May 2022:
WHEN LIFE IMITATES ART..
When life imitates art. Versus the other way around. Most forget film is a form art. It is a visual medium we use to express our thoughts and selves. And sometimes a film comes out and can seem to foreshadow and imitate a pending future doom depending on the source material and subject. And it may not always be a recent film, but in fact an older one. I came across this thought while re-watching an older movie. It was the 2002 film, The Sum of All Fears, adapted from the book of the same name written by Tom Clancy. For an example, and purpose to support my opinion, the film and book would be the source material, while Putin and Russia’s nuclear threat over his current war, and any other countries interference in Ukraine would be the pending doom.
WHEN OLD BECOMES NEW AGAIN..
The film may have premiered 20 years ago, but it tells the tale of a worst case scenario possible nuclear outcome, should the United States decide to involve itself in the war between Ukraine and Russia occurring currently in 2022. It is not far-fetched at this point, to think while you’re watching the film now, that this could very well happen in real life. The very possible worst case scenarios that could occur may not play out the same way with the same ulterior motives, or ever actually happen, but the film has become eerily relevant as of now, regardless of it actually happening. Granted, the book and film deal with U.S. & Russia relations during and after the Cold War, Russia’s motives and reasoning haven’t much changed all these decades later. Russia’s aggression is always about what they lost after the Dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War on December 26, 1991. The book the 2002 film is adapted from came out five months before the end of the Cold War in August of 1991. The conjecture of the film could very well make sense in relation to 2022. Vladimir Putin came into power in 2000, which was a couple of years before The Sum of All Fears came out. He ran for President with the idea of returning Russia to its Soviet Union glory days. He has stayed on as President all these years through questionable re-elections. And he is still there decades later trying to do what he intended in 2000. Restoring the Soviet Union by any means necessary.
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME…
The motivating factor behind Putin invading Ukraine now and Crimea in 2014 are about returning Russia to the great glory of the USSR, and that plan always included taking back the countries crumbled under the union fall at the end of the Cold War in 1991. Putin wants back what he feels was taken from Russia. He did not see these countries as being liberated in 1991. He still believes today that the countries and people of those European nations to be his and Russia’s to control. He tells the people of Russia and Ukraine he is freeing them from the Neo-Nazi’s that rule over them when justifying his incursion of the country. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish. And the nation of Ukraine is in no way suffering under Neo-Nazi rule. The people of Ukraine elected him their president through a fair election of voting in a campaign Zelenskyy ran under to eradicate corruption.
IS IT AN EXTREME MOVIE OR IS IT EXTREME POLITICS?…
While the motives in the film and how the story plays out may differ from Putin’s own motives and the events in present day, the novel and film have several similar alarming Neo-Nazi modern revolution motives that are concerning and lining up with today’s geopolitics nationally. The Neo- Nazi story development of the film could have easily been pulled from a 2022 news headline. In the film when the Russian President suddenly dies and a Presidential transition is in effect, an Austrian Neo-Nazi uses the opportunity and plans to trigger a nuclear war between the United States and Russia, so that he can establish a fascist superstate in Europe. Baltimore, MD becomes the target of a secretly commissioned nuclear weapon that has been missing for decades and is discovered to have gone missing in 1973 when an Israeli airplane carrying a nuclear bomb crashed in Syria by Jack Ryan. This was the opening sequence of the film tied in to Jack’s mission. And a football stadium full of its citizen’s as well as the President of the United States and William Cabot are at risk. The film has the United States pushed to the brink of war with Russia when a rouge Russian officer is paid off by the Neo-Nazi’s to attack a U.S. aircraft carrier to escalate the conflict to all-out war. It is C.I.A. Analyst Jack Ryan who is the only person to realize that the Baltimore bomb is a black-market American weapon and not actually a Russian one as perceived by the U.S. Government. He discovers with the help of John Clark (Liev Schreiber) that the Plutonium is from United States and that it is indeed the missing nuclear bomb from the 1970’s. The second half of the film deals with the little time Ryan has, and how he must use that time to find a way to stop the impending nuclear war.
You can watch a clip of Dressler and his Fascism speech from The Sum of All Fears here:
I COULDN’T HELP BUT WONDER…
When I recently rewatched the film, I couldn’t get over how much I could relate to the tension of Jack Ryan in the film and relate it to what the world is currently experiencing with Russia right now. While the events of the film are fictional in nature, you watch it being able to relate to Jack’s nuclear war concern the film is centered around. When Tom Clancy wrote the book it was very much based in real life. He easily related it to the geopolitics of the world and successfully told a story that is believable. It was centered on the end of the Cold War and Russia’s geopolitics with the United States as a result. Clancy wrote a what if scenario novel series and put a interworked character (Jack Ryan) at the forefront of these stories to best tell them.
IT’S ALL RELATIVE…
THE MULTIPLICITY OF JACK RYAN…
C.I.A. Analyst Jack Ryan was played by Ben Affleck in The Sum of All Fears. But this wasn’t Jack Ryan’s first appearance in a film adaption. Jack Ryan has been played by quite a few actors in film, and there have been quite a few adaptions of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan Franchise. The first book and film adaption to film was with The Hunt for Red October, written in 1984 and adapted for film in 1990. Jack Ryan was played by Alec Baldwin in that film. In the 1990 film we saw Baldwin’s Jack Ryan aboard the Soviet submarine “Red October” trying to understand Captain Marko Ramius’ (Sean Connery) motives after he abandons his orders and heads for the east coast of the United States and Jack Ryan fears he may launch an attack on the United States.
You can watch the Official Trailer for The Hunt For Red October here:
The second actor to portray the C.I.A. Analyst in not one, but two film adaptions of Clancy’s novels was Harrison Ford who played Jack Ryan in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. With the Ford version of Jack Ryan, he is already married to Dr. Cathy Muller, who is played by Bridget Moynahan in The Sum of All Fears, while in the 1992 and 1994 films, the character is portrayed by Anne Archer and named Dr. Cathy Ryan. Meanwhile, the character of John Clark was played by Willem Dafoe in Clear and Present Danger.
You can watch the Official Trailer for Patriot Games here:
You can watch the Official Trailer for Clear and Present Danger here:
Ben Affleck is the third actor to portray Jack Ryan in The Sum of All Fears. The film was clearly adapted out of the order from Clancy’s other adaptions. The 2002 film was seen as a reboot, and therefore begins Jack’s career with the C.I.A. after his plane crash while serving with the Marines and being recruited from the United States Naval Academy where he was a civilian history professor. The film is not only centered on establishing him as knowledgeable when it comes to Russian relations and sending him on his first mission as a field agent and out of the analyst office. But it also showed us how Jack met his wife, who with his daughter would all be at risk and front and center to the story that takes place in Patriot Games. In the 2002 film Retired Vice Admiral and C.I.A Deputy Director William Cabot, is played by Morgan Freeman, and is an amalgamation of the novel popular characters of Admiral Greer and DCI Marcus Cabot. Greer is responsible for personally recruiting Jack Ryan and the other popular character of the series, John Clark into the C.I.A.
You can watch a clip of The Sum of All Fears here:
You can watch a clip of William Cabot in this scene from The Sum of All Fears here:
In the 1990, 1992 and 1994 Harrison Ford Films, Admiral Greer is played by James Earl Jones. He succumbs to a Cancer diagnosis in Clear and Present Danger which is most likely why the 2002 takes liberties at combining his character with that of another and having someone else entirely. But as an avid film viewer and one for continuity, the film was already out of order with Ryan’s lifetime line so with a reboot in mind, it would have made sense to just have Freeman play the younger version of Earl Jones’s Greer. Either way, I enjoyed the film. Just always bothered me the timeline was so out of order, regardless of reboot status. The beauty of watching older films these days with streaming, watching in chronological order fixes everything.
You can watch James Earl Jones‘s final scene as Admiral Greer here:
The fourth actor to portray Jack Ryan was Chris Pine in the 2014 film Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. This film version of the Ryanverse is not a direct adaption of a Tom Clancy novel, nor does it present itself as one, it is rather a separate espionage thriller that successfully pulls from real-life events that have influenced modern geopolitics and then based it in Jack Ryan’s world. But the same description of the 2014 film can be said about Tom Clancy’s novels themselves, and The Sum of All Fears film, in terms of our relations with Russia currently. In the 2014 film, Dr. Cathy Muller is now his fiancée and played by Keira Knightley and Jack Ryan had been secretly working for the C.I.A. for years, keeping it from her. Pine’s Jack Ryan is again a younger version, and while I enjoyed the film it didn’t do as well In theaters as the 2002 film version did. But audiences still haven’t accepted either Ben Affleck or Chris Pine as Jack Ryan.
You can watch the Official Trailer for Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit here:
They have accepted the most recent and current actor portraying Jack Ryan though. John Krasinski plays the C.I.A. Analyst for the Amazon Prime Original TV Show Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. I have to say, this may be my favorite version of Jack Ryan so far. I have enjoyed every film, but Krasinski’s portrayal of the C.I.A. Analyst has been my most enjoyable. The first two seasons of the show included Wendell Pierce as James Greer. I have known Pierce better and for a while as Det. “Bunk” Moreland on The Wire. But I thoroughly enjoy his version of Greer and can’t wait to see him and Krasinski sometime in the fall of 2022 when the show is slated to return for a third season.
You can watch the Official Trailer for the first season of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan here:
You can watch a trailer for The Wire here:
REAL LIFE RELEVANCE…
Regardless of how many actors have played Jack Ryan, the stories Tom Clancy wrote were based on a real life conflict with a real life country. It has been more recent though, that we have seen the Russia relations of the novels and films start becoming and seeming more relevant and real than they originally did. Russia has always been good at covert operations and placing the blame elsewhere making it difficult to make them accountable for their actions. They have never been so out there and in the open, as they have been in Ukraine. It is the Russia we see now invading Ukraine that becomes the Russia we can relate to in The Sum of All Fears. We sit around watching horrifying news reels of the atrocities and genocide and war crimes being committed in the name of Russia every day now.
WAITING AND WATCHING IN ANTICIPATION….
The United States does what we can to help in the scheme of geopolitics bureaucracy and NATO Relations, but our country does so on a very thin line and understanding of what Putin sees as interference into his war with Ukraine. Nation’s leaders sit in fear that one move too far could trigger a nuclear war with Russia. United States and Russia relations have gotten increasingly unstable since 2014 with Crimea, along with accusations of Russia interfering in the United States election process making the U.S. even more aggressive with Russia in 2016. We have gone as far as sanctioning the country for Crimea in 2014, but any and all sanctions have done little to stop Putin.
AN INVISIBLE WAR…
Russia is also accused of Cyber Warfare in the United States and abroad in Europe. And even though all the evidence says they are guilty they continue to deny it. So we continue to tread lightly with Russia in hopes of avoiding the outcome we see in The Sum of All Fears. Some people may worry that what happens in Baltimore, MD in the film could become the reality of a near future if we don’t carefully and strategically handle our relations as it pertains to our help in Ukraine. Leaders all over the world also become more and more concerned about a nuclear outcome in Ukraine. They want to know what Putin is thinking to better evaluate that outcome possibility. They worry that everything Putin has tried to win this war has failed, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will continue to fight back strongly, but others worry Putin may reach a last resort point and use nuclear arms against Ukraine or the rest of the world. The global community worries that if that day comes, how do we not engage and defend all humanity at that point? And knowing that if we do, nuclear war is inevitable. It would most likely mean the end of days. Its altogether an unnerving concept, but when isn’t war unnerving.
Visual Therapy…
Films have a way in times, of helping to explain how people are feeling in relation to the world around them. Movies are sometimes used a therapeutic way of handling that unknown stress factor. Movies have a way of soothing the concerns, even if what you’re watching isn’t real. Look at films like Contagion and Outbreak trending on streaming during the pandemic breakout and lockdown days. A perfect example of how we cope with things we don’t quite understand or are trying to process thought wise. As a nation, we walk a precarious line with Russia currently and it’s easy to see why films like The Sum of All Fears have begun to trend in streaming communities across subscription services and found renewed life 20 years later.