Tom Clancy has been a multimedia powerhouse for nearly three decades now, and his shining star at the heart of his work has always been Michael B. Jordan Rainbow Six movies.
With the near-constant desire for modern Hollywood to encapsulate a franchise so clearly in its marketing, it can almost seem quaint to consider a time when not every movie required colons and nested subtitles to successfully capture audiences' interest. For a long time, Jack Ryan was able to do exactly that by pulling blockbuster numbers for well-crafted and self-contained films. There's far more Jack Ryan content out there than the casual viewer might be aware of. Here are all the live-action adaptations of Tom Clancy's most popular character.
6 The Hunt For Red October (1990)
The first actor to take up the mantle of Jack Ryan was Alec Baldwin in The Hunt for Red October. With an incredible, star-studded cast, The Hunt for Red October was a bonafide hit and instant classic for any war movie enthusiast. Based on the 1984 Tom Clancy novel of the same name, The Hunt for Red October is a tense claustrophobic thriller placing much of its cast in close quarters. As a CIA operative and former marine, Jack Ryan is mostly out of his element here, serving as the perfect audience surrogate for the complexities of submarine warfare.
5 Patriot Games (1992)
A direct sequel to The Hunt for Red October, Harrison Ford replaces Baldwin as Jack Ryan in Patriot Games. With Ford being Baldwin's senior by some sixteen years, the film focuses on an older, experienced, and more grounded portrayal of Jack Ryan. The married family man now has a lot more collateral on the table, however, as his family's lives are put in pertinent danger at the hands of vengeful IRA terrorists. Despite critics and even Tom Clancy himself sharing a collective guffaw at some of the movie's choice departures from the books, Ford's portrayal of the central character would prove to be iconic in later installments.
4 Clear and Present Danger (1994)
Ford reprises his role as Jack Ryan in Clear and Present Danger, the final film focusing on this version of the character and the last to be directed by Phillip Noyce. Focusing on the 1989 novel of the same name, Clear and Present Danger sees Jack leave his home turf to instead plumb the depths of Columbian drug cartels in order to unveil a national conspiracy at the highest level. With much less attention given to character and far more given to plot, the movie keeps a powerful pace while utilizing Ryan once again as a means to keep the audience on the same page as the action.
3 The Sum of All Fears (2002)
Hollywood would eventually return to the Tom Clancy "Ryanverse" with 2002s The Sum of All Fears. The role of Jack Ryan was ed to Ben Affleck this time. Loosely following the book of the same name, the new film intended to be a soft reboot, focusing on more current national threats. A dark departure from the previous installments, The Sum of All Fears sees a successful nuclear terrorist attack unleashed on Baltimore and devastating thousands. Perhaps most grim of all, the movie had finished filming in June 2001, a mere three months before the real-world attacks of 9/11. The newfound political climate of a post-9/11 world had a difficult time coming to grips with the devastating thriller.
2 Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)
Continuing to be a problematic franchise, the Jack Ryan series would be rebooted again. With Chris Pine at the helm as Jack Ryan, this particular version of the character differed in that it was a wholly original story existing outside of Clancy's established work. Using Jack Ryan's history as a financial assessor for the CIA, the plot revolves around Jack Ryan's origins as a CIA operative and his tutelage under his mentor Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner). With a Russian oligarch driving the central threat, Jack has to learn quickly if he's to prevent a global catastrophe. Unfortunately, this version of Ryan struggled to meet the studio's expectations and the franchise was shelved again.
1 Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan (2018)
Taking a departure from the big screen, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan heading into season 4, is on Amazon Prime. With John Krasinski assuming the leading role of Jack Ryan this time around and producing it alongside Michael Bay, the series completely recontextualizes the character to fit the modern era of cloak-and-dagger warfare. Following Jack as he rises through the ranks of the CIA and kindles the relationship with his canonical love interest Cathy, Tom Clancy's TV version of Jack Ryan attempts to remain faithful to the character while keeping the world he operates in relevant.
