posted 08-14-2000 04:56 PM            

You can also keep up on the latest Ryan news on the movie's spotlight page:

posted 10-24-2000 11:16 AM            

1. The family. Not only is Cathy a integral part of one plot against Ryan (she has some awesome lines against her husband's female rival, who started some nasty rumors), but the family gives Jack a reason to fight this nuclear exchange.

2. The nasty rumors (of an affair) mentioned above would not exist if he was unmarried, and if his rank was lowered in deference to Affleck's age. Both of these rumors I have read on other websites. And the result of that conflict provides some confict later with the President, since he's sleeping with the female rival.

3. The rank of DDI is also needed if you want to proceed chronologically with the series. Remember, he is supposed to be the youngest DDI, but still in about mid-late thirties. Especially if you want to make Debt of Honor and Executive Orders, all of which have more captivating plots but need the background from SoAF.

As a question, will Willem DaFoe return as John Clark? And who played Chavez? That could improve the movie somewhat.

Ok eough venting. If I have insulted the intelligence of anyone by giving the plot away of a book you've already read, I'm sorry. I'm just flustered.

posted 03-08-2001 01:44 PM            

I REALLY want to see Rainbow Six carried off well - and if this one flops, the chances of that are more and more remote.

If they are going to bring in a new character, why not someone who can see them through a couple more. Baldwin would be my first choice. Or go with someone like Gabriel Byrne (or Tim Matheson )

posted 03-09-2001 09:59 AM            

W~

posted 03-09-2001 10:27 PM            

W~

posted 07-22-2001 02:51 PM            

The replacement of Ford with a much younger and very different actor like Affleck is a big mistake. Not that Affleck is terrible; just that he does not suit the character at all. He does not have the presence or maturity, especially for drama of this kind. He will likely bring a freshman or frat-boy sort of laid-back attitude. That is what he does, he does it well, but it does not suit this role or style of film. The required changes, particularly around the age issue, will destroy any continuity and connection with the previous films, as well as ruining what I feel is one of Clancy's best books.

Baldwin might have been a good choice, since he was fine in Hunt for Red October, which was the best film adaptation of a book I have even seen, and the best film of the series. And McTiernan as director would have been and excellent choice with real possibilities!

posted 08-18-2001 08:31 PM            

Here's Jeffrey Wells's column in reel.com from February after he read the shooting script.

I laughed last year when Ben Affleck was hired to play CIA operator Jack Ryan in Paramount's The Sum of All Fears, a nuclear-terror drama that's about to start production in Montreal under director Phil Alden Robinson. But I may have laughed too soon.
It was hard not to smirk when the news broke that Affleck would be replacing Harrison Ford, who'd played and pretty much defined Ryan in 1992's Patriot Games and '94's Clear and Present Danger. The 27-year-old actor seemed way too young to play an eye-level advisor and confidante of top-level Washington types, a status that Ryan had risen to in Danger.

Especially considering that a March 2000 version of the Sum of All Fears script (by Akiva Goldsman and Paul Attanasio, and obviously written with Ford in mind), had scenes in which Ryan plays serious poker and speaks very bluntly with the U.S. president, the Russian premier, and various other top-level, middle-aged honchos.

I mean, c'mon. The White House team is eyeball-to-eyeball with the Russians during a nuclear showdown, and they're going to listen to that guy with the goatee in Chasing Amy for advice?

But now I've gotten hold of a two-month-old draft (dated December 8, 2000, with revisions by Daniel Pyne and Robinson) that reflects the Affleck casting, and guess what? It works.

Here's why: Instead of trying to convince us that Affleck is the new Harrison Ford, Pyne and Robinson have, in a manner of speaking, split the Ryan character in two. The seasoned advisor dialogue that Ford would have spoken is now being voiced by a senior CIA official named Cabot (Morgan Freeman). Cabot, in turn, is mentoring the young Jack Ryan (Affleck), a CIA operative who's written a study of a new Russian premier who's just assumed power, which keeps him inside the power loop since the Russian leader figures prominently in the film's extremely tense story line.

In other words, Freeman and Affleck are playing an "older cop/younger cop" team along the lines of the relationship Freeman had with Brad Pitt's detective in Seven, except that Affleck's Ryan is a lot smarter, more ambitious, and more diplomatic. (He also has a girlfriend.) Following a not-unfamiliar dramatic arc, this dynamic changes at the end of Act Two and Ryan is forced to stand up and fend for himself.
The March 2000 Ford script was longish (145 pages) with scenes that tended to go on a while. It was a first-rate thriller, but it also had a bit of a reflective, middle-aged attitude. The Affleck version is 22 pages shorter, and seems to be paced more like a younger man's film.

The basic scenario in The Sum of All Fears is that in today's world, nuclear devices are no longer strictly controlled by super-powers and are being bought, sold, and detonated by rogue elements.

Anyone who's read the original Tom Clancy novel knows that the centerpiece is a nuclear explosion that happens during a Super Bowl game. In the various Ford versions, the blast happened at the New Orleans Superdome. Now, in the new Affleck version, it happens at the Baltimore Stadium, the home of the Ravens. Either way, this is going to be one hell of a sequence.

In the Ford version, the U.S. president is watching the game in New Orleans and dies in the blast, leaving his avaricious, trigger-happy vice president to run things. I won't say what happens in the Affleck version, but the effects of the nuclear blast are now different.

One more interesting difference: In both scripts the nuclear device behind the Super Bowl blast is a relic (left over from the 1973 Yom Kippur War) that has been dug up in the Jordanian desert and sold to a freelance arms merchant. In the Ford script, the finders of the device, ignorant of its true value, sell it for $1,000. In the Affleck draft they accept $400. Why did Pyne and Robinson drop the price?

Robinson and producer Mace Neufeld will begin shooting Sum of All Fears in Montreal on February 12. Paramount is preparing a press release that will divulge most of the cast, and they didn't feel like giving me an exclusive. But they tipped me off about Freeman, and for that I'm grateful.