When a franchise gets rebooted it’s not uncommon for the second version of a story to take into account and change anything that was seen as a problem the first time around. When it came to resarting Reacher as a streaming series, that meant one thing, casting somebody really big in the lead role because if there was one thing that even the author of the Jack Reacher books admits, it’s that Tom Cruise's size fell...short.
Before Alan Ritchson completely filled out the role in Reacher (available with a Prime Video subscription), Tom Cruise played the drifting badass in a pair of big-screen films. Both movies were modest hits, and author Lee Child, who created the character, tells the Independent that he thinks the first movie is actually quite good, even if he agrees with most fans that Tom Cruise wasn’t the right man for the role. Child said:
I thought the first movie in particular was excellent. It was a really crisp hard-edged thriller. Working with Tom was a pleasure and a privilege – he’s a really smart guy, he’s a smart filmmaker, he’s real fun. But you cannot escape the fact that Reacher is a huge guy. I mean, that is a component in his entire approach to the world and the world’s approach to him. He’s huge, he’s implacable, he’s scary, and for all Tom’s ability in getting the internals of Reacher out, he is not huge and he’s not scary. So the readers were terribly upset about it and I think, ultimately, the readers were right.
Normally, having Tom Cruise star in any movie is automatically going to make it a hot property and get people excited. Unfortunately, that was not the case with 2012’s Jack Reacher or its 2016 sequel. Fans were not excited that Cruise was playing the character because the actor, who is somewhat famous for being on the smaller side, was just not the right physical match for the character he was playing.
Movies often make changes to characters when adapting other material. A character's race or ethnicity may change depending on the actor being cast, but in those cases, we’re usually talking about changes that are not vital to a character's presentation.
The fact that Jack Reacher is, almost always, the biggest and strongest guy in the room is a big part of who Reacher is and how Lee Child wanted him to be. Take that away, and you’re just not dealing with Jack Reacher anymore. While it sounds like Tom Cruise was perfect in every other conceivable way, he just couldn’t overcome that.
Prime Video series Reacher, now in its third season, does not have that problem. Alan Ritchson is probably the biggest guy in the room most of the time, so he has the look that the character needs. Child doesn’t think the series could have done better when it came to casting, saying…
Alan was born to play Reacher and I think he knows that.
Still, following Tom Cruise is no easy feat. Ritchson says he reached out to Cruise after being cast, though as far as we know the two have not spoken. It's unclear how Cruise himself feels about the response to his playing the role.
Fans may not have been on board with Tom Cruise, but a lot of people seem to like Alan Ritchson in the role, as shown by the fact that Reacher Season 4 is already in the works.
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