Jack Ryan, season 2
Posted on by Mac Slocum
It’s been a very long time since I read a Tom Clancy novel, but my take on Jack Ryan is that he was always the smart-but-reluctant analyst who, by nature of his strong moral compass, found himself amid action (but maybe I’m wrong – or, maybe Ryan evolved into something else in the novels I didn’t read).
Ryan was not a kill-‘em-all vengeance bot in the mold of Jack Bauer. Yet, this updated Jack Ryan show on Amazon portrays him as a genius super soldier who can analyze and destroy. It’s a weird take.
The novel version of Ryan (and, for the most part, the movie versions) were comfortable with guns and shooting and such, but it wasn’t their first option. With this, Jack is real mad because his friend was killed by someone high up in the Venezuelan government so he joins up with a couple other American dudes and they storm Venezuela’s presdential mansion.
Uh. I mean, for what it is the action and the writing and all is fine. It’s a perfectly serviceable and forgettable show. But I do find this evoluation of the Ryan character to be odd.