The Tom Clancy brand has produced some memorable heroes over the years. From Rainbow Six's John Clark to Splinter Cell's Sam Fisher, the world of espionage, spycraft, and grounded action thrillers has been forever changed by these patriotic badasses. However, there's one Clancy character who arguably rises above the rest: Jack Ryan. The CIA analyst is about to get his own series with John Krasinski in the titular role, and the first official teaser for Amazon Prime's Jack Ryan looks seriously intense. Check it out below to see for yourself.
He may be looking into the camera in this teaser trailer for Jack Ryan, but it is pretty clear that John Krasinski has come a long way since the days of Jim Halpert on The Office. The teaser itself does not go into too much detail with regards to how Mr. Ryan gets to where we find him, but the trailer seems to suggest that Ryan comes across an anomaly in a series of bank transfers that leads him on a manhunt to find a terrorist mastermind. Just look at Krasinksi's face when he sits down at that table; you know he means business.
Although there isn't a ton of footage to work with in this teaser, it seems to show how the Tom Clancy/Jack Ryan concept has evolved over the years. While he remains a CIA analyst (not the run-and-gun John Rambo type of action hero), Jack Ryan's area of expertise appears to have been updated to the Middle East -- a far more familiar locale for this type of story in 2018. As a result, instead of the Cold War imagery that defined the Jack Ryan projects of Alec Baldwin or Harrison Ford, the show appears to have an aesthetic far more reminiscent of projects like Zero Dark Thirty or 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi -- which similarly featured John Krasinski.
Building off of that idea (particularly the Zero Dark Thirty reference) there's something to be said about the way in which this Jack Ryan trailer frames its hero. The trailer pretty much entirely takes place from the perspective of a captured prisoner, which in turn keeps Ryan at a distance from the audience. The entire thing plays out from the point of view of somebody bound and gagged with a bag thrown over their head, which makes it seem that Jack Ryan may dive into the ethical treatment of prisoners, and possibly even the use of torture to extract information -- a hot-button topic in recent years. With that in mind, you can definitely consider us excited for the return of this iconic hero.
Jack Ryan will debut on Amazon Prime in 2018. That said, we still have a wave of awesome-looking fall shows left to debut over the next few months, so make sure to take a look at our comprehensive fall TV premiere guide to keep yourself in the loop on all of them.
