[deleted]

I liked it.

Of course I would not routinely care how long it too a boat to reach a thing.

It's actually very good.

I'm on the 2nd to last episode of the new season , and I am still waiting for just one Russian to speak Russian.

Or why Greer was stationed in Moscow… not like he sticks out at all, right?

It's not just about time but a tiny little inflatable boat like that wouldn't have enough fuel to even make it a small portion of the way. On top of that, it would pass through the territorial waters of Turkey, where there are two serious chokepoints, the Bosporus and the Dardanelles where they would have been stopped.

i mean the second season was awful so this isnt a surprise

I thought season 3 was quite good and had lots of suspense. Season 2 on the other hand dragged a bit

S1: Introduce a new actor as Jack Ryan, and bring in the original character's origin story updated to happen in the modern day. S2: Let's make him an action hero instead. will it make sense? not really, but the actor is good as an action hero. S3: What country can we make be the bad guys without hurting overseas views? Russia? we can't afford Russian talent? then just hire whatever we can afford.

Dude is an analyst. I have yet to understand why they don't have a character for action stuff instead. It's not like amazon introduced him in his own movie.

Sigh. This show is beyond dumb. I just watch The Last of Us and wonder what a Ryan show would be like if it actually followed source material.

"Invisible nuke to radar" - what the actual fuck?

Oh well. At least Slow Horses has another season.

I thought it was OK. Biggest problem IMO was the anticlimactic ending. Everything up until that moment felt like a setup for a much bigger conspiracy, but it somehow still felt small and wrapped up too easily.

New, mediocre writers. Like many shows these days it followed the trend of changing the showrunners and the writers room from season to season, that's why it's so inconsistent.

The show is just the embodiment of phoning it in. I thought I wanted more kinda cheezy, forgettable action stories. I think I forgot how goddamn boring they can be.

[deleted]

I was hoping making Russians the bad guys would be a return to form as that was the bread and butter of the genre but no, it's the same "Jack Ryan shoots his way across the world with his wisecracking buddy"

Wasn't the whole point of the character that he's also a badass vet who is more than capable of violence when the situation calls for it?

I think the unfortunate change is that instead of him being unwillingly thrust in to the occasional violent situation, he's basically the black ops vanguard leading the charge whenever violence is the solution. And violence is always the solution lol

Totally agree. S3 was definitely better than S2

In the real world I’d imagine it’d probably be something to do with his experience and skills and nothing to do with his race.

In the TV world it doesn’t matter at all.

I assume most nuclear weapons are larger and require larger aircraft to transport and drop. These would be smaller and considered a stealth missile, which would be carried by low detectibility aircraft.

See that’s the thing. Ryan isn’t supposed to even be a badass vet of any form. In fact I’m struggling to think of how many times his character even “touches” a gun in the entire book series. Maybe 3 times? (Red Rabbit, Red October, Patriot Games).

Am I misremembering? I thought in the OG stories he was also a military veteran. Although IIRC it's Red October where he famously never touches a firearm, he does in other stories.

But again the tone is "more than just a pencil pusher," not "motherfucking terminator"

You may be right, I might be confusing the October movie and book together. And he is still a vet and had a helicopter crash that messed his back up (just different wars due to time).

That bad back he still had issues with until season 1 was over. Guess he found those Jack Bauer level painkillers.

Also what happened to his damn wife!

Remember, his back is exactly as bad and Greer's heart is exactly as bad as the plot requires it to be at that exact moment

you are right. Amazon has the right to all of Clancy's books, so going back to spy thriller and bringing in the other characters and story threads seems like a natural plan. my hope was something like. S3 opens up with Jack catching the trail of something going on in Russia, reaches out to the resident spook in Moscow, her name is Foley. they start working the Intel. find out we need to get into an (insert very secure place), and we send in Sam Fisher to retrieve the info. season finally has Mr. Clark comes in to do the actual shooting.

S3 felt like a travel show, let's film in all these beautiful places, make it look gorgeous, but let's not spend a dime on a script or good acting, it kinda feels like that's Amazons thing, lots of shows they have look great, but they're terrible to watch.

I'm trying to play devil's advocate here and look for ways to defend it but... yeah no, the show's gone off a cliff. I remember S1 being so good, a perfect spiritual successor to the 24/Homeland style show but perhaps more grounded and serious. I don't remember a single thing from S2 but I guess I enjoyed it? And this season had some good moments (the >!bomb in a bridge episode!< was fun and well done) but generally it was just kind of a nothing burger action show best enjoyed with your brain turned off, and it's a shame it's come down to this.

Because there are simply not enough writers for the sheer amount of greenlit shows, the pathway to being a writer is so underpaid and under supported yet so critical that there’s no real pathway anymore. Good Writing is hard and bad writing is easy and they’re stretched too thin.

It’s the only way I can see it being like this

> Why is Jack Ryan S3 so terrible?

Because the show is just terrible.

Season one started great, they reskinned the character but stayed pretty close to the source material. A lot of that got thrown out in the final two episodes and it became very close the shit show that was to follow.

Season two was just wanna be SEAL team dogshit.

> Wasn't the whole point of the character that he's also a badass vet who is more than capable of violence when the situation calls for it?

No, not at all.

[deleted]

I mean, did you see what Amazon already did to Mr Clark in their Without Remorse?

Even the violence he uses in Patriot Games is almost more than he should have been capable of. He's not a badass vet, he was injured badly in a chopper crash in training. I mean he was a Marine, but that's it. Clear and Present Danger is the movie that got Jack Ryan the most correct.

“How could fiction be so unbelievable?”

I enjoyed it, but I don’t take many fictional things very seriously.

And in Patriot Games it's made very clear that he's old and retired and it's only his hero instinct reacting that led him to do anything there. He only survived that because of his surprise rush and because one of the attackers was an 18 year old kid who'd never actually been in a fight before.

I don't think I've read Red Rabbit and I've only seen the movie of Red October, and that a long time ago.

>I just watched the first episode and it was a surprise to see Czechs and Russians speaking among themselves in English.

What should they speaking instead? Most Czechs don't learn Russian and Russians sure as hell don't learn Czech.

He is a veteran, but he injured his back in a helicopter crash in training and never actually put his boots on the ground in combat. So he's more than a pencil pusher because he is in fact a Marine, and a young version like Krasinski is playing might still be in shape enough for like, the scene in S1 when he's at the camp that gets attacked. I'd believe him picking up a weapon and returning fire there. Or the opening or (book version) climax of Patriot Games.

He can handle a weapon and take care of himself if the situation calls for it, but that's not his role.

I heard it was good, but not like the original character. haven't had the heart to watch one of my favorite characters get ruined.

The Jack Ryan in Hunt for Red October was not bad. Not a lot of action in that movie.

> Because there are simply not enough writers for the sheer amount of greenlit shows,

I don't believe this at all.

It reminds me of Jason Bourne 3. Just bigger and more locations for the sake of doing it. Script comes second.

Not enough good writers

that's kind of a thing with all of Clancy's work. it was so close to believable that at one point, he got a visit from the folks at Langley asking who his sources were. the stories and characters were close enough to be real. making them more than that is where the fans of the books become disappointed.

That’s one of the differences between a tv show and a novel. Novels can go into so much more detail.

You are absolutely right, but the problem isn't the lack of detail or nuance. the problem is making unnecessary changes that make believable characters unbelievable. for example: In this universe there are 3 VERY capable combat operators. and throughout the stories Ryan is the analytical planner. he figures out what is going on and sends in one of them, with a team of operators to solve the problem. Ryan is not someone good in combat, he is good with information not guns.

> How in the world did they speedboat from the middle of the Black Sea all the way to the outskirts of Athens?

They stop in the North of Greece. And then they travel in car to Athens.

And other details are you dont paying attention.

>S3: What country can we make be the bad guys without hurting overseas views?

This has basically been a huge problem with spy fiction since the end of the Cold War.

Bond films have floundered, too, not knowing what to do with themselves. Central American drug cartels? Works for a movie or two. Ditto the Russian mob. Then it's basically variations of the "Dr. Evil" - private villain who wants to take over the world. Rupert Murdoch standin is trying to start a war because it would profitable or something.

By the last few Craig movies we're down to soap opera garbage like "the villain is Bond's long lost brother."

The huge mistake Bond films made IMHO was not making "Casino Royale" a reboot back to the proper time period. They could be doing cold war period pieces now. Maybe even actually faithful adaptations of the original books.

Ditto Jack Ryan. How much cooler would it be if the series worked up to "Red October" and beyond. Work your way through the books faithfully and you've just created the action/espionage equivalent to "Game of Thrones."

that would have been a great idea. it would have given years of stories and conflict that are baked in. reference the movies that already were made as you progress through the timeline. The world building is there, it just takes someone willing to commit to it. I imagine they could have done most of the same character's stories and arcs in a modern timeline without losing the character.

Maybe OP still lives in the 1980s?

you mean Ultimatum? I have never disagreed with an opinion this quickly, movie is phenomenal

Hello, to answer your question it's because of season 1 and 2 existing.

Wow. I never heard anyone say that. The movie barely makes any sense. They were writing the script on the fly and shows. But we all enjoy what we enjoy.

yes, script is ultra thin and nonsensical (Bourne wants to punish those who made him a machine, but he volunteered for it so huh? your fault, Jason) but as two plus hours of him wrecking literally anyone in his way and eluding the hell out of every surveillance device ever invented I find it one of the best action movies in, well, a lot of years. I also like Greengrass' style so

Fair enough. I still like knowing who is being killed and why. And why suitcase bombs are blowing up etc.

haha ok, it's not that convoluted but I watched it a lot of times, more than 20 probably, so had plenty of chances to connect the dots

I was very disappointed in the entire season 3. Absolutely underwhelming. I had high hopes but it just wasn't very good.

No, they didn't. Check Legrena on a map. It's south of Athens.

I said "speaking amongst themselves", not "speaking amongst each other". It means Russians are speaking to other Russians in English, even without other nationalities around. Same with Czechs.

Speaking of the 80's, even in the flashback scene, Russians were speaking in English.

What other shows suffered from this?

I agree with it going off a cliff, and you're right about season 2, I can't remember anything interesting about it at all, except that it involved South America.

Just from recent memory and a few that I dropped after the quality plummeted: The Mosquito Coast, Barbarians, Westworld (Nolan and Joy remained showrunners but they changed the writers every season). It's also pretty common for Amazon originals, it happened to The Man in the High Castle, Goliath and recently Carnival Row.

Writers missed the opportunity (just in my opinion) to have some True Lies moments with Ryans girlfriend/future wife.

They touched on it with the helicopter ride out of the party and the sudden meeting about the pandemic, but I really wish they'd have done more with it.

Something I have never understood at all is why so many movies based on books change the whole story around. To me it is so confusing. You have a great book. There is. Whole story in there and all you have to do is film it. It is just so weird.

Nukes are down to the size of 500lb bombs these days. Lightest production nukes was like 100lb, for the 155mm howitzer.

They never went smaller due to security and practicality concerns.

>You have a great book. There is. Whole story in there and all you have to do is film it.

You cannot, in fact, do this. Certainly not for any book that is actually "great."

Even for simple books there are budget considerations, pacing, clarity, the interests of the actors, etc.

It feels like there are five years in-between seasons. I couldn't tell you what happened in season 1 or 2 at this point

It's a popcorn show. I enjoy it for what it is. And it's great at being a popcorn show.

They also had no reason to go to Greece. They could have gone straight back to the navy ship they came from.

It’s one of the biggest budget shows. They have the money for Russian talent, but it was a call made because Americans don’t really do subtitles. What tv shows do you watch with extensive subtitles?

The budget remark was meant as a jab at the production. Amazon is not known for being cheap when budgeting for their shows. As to subtitles, both previous seasons of this show had subtitles for the non English-speaking characters. and I see it rather frequently. the NCIS shows and Madam Secretary are the two most recent that I have watched.