that wannabe Kiefer Sutherland series), Third season adapts The Bear and The Dragon.

And if it's really popular, we do a spin-off based on Rainbow Six.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I don't know for sure why Paramount ditched Baldwin for Harrison Ford

More like, he ditched them. Baldwin was doing a show on Broadway and he basically said, either work around my schedule or find somebody else. So they chose Ford instead.

I agree, though, that Baldwin was the best Jack Ryan, and Red October was the best Ryan movie (in fact it's one of my favorite movies of all time). And here's one conservative who does like Baldwin - for that, and because he's a Yankee fan.

(interestingly, Kraz is a Red Sox fan...he and Baldwin used to do commercials, I forget what product, where they'd play that off each other)

 

[Markonian]

I don't think so. The Kraz series could adapt Red October with very little re-writing. It would not at all be a stretch to suppose that there'd be defectors from Putin's regime, just like there were from the old Soviet Union. (Remember, Putin himself is a former KGB agent.)

Like I said...Russia under Putin IS the Soviet Union, in all but name.

Russia now is a strong-leader oligarchy basing itself on its rich natural resources. The Soviet Union was a one-party system based on communist ideology. They’re both undesirable regimes but not interchangeable.

How would you adapt the story now that there’s modern tech like iPhones, computers, Internet and its surveillance? Non-existent in Cold War time and now ubiquitous.

 

[Admiral2]

More like, he ditched them. Baldwin was doing a show on Broadway and he basically said, either work around my schedule or find somebody else. So they chose Ford instead.

Okay...got it, and I just did forehead slap (dang Trump-imitating moron...).

I agree, though, that Baldwin was the best Jack Ryan, and Red October was the best Ryan movie (in fact it's one of my favorite movies of all time). And here's one conservative who does like Baldwin - for that, and because he's a Yankee fan.

(interestingly, Kraz is a Red Sox fan...he and Baldwin used to do commercials, I forget what product, where they'd play that off each other)

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[sttngfan1701d]

I'm on episode 7, with 1 left...I like it. Thing is, it has nuance and shades of grey regarding the migrant situation (something the recent BBC/Netflix offering "Collateral" didn't have, and suffered for it, along with its cardboard characters). Not all migrants are innocent lambs. Not all Muslims are terrorists, and not all terrorists are pure evil (and 99% of the time, things happen in their life make them that way, which the series shows through multiple flashbacks). There are innocents that suffer needlessly, and people that pay the price due to circumstances beyond their control. The world is ugly, bad guys do exist, and good people get caught up in crappy circumstances.

It's not perfect and I'm not entirely sold on Krasinski as Ryan (he kinda just wanders around while everyone else drives the action, and connects the dots when the plot needs him to). He's a boy scout but he also messes up, which is good. Abbie Cornish is just kinda….there. They give her something to do but it feels tacked on. There's another subplot that doesn't really work but I understand why they included it.

I never read any of the novels, but was Greer ever part of the action? In this show he's Action Jackson, looking too cool for school in his Randolph Aviators. I like him, though I miss James Earl Jones.

Plenty of people aren't going to like this. I already read the Vanity Fair critique....and I disagree with almost everything they say...I don't believe they're watching the same show I am, or are deliberately watching through a certain lens, to the extent where they start to misrepresent plot points entirely and completely misinterpret Jack's character in the show. I wish they had a comment section so I could refute the author's arguments point-by-point, they are so transparently off. In any case, I believe the show is already renewed for season 2, so it will be interesting if they do start to evolve Ryan more and more as he goes from "I'm just an analyst" to moving up the ranks.

Is it on the level of True Detective Season 1 or The Man in the High Castle? Nah...but (1) I was entertained, and (2) it portrayed the murky shades of grey of this world. That's all I wanted, really.

 

[Gaith]

I'm not yet sold on giving this show's first season a try, but while I might be interested in period adaptations of Clancy's books, I'd almost certainly not be interested in a modern adaptation of the books that changed the bare minimum for the mere sake of fidelity to a (mostly) pre-9/11 story arc. In a media landscape in which generic, apolitical arms dealers seem to make up the vast majority of pop culture action story villains, I find this new show's willingness to make a fundamentalist Islamist (I assume) the Big Bad kinda refreshing. It's certainly its foremost selling point for me.

Yes, Russia has become a big thorn in our sides again, to the extent that I now admit I unfairly mocked Mitt Romney for saying so back in '12... but Shadow Recruit was still pretty damn boring, and its plot of needing to rescue Wall Street from a dastardly foreign attack didn't play at all well in the immediate aftermath of the Great Recession. (Nor did Keira Knightley's awful and completely unnecessary American accent, but that's neither here nor there.)

 

[Admiral2]

I never read any of the novels, but was Greer ever part of the action? In this show he's Action Jackson, looking too cool for school in his Randolph Aviators. I like him, though I miss James Earl Jones.

In the books, James Greer is the head of one of the CIA's divisions, the Analysis division (Intelligence) and Ryan starts out as his Special Assistant. "Action" was in no way part of his job description.

So I guess the show's Greer is yet another retcon.

 

[sttngfan1701d]

In the books, James Greer is the head of one of the CIA's divisions, the Analysis division (Intelligence) and Ryan starts out as his Special Assistant. "Action" was in no way part of his job description.

So I guess the show's Greer is yet another retcon.

In this show, he's the former head of station in Islamabad, he messes up (big time), and gets busted back to CIA headquarters to head up analysis. But he's the one that drags Ryan out in the field after Ryan's theory hits paydirt. It's like "This is your thing, so come on, boy scout. Let's go."

 

[Admiral2]

In this show, he's the former head of station in Islamabad, he messes up (big time), and gets busted back to CIA headquarters to head up analysis. But he's the one that drags Ryan out in the field after Ryan's theory hits paydirt. It's like "This is your thing, so come on, boy scout. Let's go."

Yeah, that's backward. Deputy Director (Intelligence) - i.e. "heading up analysis" - is not a demotion. That's like screwing up in accounting and being "busted" to CFO.

So, they must use the same research deartment as every Star Trek writing team...