My pick when the movie was announced was Jared Padalecki of “Supernatural.” He’s 6’4" and big but not muscle-bound/cut.
Johnson looks too friendly no matter what while Bautista looks like he’s thinking of killing someone when he smiles.
Like comic book heroes & cartoon characters, detectives don’t age. I read that Raymond Chandler said that Philip Marlowe was perpetually 39. John D. McDonald said the same thing about Travis McGee. (Also Jack Benny, but I digress.)
I need an emoji to indicate that this posting is “tongue in cheek.”
Yeah but there are some exceptions. IIRC, Matt Scudder progressed through various stages of life and relationships, which had to cover a number of years. I presume the books had him aging in the process.
Right now I’m reading the 5th or 6th Bosch novel. He retired at the end of the last book and I think he starts off commenting that he is now in his 50s.
And even the Reacher stories alternate between when he was younger back in the Army, and later on.
JAM noted that McGee aged at about 2/3 of the speed of the rest of us. The character aged during the series: at one point he takes up tai chi to try to stay limber. In the last book, he meets the adult daughter he never knew he had, there and in earlier books, his friend Meyer has put together some retirement/trust for him as McGee knows he won’t be able to keep on as he started
The Childs can fudge Reacher’s age in several ways, one being not mentioning the actual year the action takes place. There are no rules, really.
In the popular Prey series by John Sandford, the main character, Lucas Davenport, has aged 1 year for every two the 33-year series has existed. It really hasn’t mattered at all.
Nero Wolfe and Archie aged a bit over the decades, but not much. Maybe a decade over 40 years.
Killing Floor was my favorite Reacher book. The series is okay better than the TC movie by 100%!
Overall, I though the series was decent, if not spectacular (though certainly 1 million times more faithful to the books than the Cruise movies). One of my main gripes is indeed what iiandyiiii mentions here, that Reacher had much more trouble in some of his fights than he should have. In the books, Child often sets Reacher up against multiple antagonists to make it interesting, like the prison fight in the show, which I thought was largely well done. But one-on-one, there’s no way Reacher should have trouble with the Venezualan guy in NY or, even worse, the nephew in GA. Those were obviously engineered to be showpiece moments and they fell flat for me. There’s no way Reacher runs away from one guy as he did in the NY fight, which was clearly a choice solely to get him onto the fire escape, so he could do the hanging thing. And don’t get me started on the scrawny nephew, who Reacher could render unconscious with one head butt. I understand the dilemma that the writers/directors are in - one headbutt does not a lot of drama make - but I wish they had been more creative about how to work around that problem and stay true to Reacher’s dominance in a fight.
I’ll also agree with MaxTheVool that the last episodes were disappointing. The ludicrous exposition scene where the bad guys lay it all out was so trope-y I almost fell asleep. And to let Reacher go with just Hubble at that point, as Max says, was really dumb. He’s also 100% right about the warehouse fight.
I’ll also add that, unlike some others here, I thought Alan Ritchson was mediocre, acting-wise. Pretty cardboard and uncompelling, IMO. Now, again, he’s got a difficult job in that the Reacher character is pretty stoic, and stoic is difficult to pull off in an engaging way. Nevertheless, I found him too wooden to capture my attention much. He absolutely looks the part, and he definitely hit on the cocky insouciance, but there was definitely an edge missing for me. Some of the other actors, particularly the women, were excellent, though.
All told, a reasonably faithful adaptation with potential to improve! I’ll watch Season 2 when it comes.
I watched the whole thing the other day. It was good.
It was rather frustrating it took them so long to figure out the paper thing. Seemed obvious to me immediately, but I suppose that was a lot more clever in 1997.
it was a Castle plot as well.
On The Good Girls, they took $1 bills, removed the ink, ground up the blank paper, then created fresh paper. I thought the grinding was unnecessary.
Haven’t read the books, i have no familiarity with the character. Biinged it over a couple days. I have one question: is Reacher supposed to be on the autism spectrum? Definitely got that vibe.
The character was created before “the spectrum” was much discussed. I don’t recall any mention. He definitely is wired differently than many/most others.
I haven’t read the books but based on show, I’d say not. He is very good at reading people, which people “on the spectrum” are not.
I read the character very differently. I believe he CAN read people very well which is what allows him to solve so many crimes. He has a grand ability to find the motivations of almost everyone, cops, criminals, prosecutors, victims, and everyone else. He can extrapolate the likely behavior because he understands human nature so well so he often anticipates the next moves of others.
What you are seeing, in my opinion, is the fact that he makes HIS decisions based upon a higher level of cognition and a much lower level of panic (especially in violent situations). It is not that he doesn’t get the other person-- it is that he doesn’t give a shit about the decisions or feelings of others because they are almost automatons who simply react to situations whereas he is a superior being who acts – and doesn’t have to simply react. He also has lots of training which people do not understand. They think training to fight is almost entirely physical conditioning but it is not! Knowing how and where to strike, how to block blows and when not to bother to block is far more important. How to feign an attack to get someone to focus precisely where the attack is not being aimed. How to drop a guard to entice an opponent into attacking in a manner that allows a great counter attack. (*)
That is why for example he tells opponents they are going to hesitate - - - and then they do and he doesn’t because - - - he is Reacher. If you don’t realize he reads others better than most you are missing a good portion of who he is. Don’t mistake apathy for ignorance; at least in the books (which I have not read in forever) he is several steps ahead of the pack. The Tom Cruise version got this detail right in my view.
(*) Another example of this is how anyone who ever held a hammer thinks they are a carpenter. As a professional carpenter for decades I was constantly exposed to people who thought they were “good” at building things. Very few of them were, driving nails is the least important part of being a carpenter it turns out.
Yes, what he said.
In the books, he is very adept with numbers, to the point that it suggests Aspergers or something similar. He’s kind of obsessed with prime numbers. He does massively complex math calculations in his head to kill time. It’s never outright stated, but my impression was that he was abnormally gifted at math in a way that suggests something unusual.
It is stated flat-out that he is unusual. Unusually aggressive. (And fearless—his response to a threat is to fight.)
In Bad Luck and Trouble (which I happen to be reading,) Reacher is described as having a ‘junior-idiot-savant facility with arithmetic.’
He’s also got that weird thing where he can go to sleep and will himself to wake at any specific desired time. Like I said, definitely not wired the same as most of us.