This story is a couple of days old, but it’s just too important to pass up!
My bullshit detector is working overtime w/r/t Harrison Ford’s supposed interest in returning to the Jack Ryan series, but since that dreadful… thing is set to blow past $200 million in its second weekend, Paramount would be crazy to deny the AARP-eligible action star a return to his other former, faded glory – especially when he’s talking like this (via IOL):
“The Ryan films, the Tom Clancy films were, I thought, worth re-exploring again, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the book on which the last one was based. I think they made a cracking good shot at it and I think Ben Affleck is a very, very talented.”
A “very, very talented” what, Harrison? The IOL story fails to indicate whether he trailed off, mumbled “ponce” under his breath, or simply fell asleep. Eventually, his train of thought derailed into rhetorical chemical plant.
“[Jack Ryan’s] a character that I think you could revisit acknowledging the passage of time and his increasing age. It wasn’t age dependent; that character and his experiences were chockablock full of recipes for ripping good yarns, so that’s a character I wouldn’t mind revisiting. What news, Lord Bardolph?”
I don’t know what amuses me more: Ford’s claim that he bowed out of The Sum of All Fears because the book sucked (like Clear and Present Danger was any less laughable), or his lobbying for a role which which was all but guaranteed to Ryan Gosling (who probably would’ve bolted the production a week into principal photography anyway). Yeah, yeah, it’s sad to see Ford settling for franchise revivals when we know he’s capable of better, but, after a while, you’ve got to give up on these guys. That said, I hope he’s revelatory in Wayne Kramer’s Crossing Over.