*** Official "THE SUM OF ALL FEARS" Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[Eric Paddon]

A very lame movie overall, IMO, and even though I knew all about the change to neo-Nazis going into the movie, actually seeing this story play out only demonstrated the absolute la-la dreamland Hollywood has always existed in when it comes to their choice of villains. During the 1970s and 1980s, Hollywood refused to depict the Soviets as bad guys any longer in the name of PC ideology, and that trend extended post-Cold War to not depict Arabs or Palestinians as terrorists. Now in the wake of 9/11, that just seems so laughably insulting from my standpoint.

 

[Chris]

This movie was bad.

That is all.

I wished I could get my money back.

* out of ****.

 

[Patrick Sun]

I thought this film lacked in dramatic tension. A better director might have been able to truly pull the audience in more as the 3rd act concluded because there's some really juicy bits that just never came together in the right manner to make it a thriller of a movie. It felt like a "paint-by-the-numbers" thriller with little originality or passion.

 

[Ben Osborne]

In The Sum of All Fears I really missed the thoroughness and attention to detail of Clear and Present Danger. Sure, the previous Clancy movies were not that distinctive cinematically, but they were at least well done and didn't leave the audience feeling short changed. In Clear and Present Danger we see the U.S. commandos landing in Columbia, hiding in the brush, planning their operations, communicating with Clark. They don't just come out of nowhere and vanish when they're done with their job. They have to obey the laws of motion, gravity, non-contradiction, etc.

In The Sum of All Fears we suddenly find Ryan and Clark on a boat, then they're on their way to the Russian lab, then they're back in the boat. Then Ryan's back in Washington. They exhibit the planning and strategy of a couple of juvenile delinquents toilet-papering the next door neighbor's house, not an ex-Marine and a hardened CIA operative.

 

[Quentin]

Very cliche, very dull, I saw it for free...

 

[Sean Moon]

The reason the film didnt revel in the nuke sequence is because it wanted to simply shock you with it, not beat you with it. Also, if it really happened it would be over and done with that fast.

My only complaints areWhy does the radio on the chopper ryan is in when the nuke goes off still working? Wouldnt the EMP disable it, or were they too far away for that to affect it?


Also, why make a stink over where the uranium came from? They went nowhere with that!


Other than that, I loved it.

 

[Kaima]

Sean,

They could at least have an overhead shot of the explosion. I wanted to compare the blast radius with Armageddon (Paris). I didn't get the feeling that was an Nuke that went off. The buildings are still standing in the background and it's hard to tell how far it is from the stadium if you're not from Baltimore.

I wasn't shocked when the nuke went off. I rather have the director beat me with it and show me just how much damage it did and how many people it killed.

Chris,

Me too, I wish I can get my money back as well. This is a movie to rent instead.

 

[Danny R]

Sean, the source of the nuke is vital, because it proves that Russia wasn't the direct source of the bomb, but rather terrorists.

FYI, Rush Limbaugh's spoiler is false.

The bomb was NOT the size of a cigarrette pack, but was actually hidden inside the whole cigarrette machine. Glad to see this, as it would otherwise have violated the laws of physics!

I didn't get the feeling that was an Nuke that went off.

This is intentional... the bomb was a dud, which is explained in the book, but only glossed over in the movie.

 

[Tino]

BTW guys, SPOILER BLOCKS are NOT needed in a discusion thread.
Some of us cannot read spoilers, like we WEBTV users.
Another nitpick was that since the nuclear explsion was NOT graphic in the least, there was really very little sense of loss, devestation and horror. I read that no changes were made after 9-11, however it sure seems that it was toned down.

 

[Sean Moon]

Ok...the Russians are not the direct source of the bomb. That was Ryans quick way to get attention for his theory, so I buy it now. But why say Cabbot stole the plutonium, or whoever. But didnt Liev Schrieber find this out without the plutonium tests? Also, the size of the blast they describe on Air Force One afterwards. The blast radius was a few thousand yards, fallout was blown out to sea by the prevailing winds.

And with the nuke blast being so short and non graphic, it seemed worse to me, as it left a lot to your imagination. They described what it was like there, and you saw the research team NEAR the site. Old rule of cinema, the less you show, the scarier it is.

 

[Tino]

Normally that rule works. However in this film, as depicted, it was weak. IMO, it's a no win scenario. Show less, it appears less powerful. Show more, it is too disturbing.
Unfortunately, poor timing has ruined what could have been a powerful scene.
Still, the rest of the film was weak anyway so to this viewer, it didn't really matter anyway.

 

[Matt Pasant]

About the plutonium, my thoughts was that it was not stolen but given to Israel along with other military technology and weapons that we have given to them over the years. That was my take, I have not read the book so I do not know if it was explored further in the book.

I am kind of suprised at the backlash of this movie on the forum, I sat there and enjoyed every minute of it. And I can't wait to see another Jack Ryan movie with Ben Affleck at the helm.

About Ryans age, given the structure of the script and its "birth of Ryan" approach, I had zero problems with it. I got to thinking about this last night, there is another pretty popular spy movie series that has manipulated ages to where the lead has not aged out of a bracket for 40 years, except everyone around him has. He has a new boss, new gadget guy, etc, etc. Yet his age has remained static

-- Matt

 

[Chris Lock]

> FYI, Rush Limbaugh's spoiler is false.

I didn't hear exactly what he said, but before seeing the movie I thought what he had done that bothered some people was revealing that the bomb goes off, not the location/size of it. I was expecting most of the movie to be Ryan trying to find the bomb & stop it from going off, & if that were true, whether it does explode is a major spoiler. But since that isn't the whole point of the story...

I also was less bothered by the change of who the terrorists were than I thought I'd be, probably because their goal wasn't just to do damage with a bomb but to use it to provoke a war.

The bomb was a dud? It seemed to make quite a mess.

I thought Affleck did a good job. At least they adjusted the character to fit his age, rather than having him be the head of the CIA or the like in his 20s.

Did James Cromwell as the Prez remind anyone else of the first George Bush (who just happened to be in office when the book came out)?

 

[Larry Schneider]

Let's see...Jack Ryan was an ex-Marine officer, and a PhD in History...in his 20s? I saw the movie, and Affleck is too young and too much of a lightweight prettyboy to be credible as Ryan.

 

[Patrick Sun]

I'd say late 20's, early 30's for Jack Ryan in the movie version of SoAF. A PhD is possible given my age range for Jack.

 

[Matt Pasant]

I had my B.A. and M.A. at 23, and a Ph.D. would have only been 3 more years, thus 26. So its not out of the realm of possibility.

And according the the "Tom Clancy Information Center" he only served for 3 months due to an injury sustained in a helicopter crash.

-- Matt

 

[Mark Lee]

Just saw it today -- I'll refrain from doing an Elvis Mitchell on this thread, and stick to the questions! (Though I found it amusing to see Ben's buddy Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity trailer before SOAF -- boy, working-class boys from South Boston, sure, but international spies? Nah.... )
Did they in fact ever suggest the movie's bomb was a dud? I vaguely remember the whole premise as the book laid it out -- the East German scientist responsible for putting together the bomb was killed by his employers before he could tell them about the need to replace the deuterium in the bomb, thus leading to the (relative) dud of a detonation.
I'm now totally confused as to how SOAF fits into the whole Jack Ryan canon, tho. After the prologue 1973 Yom Kippur War sequence, we get a "29 years later" caption, implying we're in the present-day. So what's with the forever-young action on Jack and Cathy Ryan? Does this movie stand completely alone from its predecessors, placing its Jack Ryan in some parallel universe? And if it's supposed to be some kind of prequel to the others, despite the apparent present-day setting (an Episode I, of sorts....), then it certainly seems to make Jack a lot "greener" and less trusted than he oughta be in the other films, given his "prior" experience.
I thought Morgan Freeman was gonna play a younger (and much thinner! ) version of James Earl Jones' Jim Greer. Ah well....strike another blow against continuity!

 

[Ken Chan]

So this is what happened to the "Rush spoils SOAF" thread that I avoided before seeing the film. Where to begin....

As someone mentioned earlier, this restarts the Jack Ryan clock so they can have a young guy like Affleck play the role. Maybe he'll make it to POTUS in 20 years or so.

Yes, the bomb was in the cigarette machine, and not in an actual cigarette pack. Put the machine is the kind they use to vend chips and Twizzlers, the wrong kind, unless it was some product placement for Malboro. And could some joe really add a vending machine on the day of the Superbowl when the president is attending?

The commercials and trailers totally give away the fact that the bomb goes off, so not much tension there, and you know darn well that the world doesn't end, so not much tension there either. Of course, that the commercials show the bomb is (a) cheap stunt marketing and (b) a no-win for the filmmakers. With current sensibilities, they can't hide the fact that the bomb goes off; but then they blow their wad. I do agree with not showing the blast itself; we all know what one looks like on film, so showing it would be even more exploitative.

Isn't there a better way for Ryan (or anyone) to contact the president's security team than to call the DCI on his cell phone? Maybe the book does a better job there.

Would the cell phone and wireless e-mail really work in the area immediately after a blast, even if it is a dud? I didn't pick up that aspect from the film either; I just figured it was a older small bomb.

Where the hell did Neo-Nazis come from as part of the terrorist landscape?

The neo-fascists were not terrorists in the common sense. Their primary goal was to start the war, so that when the dust settles, they could be on top. (Now, much like Hitler's little mistake with fighting on two fronts, there seems to be a huge gap in the logic there: what if there's nothing left to be on top of?) Now maybe in the book (which I haven't read) the terrorism and the annihilation of the superpowers by Muslims (right?) is one big happy package, but as far as setup for the movie, I didn't have a problem with it. It doesn't really matter who started it, but just to setup the confrontation so that Jack Ryan can save the world.

I also didn't mind the change. We don't need to be reminded that there are Muslim terrorists (do we?) but they still represent a small percentage of that population. Unfortunately, that's about the only way Muslims are presented in big studio entertainment. For the overwhelming majority of non-terrorist Muslims, especially those that came to America for a better life, they don't need the grief. (Of course, how Muslims need to get their own house in order is a whole 'nother subject we can't get into.)

(I dunno how many of you are part of a group that is under- or poorly represented, but it can get annoying. I was just reading that CBS's new fall medical show, Presidio Med, is set in San Francisco, but the featured cast has no Asian doctors! WTF?)

I'm not saying never have the bad guys be Muslims, but maybe just not every frickin' time. Even if Muslim extremists are currently the most likely cause by far, they are not the only possible ones, and we should never lose sight of that. (I would say that Norwegian grandmothers are in that big clump at the low end of the risk scale, though.)

The change probably bothers people that read the book first the most. But then, since when has a movie done justice to the book? What was Clancy's opinion of the change?

//Ken

 

[Jason Seaver]

I'm now totally confused as to how SOAF fits into the whole Jack Ryan canon, tho.

It doesn't, but why care? The idea was to make a movie that would stand on its own, not be part of a series.

 

[Jason_Lund]

Saw the movie last night...

Overall I thought it was the worst of the Jack Ryan series and probably one of the weakest political/military thriller movies I've seen yet. It didn't work for me as a sequel or a stand alone movie. The soundtrack was lackluster and I really didn't feel that the music "fit" the movie very well. The screenplay was a horrible frankenstein-esque hack job of the book and the casting job didn't work for me at all.

How are they going to even make the next few books into movies with a 20-something Jack Ryan and his hottie frat-girl wife? I was alarmed by the Morgan Freeman/Ben Afflek concept before seeing the movie and my misgivings were right on the mark this time.

Bottom line - the movie is a dud as a stand-alone and doesn't make the grade as compared to the previous Clancy movies. It could have been great but I believe this is a classic case of Hollywood turning a good franchise bad in the name of mass market appeal and political correctness.