We finished last night, and these are all valid complaints. When it ended my wife and I looked at each other and said “eh”. We’d watch another season, but I would really like the writing to get better.
Agree. Am hoping this was an effort to lure Reacher fans to the new franchise by getting the details more correct and that in the future they can refine things. Would like to see Reacher quote Proudhon, but doubt that will happen!
I presume the producers wanted the fight scenes to have some drama, and thus Reacher couldn’t be as unstoppable as he is in the books. If so, they might not be getting (or portraying) what makes Reacher different as a character from so many other action/thriller protagonists – really that he’s not meant to be some average Joe hero, or anything at all close to that, but that he’s more like a force of nature or superhero. The joy of Reacher (or at least one of the joys of Reacher) is that he never feels fear, and pretty much never even has a reason to feel fear. And I think it’s fun for Reacher fans to know this and smirk at the hubris and arrogance of the bad guys who don’t realize what they’re up against.
Silly fun, but still fun, I think. The quote from Neagley (something like it, anyway) best sums it up –
(warehouse on fire)
“Don’t worry, Reacher’s fine.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he’s Reacher.”
IMO a regular “problem” with this sort of mystery/thriller is the first 9/10 of the book are really interesting, w/ good character development, interesting plot twists. Then the final 20-30 pages is some over the top shootout. Happens al the time.
What I also like about this series is, you can tend to think of Reacher as a “hero”. But you have to square that with the fact that he’s a flat out killer.
At some point it was established that besides being a military investigator, Reacher did off-the-books wet work for the Army and is indeed a flat-out killer in every sense of the word. I am not sure how much of that was conceived just for Killing Floor, though.
No - in the books he did plenty of such work - and then got alternately honored and disciplined for same. Kinda contributed to his later view towards his Army experiences. But he has no objection to the extrajudicial execution of “bad guys” - whether when he was in the military, or as a private citizen.
Perfect. I’m cracking up picturing Warburton actually portraying Sherlock Holmes.
I’ve never seen Ritchson in anything else, but it seems intentional. After all, Jack Reacher is a weirdo. He’s insensitive, asocial and (mostly) unconcerned with people’s feelings and needs. Singularly focused. And in real life, that would come off as being a bit strange. So if it’s a deliberate choice and not bad acting, it’s a good one. Also, he really does sound and even look like Puddy sometimes.
I’m enjoying it, but if there is a second series, hopefully there will be a talent infusion, especially among the writers and supporting cast.
Bit of trivia: Frances Neagley is a real person. A big mystery/thriller fiction fan, she had her name used in the Lee Child series by winning a charity auction. She must have a lot of disposable income as her name has also appeared in novels by Michael Connelly, Harlan Coben and Dennis Lehane.
I’ve read everything by Lehane and Connelly, and when the character ‘Frances Neagley’ was first introduced in a Reacher novel, I was really scratching my head. Why is that name so familiar? It makes me wonder how many other popular characters are auction winners. Neagley was an extremely minor, peripheral, one-mention character in the other novels. She really got her money’s worth with Child.
Reacher is more an anti-hero than a hero. Think of him as a slightly more realistic version of the Punisher from Marvel comics. Or Dirty Harry or Rambo.
For your point three, I mentioned that earlier also. It seems like movies/shows like this are required for that to happen at the end, no matter what. I’m sure a lot of the audience expects to see it.
This question is for people who remember the end of the book.
Summary
It’s been 20 plus years since I read this, but doesn’t Reacher pretty much kill everyone by himself at the end of the book? I’m pretty sure he killed Teale instead of Roscoe doing it. Little bit fuzzy on the rest.
Anti-hero? Reacher kills bad guys and saves good guys. Definitely hero.
He is a vigilante. When given plot immunity so they never “execute” a innocent accidentally, they tend towards good, yes.
Killing Floor was published in 1997. Some things have aged a bit.
The adaptation seems to have been pretty faithful to the original, but I haven’t read it in a while. It is set now, as opposed to 1997. That introduces some differences.
We noted that Reacher was injured in an attack on a marine base in Kandahar, not the attack on the marine barracks in Beirut. While he doesn’t carry a phone, he gets a burner pretty quickly that allows for updated means of communication - something that stands out in the early Reacher books, reading them now.
The driving thing has changed, too.
As a non-book-reader, the way it came across to me was that Reacher is insanely bad-ass, as witnessed by the serious whoopings he delivers to (for instance) a bunch of prison thugs in a bathroom. When he struggles more with some of the South American hitmen later in the series, that just felt to me like “these guys are DAMN good to actually make him sweat, shows how much money the baddies can afford to spend to hire them”; as opposed to “guess Reacher’s not so tough after all”.
(The one that doesn’t fit at all, of course, is the creepy nephew, hard to see how he could be that well-trained a killer.)
He extra-legally kills bad guys. A lot of them. That’s normally called murder. Vigilantes are classic anti-heroes.
A hero may work outside the law, but they wouldn’t rack up a kill count like Reacher has. Spider-Man is a hero. He stops bad guys and leaves them webbed up for the police so they face the justice system.
Hero. Anti-heroes engage in criminal activity for personal gain, Reacher does not. Vigilantes can be heroes, as long they kill the baddies with no civilian, collateral damage.
I’ve never heard that description. So you think Dirty Harry was a hero too? Both him and Reacher beat someone up for information. Harry outright tortured a guy. Just in the last episode of Reacher, he committed arson, knowingly spent counterfeit money, broke and entered and shot to death a bunch of third stringers who’s crime was counterfeiting. And he did it all for personal reasons. Doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy watching it, but Reacher is not a hero.
Is Robin Hood an antihero?
There will be a season 2: