Tom Clancy would be baffled by John Krasinski’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War
Courtesy Prime Video
My neighbor and I have spent 2026 ping-ponging text messages about Tom Clancy. Mostly, we want to know what his ghost would think about ~all of this~.
As kids of an era where Clancy’s work was ubiquitous in family living rooms and airports, we remember when he was held in national acclaim as a monolithic American perspective on force. Before 9/11, the man and his dozens of bestsellers could set a national temperature on international pressure, where he/his protagonists would wield that power of strong-arm diplomacy backed by an unshakable compass to walk nations back from the edge of another world war. After 9/11, there was clearly a period where Clancy simply wasn’t needed, because no one from the powerful to the public felt the need to exercise any manner of restraint in international affairs; for whom would we need to balance the scales? It was here that you catch Clancy evolve into an IP—licensed out to a dozen video game franchises, which would go on to grossly outpace the fame (and cash) of his books and movies combined. John Madden’s name spans decades of video games, but at least he understood what was in them. It feels either confoundingly antithetical or, more likely, of no concern to Clancy that his name also became synonymous with sport.
Competitive gaming tournaments based around run-and-gun wordless mayhem would, we assume, not have anything to do with the worlds and characters his life’s work populated. Wondering how or what he would do with this—much less watching border enforcement officers take over U.S. airports or, hilariously, a dream fulfilled of attacking Iran, albeit it not like this—well, I imagine he’d spin in his grave.
But he shouldn’t. There’s no reason for anyone to get worked up over this—least of all me.
Amazon’s Jack Ryan TV show has had a perfectly acceptable run, and the combo of John Krasinski as the face and Wendell Pierce as the “I’m getting too old for this” sidekick has had a fine run. Jack Ryan: Ghost War is an absolutely forgettable piece of streaming trash, like so much of streaming entertainment in this era of mergers and collapse, seems intent on spiking the football of the show—either as biz move or fan service finale. As either option, it simply isn’t going to be remembered by anyone. This is the Men in Black flashy-thingy of international thrillers, and even I’m annoyed to admit that the Jack Ryan show deserves a better send-off than this.
Would Tom Clancy care too much about this drop in quality? Probably not. Would he care that a solid third of this film is a paid advertisement for Dubai? PROBABLY. That shit’s funny. Even I wouldn’t do ’em like that. Stone cold, Mr. Bezos. Stone cold.
