So apparently Tom Clancy's Without Remorse is on the way?

Started by JasonPratt, February 07, 2021, 10:02:03 PM

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JasonPratt

This was at least teased during a commercial for Amazon's Alexa during the Super Bowl, when... well, see if you spot it.



Michael B. Jordan is shown headlining the movie in an ad within the ad, presumably playing Tom Clancy's version of modern pulp vigilante Mack Bolan, the Executioner (whom Marvel Comics had already adapted a version of as Frank Castle, the Punisher).

Jordan will be at least the third actor to play John Clark (if that wasn't just a throwaway joke), including Willem Dafoe and Liev Schreiber, both of whom bring different but good interpretations of the character to films in completely different continuities. (I suspect the character is somewhere in the Prime series, played by John Hoogenakker, but that hasn't been officially confirmed I think.)

Annnnd, checking around, it isn't a throwaway joke! There's a brief teaser on imdb here: https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1230289433?playlistId=tt0499097&ref_=vp_rv_ap_0 (Note that you may have to click through an ad to get to the ad which is kind of insane.)

Wikipedia says there's a two film deal so far, going from Without Remorse to Rainbow Six, which is fine I suppose: after all, the book is a straight homage to the first Mack Bolan crossover story with Phoenix Force and Able Team, with almost exactly the same plot but different characters. More importantly, the main character Jack Ryan has almost nothing to do with it (aside from being President and creating the team), and at best has maybe a small cameo in Without Remorse which can be easily snipped out.

It's bizarre to me that, despite Clancy's meticulously crafted continuity across numerous books, producers have never bothered to try any continuity aside from the two Harrison Ford films (which do keep James Earl Jones as an important character at least from Alec Baldwin's Hunt for Red October). So once again we're getting a total reboot, now updated to Clark being a soldier coming home from Afghanistan (or the Middle East more generally) instead of Vietnam (which makes sense naturally unless they tried a period piece). From the snippets of dialogue in the teaser, I can't tell if they're going to follow the plot of the book in any but the vaguest ways; but maybe that's for the best since Clancy's lawyers must have had lots of clout to avoid copyright infringement on borrowing so much from the basic Mack Bolan plot (even down to him joining the CIA under a new name once his mob-killing activities wrap up. And creating Phoenix Force in effect.  ::) )

Well, maybe they're hoping to follow the extended continuity from after Clancy's death which has primarily focused on John Clark (despite his continually increasing age??), down to 2019's Code of Honor. (He's still around but apparently not in the field in 2020's Firing Point.)

Researching this makes me feel horribly old, considering that I now know about considerably less than half of the whole series of books so far, sigh.
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GDS_Starfury

I stopped reading "his" books a long time ago.  however I do wish they would remain cold war era period pieces as Im bored to tears with anything middle east related.  the Amerikans did very well by staying in that era.
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JasonPratt

To his credit, Clancy's books ranged over a number of theaters, and still do long after his death. It's impossible to simply ignore Middle Eastern theaters of conflict, but it helps that his series became increasingly alt-historical starting around Clear and Present Danger if not before.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Destraex

Love Tom Clancy films. If they stick to the books. Do we think they will ever get back to the quality of the earlier films like patriot games?
His books I have only finished red storm rising, I just never got around to his books. Generally the political and clandestine stuff bores me to tears.
I too am not a great fan of middle eastern stuff either for books.

P.S. Was Jack Ryan any good? I did not bother with that.
"They only asked the Light Brigade to do it once"

JasonPratt

I didn't bother with the JR Prime TV series either -- it simply looked too far off the plot of the books. What I've heard about it seems mixed?

The Ryan-verse books have a mixture of political, clandestine, and tactical/operational stuff (like Red Storm Rising). The films somewhat scale back on all of those for time (and budget)! Clear and Present Danger, for example, has a lot of combat not present in the film (and the ending is quite different).

Clancy got to a point where no one cared to edit him, the worst point for me being Sum of All Fears, which reaaaallly could stand some chop (and is also quite different from the film). After that he tightened up better. I don't know how authors after him have done with that, but I suspect they've kept things moving along (being contract writers on someone else's intellectual property).
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!