Jack... Cruise?

1.) Buy movie rights to best selling action-adventure novel series.
2.) Fail to read even one word of them.
3.) Cast 5'-6", 160 lb prettyboy as hard-bitten 6'-5", 280 lb main character.
4.) ?????
5.) Profit !!!!!!!!!!1!

Time to put all of those gay rumors to rest with this role...

Banana in the Tailpipe...
Staring Tom Cruise.

turns around, walks out the room, shaking head.

Yep, they turned the Reacher series of books into something my girlfriend wants to see.

Fail.

In reply to N Sperlo:

I hope that wasn't directed at me, I was just keeding. Gay people don't bother me, Tom Cruise bothers me.

In reply to Anti-stance:

Oh, no. Just boggled and have nothing to add.

You're definitely talking about the Reacher series.

I laughed out loud when I saw the trailer. Cruise is everything Jack Reacher isn't. They just wanted a name to put on their new action series.

Pretend you've never heard of Reacher, now what?

Not having grown up here or read many American comics, I'd never heard of Racher until there was a piece on the movie on NPR last week. Is having a short psyco play the lead role going to fundamentaly change my enjoyment of the movie?

In reply to Adrian_Thompson:

If it makes you feel better I grew up in America and never heard of Reacher

Adrian_Thompson wrote: Pretend you've never heard of Reacher, now what? Not having grown up here or read many American comics, I'd never heard of Racher until there was a piece on the movie on NPR last week. Is having a short psyco play the lead role going to fundamentaly change my enjoyment of the movie?

I have no idea. Cruise has been fine in some action roles, horrible in others. Depends on how they rewrite the films around him.

But as the lead in this particular series, Tom Cruise is just ridiculous. The whole point of Jack Reacher as a character is that he can just power through anything he can't shoot first.

FWIW, they are a novel series, not comics, set in the US. They are being written by an expat English author named Lee Childs. He started maybe 8 years ago? There are about a dozen of them, I think. They are passable (if highly formulaic) though the author definitely doesn't know as much as he thinks he does. He often gets little details wrong, but overall, they're perfectly valid ways to kill a couple evenings.

So Jack Reacher was the originator of the "Reach-around?"

1988RedT2 wrote: So Jack Reacher was the originator of the "Reach-around?"

Only if he's ripping it off and then feeding it to you.

Wally wrote: In reply to Adrian_Thompson: If it makes you feel better I grew up in America and never heard of Reacher

Me too.

Can he take Chuck Norris?

Duke wrote: ...Cast 5'-6", 160 lb prettyboy as hard-bitten 6'-5", 280 lb main character.....

You are discounting the booming "height challenged action co-star and stuntman" business.

Stallone had the same issue.... well, not he "prettyboy" part.

aircooled wrote:

Duke wrote: ...Cast 5'-6", 160 lb prettyboy as hard-bitten 6'-5", 280 lb main character.....

You are discounting the booming "height challenged action co-star and stuntman" business. Stallone had the same issue.... well, not he "prettyboy" part.

Stallone at least wasn't built like a jockey. He has some beef to him. Tom is just... a guy, you know? I mean seriously. Reacher is supposed to be able to beat on a poolroom full of hoods by himself. There's just no way Cruise has the mass to pull it off, no matter how fancy the choreography. Reacher is supposed to be built like Jason Statham with about 40 more pounds of muscle.

See, this is why I'm not a purist. It's exhausting.

If somebody made a autobiographical movie on Tom Cruise.. I would not even get him to play himself

Anyone want to bet Cruise is running in this movie? Running...a lot.

The size issue changes just about all the dynamics of the books and who the character really is. They bought a name for an action series they wanted to make hoping it would attract people who knew the name. Only people who know the name . . .

Reacher is not your typical action hero.

From Wiki: Jack (None) Reacher is a former United States Army Military Police Major. He was born on a military base in Berlin in 1960. A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, he served 13 years in the Military Police, during which time he became part of a fictional military police unit, the 110th Special Investigations Unit, formed to handle exceptionally tough cases, especially those involving members of the United States Army Special Forces.

Though he was demoted from Major to Captain in the prequel novel The Enemy, he regained the rank of Major by the time he mustered out in 1997. He received many military awards during his career, including the Silver Star, the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, the Soldier's Medal, the Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart for wounds sustained in the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983.[citation needed]

Since leaving the Army, Reacher has been a drifter. He wanders throughout the United States because he was accustomed to being told where to go, when to go and what to do for every day of his life from military childhood to military adulthood. He also felt he never got to know his own country, having spent much of his youth living overseas on military bases and at the military school West Point. He usually travels by hitchhiking or bus. As a drifter, the only possessions he carries are money, a foldable toothbrush and, after 9/11, an expired passport and an ATM debit card. He has never possessed a driver's license.

BUT HERE'S THE BIG THING

Reacher's demeanor is stoic, and he does not talk much. (just try to get Tom to shut up)

Reacher frequently does not answer when people make statements or ask questions, nodding or shrugging, preferring the other party to fill the silence. A recurring line in the novels is "Reacher said nothing". He is cool-headed and rarely becomes visibly angry.

Sometimes during the course of a novel, usually toward the end, Reacher calmly kills his foe(s) even after they are no longer a threat, but only if they have committed terrible acts (usually multiple murders) which he feels merit their deaths as justice. Such killings by Reacher are featured in Persuader and Bad Luck and Trouble, among others.

Am I the only one who thought this when they read the title?

Sounds like a role written for this guy:

I've only read one Reacher novel, but I agree that Tom Cruise is diametrically opposed to the character. Reacher blends into the background which makes him triply dangerous when he's hunting someone. Statham would be just about perfect, The Rock has too much mouth and stands out too much.

I'll take just about any movie with Statham in place of Cruise.