Yeah, I promised I would not eat kimchi until the “Adventure” continued…I missed pickled cabbage.
Just bumping this back up to note that the film still hasn’t opened in Japan or China, but has already more than tripled its budget. I can easily rattle off more than a dozen films that recently fell short of that feat and of course got sequels – not counting how Cruise himself failed to accomplish it with MISSION IMPOSSIBLE III, just like he didn’t swing it with half-a-dozen of his other pictures that didn’t punch this far above their weight.
I don’t know how much higher the “upcoming Asian markets” will lift it, but it’s already a better return on investment than a ton of the stuff out there.
Saw the film expecting it to be a terrible yet hilariously awesome “action” “thriller” where Tom Cruise plays an unprecendentedly Mary-Sue-tastic kung-fu detective who defeats Werner Herzog in a battle of not-quite-wits and much meaningless shooting. Was not disappointed.
Sorry there won’t be a second one, but I can’t say I’m surprised. People who expected this to be any good…did you see the trailer? If so, what precisely were you smoking at the time? I’d like some, if you please.
I was turned off by the character’s stupid name. It’s like they read the instructions on how to create a hero name, but because their first language wasn’t English they completely missed the mark.
You may as well name someone “Blade Sharpener” or “Spike Haircut.”
They are going to reboot it with the guy from “Cash Cab.”
Bumping to say: since the final numbers seem to be in, it’s now apparently a $200 million film (BOX OFFICE MOJO has it at $216,568,266), which is well past 3.5x the paltry $60 million budget.
By contrast, Valkyrie did $200 million on a $75 million budget, so this is a step up for Cruise; Vanilla Sky did $203 million on a $63 million dollar budget, which (a) missed it closer, but (b) still ain’t as good as Jack Reacher; see also Tropic Thunder, even; and, sure, Knight and Day made an impressive $261 million, but it needed a $117 million budget to manage it; you’d be waaaay better off bankrolling a pair of cheap Jack Reacher movies, if they bring in more than $200 million apiece.
So the return on investment is far beyond the usual Does-This-Justify-A-Sequel mark, it preserves Cruise’s two-hundred-million-dollar-man credentials, and you can slap one together quickly in a regular city without a huge special-effects budget – or even vintage clothes and old-timey airplanes; you just film Tom Cruise brawling with a few stuntmen, throw in a sexy blonde or two, hire someone like Robert Duvall to deliver a couple of good lines, and the money prints itself.
I was one of the skeptics, having read all of the books and thinking Cruise was totally wrong for the part, but after seeing it, I thought they did a great job, and would look forward to another one.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. As a matter of fact I STARTED reading the books because of the movie. Until then I hadn’t heard of him. Yeah yeah, he’s a big guy in the books. Tom Cruise filled his role just fine. To me it’s just not that big of a deal.
OP here - was surprised to see my thread revived.
And it looks like I might have spoken too soon - there might just perhaps be a sequel - nothing definite, but at least they are considering it.
In a world where a second Ghost Rider movie can be made, anything is possible.
I finally watched Jack Reacher and was surprised by how good it was. I thought Tom Cruise carried off the role just fine. He managed that quiet sense of menace and self-assurance that the title character calls for. I also thought the fingerless villain was great. I thought the plot was kind of stale, but hopefully if there’s a sequel, they’ll put more attention to it.
Stale plot? A damsel in distress story from the git-go, and a BADLY DONE damsel in distress theme as well, with the damsel all too freaking obvious and not all that distressed except for being in the hands of the bad guys, and the rescue depending entirely on the bad guys including the sniper bad guy, using those magic bullets that never hit the hero. Jeebus.
Whoa..this thing ended up making $218M worldwide. No surprise that Cruise is working a sequel:
The article says that Never Go Back is the book they’re going to do next. Bad choice, IMO.
Child is a much better action writer than a mystery writer, but some of the Reacher books stress brains over brawn, which is the way you want to go if Tom Cruise is the star. Never Go Back is not one of them.
[spoiler]I shit you not, in that book he fights two guys at once with both hands behind his back. He’s not tied up-- he just offers to fight them that way. Of course he wins easily.
But as far as brains, not so much. He spends much of the book puzzling over what illegal activity an Afghan criminal could be up to. He only knows two things about him: he’s an entrepeneur, and his family grows opium poppies on their farm. He finally figures it out.[/spoiler]
Brad Pitt would be even more wrong for the role. He’s a smirker and a pretty boy, neither of which works for the Reacher character.
I don’t get all of the complaints about Tom Cruise for this role. If you want to see a movie not worth watching, then film some of the Jack Reacher stunts and story lines in the books, unedited. Like Tony Sinclair mentioned above there is just some silly shit going on in the stories. The least of my worries is that Tom Cruise is too physically small. However I think Never Go Back is a pretty good choice for the next book. It’s a good way to spin a tale about him being in the military; which was only discussed in one conversation in the first movie. If a movie gets maid, I’ll see it in theaters.
I’ve been working my way through the Reacher books (I’m up to The Affair). My opinion on the movie: Cruise was okay, but he wasn’t Jack Reacher. I mean, in the original book the movie’s based on, One Shot, Reacher bear-hugs a guy to death, just flat-out crushing him. Can anyone imagine Tom Cruise doing that?
Wonder which book they’ll base a sequel on. Gone Tomorrow would be okay, nice little New York backdrop, and not much “Reacher the giant” stuff to write around for Cruise, but the plot most likely wouldn’t make a lot of sense on a screen. But, I bet we get something like Nothing To Lose (the one about the towns of Hope and Despair? You know, the Reacher book that didn’t make sense and really sucked?).