Which did you prefer?
While I enjoyed the book it didn't blow me away the same way the film did. I definitely preferred the film.
I felt the exact opposite with Patriot Games. I really enjoyed the novel and found the film to be awful.
My favorite Clancy novel is Without Remorse but if they haven't turned that into a film yet chances are they never will.
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My favorite Clancy novel is Without Remorse but if they haven't turned that into a film yet chances are they never will.
Yes, I peek at that page once or twice per year and although there is an IMDB page for Without Remorse there never is any movement or developments there.
I like the story too much as is, I don't think I'd like it as well if they changed it around too much.
If it were done well, it could be an awesome movie. I don't know, perhaps they've waited too long. Many of the Cold War films were done in the early 90's. I don't know if Hollywood would still do a Cold War, Vietnam era film. Would audiences be interested? They still do WWII settings in films so I've got to believe this would still be successful as it is written. Who knows.
As for Sum of All Fears I've not read that book yet and I've never seen the film so I don't really have any opinion other than I don't care for Ben Affleck and him being Jack Ryan sounds like bad casting to me. I've heard lots of negative things about the film.
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I didn't think SOAF was as bad of a movie as PG or C&PD were. I like Ford, but he was completely wrong for the movie. Plus, they messed with the side characters way too much.
I've read all of Clancy's Jack Ryan universe books, as well as Red Storm Rising. THFRO is one of my favorite movies, but I'll almost always take a book over a movie.
If you know the book and they have a miscast in the movie (Willem Dafoe) it can really tank the movie for you. Even the opposite is true, that miscast in the movie can make the book lesser because now you've seen the person who was miscast doesn't fit the description in the book.
I actually saw a couple of these movies before I ever read a Tom Clancy novel so I had already seen Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan before I had read any of the novels. Because of this I never really had any issue with the casting of those guys. To be honest I think I like the Alec Baldwin version the best. I've never researched why the change to Ford was made, was Alec not interested...I don't know what happened there but I like his version best. He came off as an analyst thrown into the fire whereas Ford has more of an "action hero" vibe to me.
I really enjoyed Clear and Present Danger (the novel) but they really messed that film up. I didn't like that film at all. I also didn't think Dafoe was a good fit for Clark.
Hollywood loves action and big explosions and special effects. Because of this I wonder why they ventured away from the helicopter rescue mission with the (3)Gatling guns or Vulcan canons (I can't remember off the top of my head) used from the helicopter as the trapped soldiers were rescued. They came up with Ryan and Clark renting some old news chopper flown by some down and out pilot to fly them around and they had a showdown in an old warehouse building. What an awful change from the book to film. Were they trying to save money? Who knows what they thought. To me that film was a fail.
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I didn't think SOAF was as bad of a movie as PG or C&PD were.
shareIt's been a LONG time, but I read it several times, along with The Cardinal Of The Kremlin, which was my favorite Clancy book at the time. But I haven't read any Clancy novels since The Bear And The Dragon.
When it just comes to whether I prefer the film or the book, it's the film. But the combination of Red October and Cardinal makes for a really cool experience that the film universe didn't get because they didn't adapt the latter. I don't know if Clancy planned it that way or just made a very good sequel to his novel, but they really felt like one long book to me. So the fact that the film universe only tells half of the Red October story always sort of lets me down.
I definitely prefer the film to the book of Patriot Games. I've always felt the plot made a better action movie than one of Clancy's procedural jargon-novels. Red October really benefits from the added scope and realism that a Clancy novel brings (though I still prefer the tighter story of the film), whereas I think Patriot Games benefits from a tighter movie script.
I barely remember reading Clear And Present Danger, I only read it once so it must not have been one of my favorite Clancy books. I know it's my least favorite of the original 3 Ryan films, but the only one I saw in the theater. I enjoyed it but I didn't find the whole drug cartel business that interesting as it was really played out by '94. Even Crocodile Dundee had taken on the South American drug kingpins by that point, cartel films were pretty much a film genre in the late 80's/early 90's. The techno-thriller aspect was pretty interesting at the time (though very dated now), because that was when PCs were seemingly taking over every home. And they played to that a lot, lots of computer analysis and breaking into people's machines. So it may have been an old hat plot but it had an interesting execution with all the cutting edge technology. My family got our first PC that same year, not long before I saw the movie, so I thought all that stuff was pretty entertaining, seeing a computer do more than just play TIE Fighter or Solitaire. I remember telling my dad after he picked me up that it had a lot of cool computer stuff, but the story was kind of dull. But at the time I didn't even know it was part of the same series as The Hunt For Red October and Patriot Games. I don't even think I'd seen Patriot Games yet. So I was watching it as some random stand-alone action/thriller, knowing he was the same character from one of my favorite films would have helped.
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I have and I like them equally in their own way. Its the same with Jurassic Park. I love the book and movie of both of those and am glad they each did their own thing. I like the cat and mouse game in the movie but I also like the more in depth outcome in the last good bit from when the crew leaves the Red October to the end.
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Gun to my head I'd say I prefer the movie, but my mind could always change. In either form the story is my favorite of the series, although I've only read a handful of the books.
shareI saw the movie as a kid, and since then it's one of my favourite films. I bought the book a few years ago, but to be honest i didn't like it. But maybe it's my own fault. I've had this problem before, seeing the movie before reading the book. I like The Shining, don't like the book. I like All Quiet on the Western Front, don't like the book.
Maybe I should read the book before watching the film in the future :)
The only time when I liked the book as much as the film (series) was with Band of Brothers.
I have never read another Tom Clancy novel, however, i saw all the movies and played some of the videogames.
EDIT: another book i like just as much as the film: Das Boot (in my language: De Boot).
English isn't my 1st language. I'm sorry for any mistakes in grammar, spelling...
It's been awhile since I've read a Clancy novel. I've just started reading Rainbow Six, we'll see how it goes.
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Very few movies are better than the books, and that is usually when they only base the movie very loosely upon the book. Harry Potter movies are an exception seeing as how most of the sub-plots are omitted from the movies and it doesn't hurt the movie at all.
Most novels are better than the movie because of the depth they can go into. I was lucky that I saw this movie before reading the book, but then I read Patriot Games to start, then THFRO and the rest of his books before seeing the movies.
Even if I hadn't read the other books, the other movies still would have sucked.