Alan Ritchson might never fit into the top tier of Hollywood A-listers reserved for undisputed megastars, but his streaming iteration of Reacher has shown giants of the big screen exactly how it’s done. Ritchson plays the title character in Prime Video’s adaptation of the Lee Child novel series like he was born for the role.
His version of Jack Reacher is true to the books, whilst offering the physical and technical attributes required for visually breathtaking action and fight sequences. Reacher is undoubtedly Ritchson’s best movie or TV performance, but it’s also the one in which he’s scrutinized the most.
Comparisons between his Jack Reacher and Tom Cruise’s movie version of the same character are inevitable, but it’s the bigger star who ultimately ends up on the losing side of these conversations. Cruise might be the more celebrated actor, but Ritchson is ultimately the better fit to play Lee Child’s legendary antihero.
Prime Video’s Reacher Is A Lot More Accurate To The Books Than The Movies
It’s worth noting that Prime Video’s Reacher is a more faithful representation of Lee Child’s literary creation in various other respects beyond Alan Ritchson’s portrayal of the titular protagonist. The TV show works better than Tom Cruise’s Reacher movies, for various reasons, from its more three-dimensional approach to characterization, to its inclusion of small but important details from Child’s novels.
Specific scenes from the books are rendered onscreen in painstaking detail throughout the TV series, with the notorious prison scene from the first Reacher novel Killing Floor being the most prominent example. Meanwhile, the movies starring Tom Cruise seem more like an action-packed vehicle for their central megastar than works with genuine affection for their source material.
Tom Cruise Was The Wrong Choice To Play Jack Reacher
Casting Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher in the first place was setting the franchise’s first screen adaptation up for a fall. Physically, Cruise is nothing like the gigantic hulk of a man described in Lee Child’s novels, and his personality doesn’t lend itself to a quietly menacing former military police major who has little to say, either.
Because of this grave piece of miscasting, Jack Reacher had to be written to fit Cruise, since there was no way of Cruise ever adapting himself to the version of Reacher we read on the page. As a result, the franchise’s two movies effectively betrayed fans of the books, as their respective title characters are entirely different people.
There’s More To A Good Adaptation Than Just Being Accurate
Reacher’s streaming series works better than the movies for reasons beyond just its accuracy as an adaptation of the novels. The show goes into more depth and detail when developing all its most important characters, from Frances Neagley to Roscoe Conklin, and makes full use of the extra time an eight-episode season affords it.
More than anything else, though, Prime Video’s Reacher stays true to the spirit of the novels. Ultimately, it’s this approach that marks out a good adaptation, rather than accuracy in the finer points of the story. Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher movies don’t honor the spirit of what Lee Child has written, and could use Alan Ritchson’s help in this regard.
- Release Date
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February 3, 2022
- Network
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Prime Video
- Showrunner
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Nick Santora
