Alec Baldwin RETURNS as Jack Ryan in New Clancy Movie!

Just reported on E News!!! Clancy was not impressed w/ Harrison Ford or Ben Affleck & said he recently sw Baldwin in the TNT movie "Nuremberg" & said Baldwin has now aged into the role with perfection. Paramount has not announced it yet, but Baldwin is the producer & is looking at Michael Bay to direct. This is awesome! Not sure what book they're doing next!

He's all flash and no substance.

The director of Hunt for Red October? He did a great job with that. Maybe it'd rekindle the magic.

I hope these rumours are true, by the way. I always thought Baldwin was better than Ford--and miles ahead of Affleck.

I really wish they would make a movie of Without Remorse.

is a great book...may be too unPC for Hollywood to make and be true to the story...

and I didn't care for Sum of All Fears. But I have to disagree on Ford, though at this point he is probably too old to be Ryan. I had no problem with Baldwin, and actually think he was a better Ryan than Ford (though I like Ford better).

I don't know which book they would do, since the later ones have Ryan as President...

Was the movie where he became President. That was the one where they flew a 747 into the Capitol.

And "Hunt" was the best movie so far, too.

You know, I can't get over Condi saying no one ever thought anyone would fly a plane into a building. The first thing I thought of back on 9/11/01 was Clancy's plot.

The Hunt for Red October was a GREAT movie.
Book was even better!!!
:P

I wonder what movie they'll come out with next, but hope they're not PC and change it.. movies should be made the way the author initially wrote the book or script. Respect authors!! :-P

:toast:

in a role he was woefully unsuited for.

I can't put my finger on it, but for some reason I liked Alec Baldwin much better as Ryan than any of the others. Maybe because Harrison Ford already has Han Solo and Indiana Jones and doesn't need any more, or Ben Affleck just didn't inhabit the role very well in his shot at it. I dunno, I keep using Baldwin's "Hunt for Red October" portrayal as the standard by which all others are gauged.

And I am shocked at how right wing it is. It's set in the Reagan era, and damned if it doesn't insinuate that the man was some sort of god. At one point he even stoops to criticising Kennedy. But not only that, he straight out LIES about things like the CIA's past.

Here is a good example of this (including the Kennedy dig):

The KGB had a very direct way of dealing with people it didn't like. CIA did not. They hadn't actually killed anyone since the fifties, when President Eisenhower had used CIA - actually quite skillfully - as an alternative to employing uniformed troops in an overt fashion. But that skill hadn't been passed to the Kennedy Administration, which had screwed up nearly everything it touched.

Now come on! Does Clancy really expect us to believe that CIA had not killed anyone since the 50's? Hell, even the CIA admitted to the Phoenix program, and what about all those dirty wars in Central America?

I must say that Red Rabbit has almost put me off Clancy, and I have every one of his novels sitting on my bookshelf.

I'm having a hard time finishing "The Bear and the Dragon" right now. Actually, I'm having a hard time getting into it at all. But I'm working on it slowly.

But otherwise, the story can be riveting.

The end of my reading Clancy. It's the same 4 or 6 scenes told over and over and over. How many times do you need the Soviet guy to have a 5 page internal dialogue with himself over whether or not to flip? You know he's going to. How many times do you need Ryan to have an internal dialogue with himself about how much better capitalist USA is than Socialist Britain?

And the sheer bullshit Clancy made up about the health care system in the UK is unconscionable. I quit about 40% into the book.

The funniest bit was when he went on about how someone actually had a six week wait to see a doctor there, and they wouldn't ever have that at Johns Hopkins. I'm in the UCSD Medical System, one of the finest in the States, with Blue Cross insurance, and that same day I had been told I had a 9 week wait to see a rheumatologist. That was pretty much it.

who thought Alec Baldwin was the best Ryan. "The Hunt For Red October" is still the best of the series, and the only one I own on video.

...which is why movies sometimes do him a big favor--Patriot Games for instance. Films sometimes turn his elephantine self-indulgent blather-fests into actually a fairly neatly plotted, concise suspense thriller. But the more control he has over 'em, the more I would expect 'em to suck, just like his novels have gotten so incredibly baggy and flabby since he became, like King, Too Big To Edit.

People misunderstand the crucial role a good editor can play. Ever read the original ending to "For Whom the Bell Tolls"? Hemingway was eternally grateful to his editor for having persuaded him to lop it off. But once these blockbuster novelistst get commercially successful no one can dare to contradict them and they turn into self-parodying bloviaters, each novel fatter than the last and more self-indulgent. I enjoyed Clancy at the beginning, always allowing for his right-winger views, but gave up on him several novels back. King, I've tried to hang on with, but it's been hard recently, and his last couple have made me glad he's said he was going to hang it up. Even if he doesn't hold to that resolution, backing off and taking a fresh look at what he does would do him a world of good. Maybe he'll hire a good editor, too--one who will tell him when he's bullshitting. I think Clancy has long since gone far beyond that point....

Especially since Clancy is such a RWer, and Baldwin is the complete opposite side of the spectrum. A good example for the rest of the RWers (and some lefties, too): just because you disagree with someones politics, doesn't mean you can't respect the work they do.

:bounce: