Warning: Contains spoilers for Reacher season 1.
While Lee Child not only having a cameo in Reacher but also serving as an executive producer, it is safe to assume that he approved most of the alterations.
Reacher sees Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) enter the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia, where he is promptly arrested for a murder that he could never have committed. After being cleared of suspicion and learning that the murdered man was his estranged brother Joe, Reacher sets out on a vendetta against the corruption in Margrave. Teaming up with Roscoe (Willa Fitzgerald) and Finlay (Malcolm Goodwin) of the Margrave police department and his old colleague Neagley (Maria Sten), Reacher takes down an international counterfeiting operation that was operating out of the town.
Before Amazon’s Reacher TV series, two of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels were adapted for film. The movies were less directly accurate to the books, and many long-time fans of the books got caught up on the fact that Tom Cruise didn’t match their vision of the hulking descriptions of Jack Reacher. While Reacher is not a shot-for-shot adaptation of Killing Floor, the series sticks close enough while making some appropriate changes that viewers familiar with the books and those who aren’t should both find something to enjoy in Reacher. Here are the biggest differences between Reacher and the original Lee Child novel it is based on.
Click here to watch Reacher Differences From Tom Cruise's Movies on YouTube
Finlay And Roscoe Play Bigger Roles In The Series
There are over two-dozen Jack Reacher novels published by Lee Child, and the point of view used for the narration in them is inconsistent. While several books after Killing Floor used third-person narration, Killing Floor is told in first person from the point of view of Reacher himself. This means that much of the investigation and action is seen through his eyes, and when Roscoe or Finlay go off to do something by themselves, their actions must then be reported later. This necessitates that Roscoe and Finlay have less involved roles with Reacher taking on more of the adventure by himself and the reader does not get as much of an insight into their characters.
The Reacher TV series being able to show all of the different aspects of the investigation allows a better view into how Finlay and Roscoe operate by themselves, making them feel deeper and more realistic in the new medium. A clear example of this comes in Reacher episode 1 when Finlay goes to speak to Paul Hubble (Good Witch's Marc Bendavid) for the first time and receives a false confession. This scene is faithfully adapted from the explanation of the interaction that Finlay gives Reacher in Killing Floor, but the audience gets to see the scene play out, rather than Finlay giving Reacher a blow by blow that can feel a little stilted.
Neagley Wasn’t In Killing Floor But Sets Up Reacher Season 2
The Jack Reacher books see Reacher travel around the country (and occasionally the world), getting into new hijinks in a new location in each book. Because of his wandering nature and the different locales, there are very few recurring characters in the books. While Reacher parts with Finlay on good and from Roscoe on intimate , having memorized her phone number at the end of Killing Floor they do not appear again in another book. The departure from those characters at the end of Reacher is similar, and it is unlikely that Finlay or Roscoe will appear in Reacher season 2 unless the showrunners make more drastic changes in future adaptations.
However, Reacher makes a big chance from Killing Floor to introduce another character for Reacher season 1 which can help the show to succeed as a long-running series. The character of Neagley is from the original Jack Reacher books, but she does not appear in 1997’s Killing Floor, first appearing in the 2002 book Without Fail instead. By bringing her in during Reacher season 1 as a character who is Reacher’s equal and can help him out of a bind and is happy to move around the country for him, the showrunners have set up another character who audiences can relate to and can recur through each season of Reacher, rather than Alan Ritchson being the only returning actor after Reacher season 1.
Reacher’s Past Is Explored In More Depth
In Killing Floor, Reacher discusses his relationship with his brother, but largely his past is not explored in depth. Reacher adds in a wealth of details that enable his backstory to be more fully fleshed out in the TV series, in some cases drawing on elements hinted at in later Jack Reacher books. These changes primarily come in the form of flashbacks. Throughout Reacher season 1, as Reacher hunts for his brother’s killer, flashbacks provide a stronger emotional connection between Reacher and Joe through images of their shared youth. This is further developed by the addition of an old war medal to the few objects that Reacher carries with him. A gift from their mother (The Sinner's Leslie Fray) in recognition of the bravery that drove him, the medal once again explains their family relationship in more detail than Killing Floor does, and the flashback to Reacher’s mother’s deathbed does a lot to characterize how Reacher came to be the man that he is in a way that isn’t brought up until several books later in Lee Child’s series.
Reacher Updates Killing Floor For 2022
Lee Child published Killing Floor in 1997 and he had written it a few years before that. A lot has changed in the world in the 25 years since it was published, and some changes had to be made for Reacher to reflect that. This is most evident in the early scenes when Reacher is being booked for murder and Roscoe (Little Women's Willa Fitzgerald) is trying to learn more about him. Reacher carries a port in Reacher season 1, which he did not do in Killing Floor. Reacher does not like carrying any form of identification if he can avoid it, but after 9/11 Lee Child begrudgingly started including the port in his list of belongings. One other change to make the plot work after so many years came in making it clearer how the counterfeiting operation works in Reacher. In the 1990s, banknotes over $2 started including magnetic strips, which would cause an issue for the plan in Killing Floor where the counterfeiters washed the ink off $1 bills and reprinted them as $100s. It’s a subtle change, but Reacher mentions that in Reacher season 1 the counterfeiters are reprinting the bills as early 1990s $100s to avoid this newer security precaution.