I am gradually building up a mental picture of Reacher, what he looks like, how he behaves, how he reacts to different situations and so on. For me, forming impressions of characters is one of the great pleasures of reading. According to Wikipedia (so it must be true - ha ha), Jack Reacher's physical appearance is described as follows:
Reacher is 6' 5" tall (1.96 m) with a 50-inch chest, and weighing between 210 and 250 pounds (100-115 kg). He has ice-blue eyes and dirty blond hair. He has very little body fat, and his muscular physique is completely natural (he reveals in Persuader, he has never been an exercise enthusiast.) He is exceptionally strong but is not a good runner. Reacher's strength is combined with his savant intellect and military training, analyzing his environment and opponents at extremely high processing speeds.I learned via Mashable this morning that Tom Cruise is to play Jack Reacher in a cinematic adaptation of the ninth novel in the series, One Shot. The movie will simply be called Jack Reacher and is due for release later this year.
I'm sorry to say that no part of Reacher's physical description or psychological picture reminds in any way of Tom Cruise - absolutely none at all. For one thing, Cruise is almost a foot shorter than Reacher. But it goes further than his size (which is an integral part of this character). Reacher is imposing in almost every way and hardened by life; there is nothing suave about him. According to the official Twitter feed for the movie, Lee Child himself is thrilled with the choice and goes to great lengths to assure readers that he was never worried about it. At all. Never ever. Not one bit.
I'm not convinced and it seems I'm not the only one. The trailer hasn't done much to change my mind, either.
What do you think about Tom Cruise playing Jack Reacher? Does your imagination stretch far enough to make it believable, or will you be struggling, like me, to make the character work on the big screen?
1 comment:
To be honest, I can't ever like Tom Cruise acting as anyone hahaha. But especially when he's playing someone who should be tall and imposing.
His couch jumping and Scientology rants really have done nothing for me when it comes to taking him seriously in movies. All I see is "Tom Cruise" the megastar with a massive ego on the screen, not the character. I struggle with that. I've just decided not to watch any of his movies anymore.
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