Ranking the Jack Ryans on screen

 

Jack Ryan, the protagonist of most of the Tom Clancy spy novels, has been played by five actors over the past 30+ years, starting with Alec Baldwin in The Hunt for Red October (1990). Harrison Ford picked up the role in Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994). Ben Affleck took over in The Sum of All Fears (2002), which apparently killed off interest in the character for a while, as Chris Pine did not play Ryan until 2014 in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. Finally, John Krasinski assumed the role in the Amazon series Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan starting in 2018, with season 2 in 2019, and season 3 in 2022.

I have just one more episode of season 3 to go, so I feel like I can rank the Ryan portrayals -- with one exception: I haven't watched Affleck's try at it, so I'll leave him out of my rankings.

Again, this is a ranking of the portrayals, not the merits of the movies or TV show. It's how well each actor has inhabited the role of Jack Ryan.

1. Alec Baldwin

Jack Ryan is an analyst, not a field agent, but he did serve as a Marine, so he can get stuff done in the field. Baldwin really nailed the thinker who's sent into the field.

2. John Krasinski

Krasinski's Ryan is stockier and more action-oriented, but with the benefit of 24 episodes over three seasons, he's had the most room to make the role his. (As a side note, no one can match James Earl Jones as James Greer in terms of screen presence, so the TV show wisely doesn't try and instead has made Wendell Pierce's version an older peer who is still in the field.)

3. Harrison Ford

I've found Ford's version to be a little much of an earnest Boy Scout, culminating in the showdown scene in Clear and Present Danger where the President says to Ryan "how dare you come in here, barking like a junkyard dog," and Ryan responds, "how dare you, Mr. President." Too corny for me.

4. Chris Pine

I like Pine in pretty much everything I've seen him in (The Princess Diaries, Star Trek reboots, Wonder Woman) but he didn't really stand out as Ryan in his one appearance. He could've been any more or less generic American operative in Europe, and the movie would've been the same.

Let's talk about Hollywood and foreign languages

I'm a little more than halfway through season 3 of Amazon's "Jack Ryan" series and enjoying it quite a bit. But one thing that bothers me about the show is how it handles the use of foreign languages.

Major non-American characters in season 3 are Czech or Russian, including the Presidents of each of those two countries along with advisors, etc.

Yet, conversations among all Czech or all Russian characters take place in English (with slight Eastern European accents). How does this happen?

Okay, perhaps this is a conceit for the audience. The slight accents are there to tip off the viewer that "hey, this conversation is actually taking place in Czech/Russian, but the show is giving it to you in English because you probably don't want to read subtitles." (Not to mention, it's easier for the actors if they aren't conversant in Czech/Russian.)

Well, that might make sense, except that the same characters, when speaking English to an American character, have the same slight accent. Moreover, there is a scene where one of the American characters speaks in Russian to another character, and that entire conversation is indeed in Russian with English subtitling.

So it's very confusing -- I have no idea what language these conversations are actually being used. I would rather that conversations take place in their actual language, with English subtitling for non-English conversations. I get that this would be harder on the actors, but it's not as if large parts of the show are in foreign languages.

One of the best conceits that I've seen to deal with this language issue was in, ironically, the first Jack Ryan vehicle, The Hunt for Red October. At the start of that movie, the scenes on the Russian nuclear submarine are in Russian. This would be difficult to keep up for the entire movie, so there is a scene where Sean Connery's character is meeting with the political officer. The political officer takes a copy of the Bible from Connery's shelf and starts reading in Russian. The camera zooms in as this is happening, then stops, and then reverses to zoom out. When this happens, the political officer is speaking in English. It's a neat trick that cues the viewer in to the fact that it's all still in Russian, just that we're hearing it in English. Near the end of the movie, when the Russian sailors meet American sailors, the Russians speak in Russian to themselves.

Anyway, Hollywood is, to be fair, taking steps toward incorporating more foreign language dialogue -- something like 30% of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was in Mandarin, and large parts of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever are in the fictional language of Wakanda. I wish the trend would speed up.