Jack Reacher Franchise (McQuarrie/Zwick, 2012-2016)

[Mr Sausage]

I think historyprof is being unfairly jumped on here. He's not claiming that movies have to be faithful to the source material to be good, he's saying that the character represented here has a very specific presence that the current actor does not capture, a choice historyprof finds disappointing. That is entirely legitimate. Films don't have to be faithful, but people are well within reason to be disappointed when a film chooses to alter major details when they did not have to.

Specific known properties create expectations, and if a film goes against those expectations people will be disappointed, and rightly so. Just so long as they don't go about saying that no one else should enjoy it for those reasons, which obviously historyprof didn't.

[flyonthewall2983]

Yeah, though I keep hoping he'll make a The Rock Obama movie.

Last thing he needs to do is comedy now, family comedy at least.

[HistoryProf]

I think historyprof is being unfairly jumped on here. He's not claiming that movies have to be faithful to the source material to be good, he's saying that the character represented here has a very specific presence that the current actor does not capture, a choice historyprof finds disappointing. That is entirely legitimate. Films don't have to be faithful, but people are well within reason to be disappointed when a film chooses to alter major details when they did not have to.

Specific known properties create expectations, and if a film goes against those expectations people will be disappointed, and rightly so. Just so long as they don't go about saying that no one else should enjoy it for those reasons, which obviously historyprof didn't.

Yes...I was not positing some immutable law that requires a film to be 100% faithful to it's novelized source to succeed. I simply was commenting on this particular character in this particular film - a character that is the subject of EIGHTEEN books (thanks Wikipedia!). His physical presence is central to everything about the guy...so anyone who's read even one of them will be scratching their heads as to why in god's name Tom Cruise is playing the guy they've read about who is 6'5", blond, and built like a Klitchko brother. He's also brooding, doesn't talk a lot, and prone to random acts of vicious violence.

does even one of those things sound remotely like Tom Cruise?

I think a comparable example is the Lisbeth Salander character in both Dragon Tattoo films. How do you think people would have reacted if they cast Scarlett Johannson in the roll?

[knives]

That Johannson casting may have been interesting. Hard to make those films worst though.

[flyonthewall2983]

I read somewhere in an interview with Fincher that she auditioned, but made the character too "sexy".

[Brian C]

He's also brooding, doesn't talk a lot, and prone to random acts of vicious violence.

does even one of those things sound remotely like Tom Cruise?

Well ... who knows. I wouldn't let him raise my daughter or anything, that's for sure.

[tavernier]

I read somewhere in an interview with Fincher that she auditioned, but made the character too "sexy".

hilarious

[Matt]

David Fincher Says Despite A Great Audition, Scarlett Johansson Was Too Hot To Play Lisbeth Salander

Originally from a Vogue profile on Rooney Mara.

[barryconvex]

Didn't Cruise go through this same thing withInterview With The Vampire? And didn't Anne Rice going so far as to publicly state he was the completely wrong person to play the part of Lestat? Not that it matters at this point but i wonder what Lee Child thinks of the casting...

[dx23]

All I know is that when the trailer for this film was shown in the theater I went to a couple of weeks ago, everyone laughed when they showed Cruise acting all bad-ass trying to be some Jason Bourne type of character.

[warren oates]

All I know is that when the trailer for this film was shown in the theater I went too a couple of weeks ago, everyone laughed when they showed Cruise acting all bad-ass trying to be some Jason Bourne type of character.

HistoryProf and I rest our case.

[Mr Sheldrake]

My sister and her two movie going friends are also avid readers of the Reacher novels, and she reported to me this morning that they too saw the trailer and burst out laughing at the sight of Cruise, vowing they would 'never go see that movie'. Cinephiles have a view of adapting popular sources that may be a bit different than those of mainstream audiences, for whom these movies are intended.

[flyonthewall2983]

Between the aforementioned Bourne reference and his go at playing a rock star who probably would have been twice his age as written as when he filmed it, it could be fair to use the term "mid-life crisis" now.

[HistoryProf]

My sister and her two movie going friends are also avid readers of the Reacher novels, and she reported to me this morning that they too saw the trailer and burst out laughing at the sight of Cruise, vowing they would 'never go see that movie'. Cinephiles have a view of adapting popular sources that may be a bit different than those of mainstream audiences, for whom these movies are intended.

and again, it's not about adapting a story, it's about taking a franchised character and casting someone who isn't REMOTELY similar in any way, shape, or form, to the hero of the 18 books they've read.

Tyler Perry in the Alex Cross movie is a good example I guess. Except now imagine instead of a younger black actor they cast Tom Cruise as the tall brilliant black man they've been reading about. He's THAT different from the Reacher in these books. Reacher is the biggest badass on earth - he routinely takes out multiple guys with crushing blows from massive and powerful fists, frightens people just by walking into a room, and is generally a walking force of nature who roams the nation in size 12 boots, 2XL shirts, and nothing but a folding toothbrush in his pocket. They could not possibly have done more to alienate the very people they want to come see this movie. I love the books...I will perhaps watch this on tv some day just to laugh at it.

[knives]

The books aren't the movie though and the characters shouldn't be considered one and the same.

[Mr Sausage]

The books aren't the movie though and the characters shouldn't be considered one and the same.

You can understand, tho', how a movie named after a popular character that doesn't actually feature that character could be disappointing. Doesn't mean it can't be good, but it does mean that it will be a lot harder to enjoy for a lot of people (including the target audience).

[knives]

I would understand it for people not typically into movies, but cinema fans should be able to appreciate the materials differently.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Didn't Cruise go through this same thing withInterview With The Vampire? And didn't Anne Rice going so far as to publicly state he was the completely wrong person to play the part of Lestat? Not that it matters at this point but i wonder what Lee Child thinks of the casting...

Child was open to the idea ever since the casting was announced, and now he's outright stumping for Cruise. Of course this shouldn't have any bearing on what the books' fans think, any more than Stephen King's preference means I should elevate Mick Garris' The Shining above Kubrick's.

[HistoryProf]

The books aren't the movie though and the characters shouldn't be considered one and the same.

except you are basing a movie on a book character who has an entire franchise built upon his physical presence. Again, this is not about stories - i don't care that a few of the main characters from the book don't appear in the cast - you have to do that for a film adaptation. But if you are making a movie about a guy from 17 books and then name the movie after that guy, you should probably expect the fans of those books to want the guy to look at least something like the character they've been reading for 15 years. I'm not sure why this is so difficult to understand.

[knives]

The same argument could certainly apply to something like Starship Troopers which bucks everything from the book which defined it.

[matrixschmatrix]

It does, but it's subtle about it- certainly, a trailer for Starship Troopers would look a whole lot like the book- and it has a direct connection to the books, in that what it eventually does works best as commentary on the sort of military jerkoff fascism the book entailed.

This seems more comparable to I, Robot, in that one wonders whether there's a significant connection to the book at all when one of the central engines of the things won't work anymore. On the other hand, not having read the books, my larger concern is the evident Dirty Harry bullshit (he's not concerned with the law, just with what's right!) and with the possibility that there may not be enough Werner Herzog to justify the aforementioned bullshit.

[knives]

That later concern seems much more valid to me as fidelity to the source material should be the very last concern of a movie with of course making a good movie being first. Certainly downcasting from Michael Clarke Duncan to a midget doesn't rank terribly high in poor adaptation moves (if I can get over Clarisse living in Fahrenheit 451 than fans of this book can too). A film can be a poor adaptation while being a successful movie.

[manicsounds]

I wouldn't have cared about watching this movie if it weren't for Werner Herzog in a role. While it's always great to see him on screen, this movie was pretty meh, and that includes Herzog's character.

You'd think Herzog as the main bad guy would be scary enough, but give him 1 blind eye, and only 2 working fingers on his hands, you have a head villain that if you think about it, can't even take care or defend himself. And for him to be some sort of mastermind behind a very intricate and convoluted plot? I just couldn't buy it.

As for the rest, it was a lot of cliched action/conspiracy theory stuff. It wasn't exactly terrible, but nothing memorable.

[PfR73]

One of the funniest things about the title change is that now the title just appears to be another actor in the opening credits. The title card is the exact same size & font as the other cast credits, appears after Tom Cruise's credit, and isn't even given any centrality to where it appears on screen. So the movie appears to star Tom Cruise, Jack Reacher, Rosamund Pike, Richard Jenkins, Werner Herzog, etc.

[manicsounds]

The movie review on AVForums even says "whip smart dialogue", but the script was pretty laughable to me. "Whip Smart Dialogue" should mean David Mamet, not Jack Reacher...

You can even read some of the quotes on the page, and many of them are pretty silly.

On the phone: "You got a pen?"
Jack Reacher: "Don't need one."