I will not see it and it literally RUINED the whole character for me. Others seconded a boycott (“My vote is a BIG BIG NO NO NO NO NO NO NO to seeing it – hitting Hollywood bigwigs where it hurts”) and some made it personal against Cruise (“I cannot believe they actually used an arrogant overexposed short IMBECILE to create such an awesome character. Get a real man to play that role and I will be the first in line to see that movie.” I will not pay money to see this movie, either. “I totally agree with every other fan that is saying Tom Cruise IS NOT Jack Reacher,” complained one Reacher Creature “I am so upset that they chose Tom to play this role. It dawns on Reacher, ‘I’m that guy.’”Ī Los Angeles Times article from July 2012 was hammered with anti-Cruise comments. People will cross the street when they see him coming. He does a lot of things knowing that he’s the biggest fish in the pond. Reacher’s size is an elemental part of his character. “For 15 years – from 1997 to 2012 – they’d built up an image of Reacher in their minds. “The hardcore fans were very unhappy,” says Jim Ramsey. “Reacher’s size in the books is a metaphor for an unstoppable force, which Cruise portrays in his own way.” And what book-to-film adaptation would turn down an endorsement from the Cruiser, one of the biggest stars in modern cinema history, with a lifetime box office of almost $11 billion?īut Cruise’s casting dominated – and soured – talk around the film. Initial reports quibbled about the size issue (poking fun of Cruise’s height was hardly new) and Lee Child defended the casting. There was talk of a film from the get-go – Killing Floor was optioned on the day it was published.Īfter years of stop-start development, Tom Cruise was announced in summer of 2011. To date, there are 26 novels and 15 short stories.
Child’s brother, Andrew Grant, will soon take over the series. Martin notes other shared traits between Child and Reacher: “The intelligence, the quick wit, the dry humour, an element of detachment… an innate hatred of bullies.”Ĭhild has cranked out a Jack Reacher novel every year since (apart from 2010, when he managed two). He loved David and Goliath – but he wanted Goliath to be the good guy, not the bad guy.” “When he was a boy, Lee liked to read adventure and hero stories. “I think Reacher came from deep with him,” she says. The first Reacher book, Killing Floor (on which the first season of the Prime series is based) was published in 1997. Heather Martin thinks there’s plenty of Lee Child – who is 6’4” himself – in his creation. “He’s always committed to doing the right thing.”
“He’s Sherlock Holmes with muscles,” says Jim Ramsey from the Jack Reacher Fan Club on Facebook. He stands above everyone both physically and mentally. There’s more beneath that massive surface. He is, as described in the new series, “two hundred and fifty pounds of frontier justice”. An ex-military cop, he drifts across the United States and exerts his nails-hard skills – solving problems, unravelling conspiracies, and smashing through bad guys – before sauntering out of town like some legend from the Old West. Reacher’s immense size is perhaps why trouble finds him so easily. “Readers felt that Lee Child had personally betrayed them.” Martin read some letters but had to stop. Heather Martin describes how the Lee Child archives, held at the University of East Anglia, contain “boxes and boxes and boxes of hate mail”.
“Cruise is NOT Reacher,” fans insisted – a sentiment that became something of a catchphrase within the anti-Cruise campaign. Indeed, the casting of Tom Cruise – all 5’7” of him – kicked off a furor of fan discontent. “It’s a relief after all the aggro there has been over the years.” “I’m happy to see the positivity,” says Heather Martin, Lee Child’s official biographer. Unlike Tom Cruise, Alan Ritchson very much is Jack Reacher. It’s one of the reasons the new Prime series, named simply Reacher, has already been a huge hit – and I do mean huge – with die-hard fans, i.e. For fans of the Jack Reacher books – the prolific, clinical series by British author Lee Child – there’s one detail that stands head and shoulders above all others: that Jack Reacher is a 6’5”, 200lbs-plus man-mountain – like he was chiseled from a hunk of raw testosterone. Very much not Tom Cruise, who played Jack Reacher in two completely fine but highly contentious films. “Details matter,” says Jack Reacher – as played by Alan Ritchson – in his new Prime series.
0 kommentar(er)
