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315. Directorpiece Theatre: How Patriot Games Ignores Its Own Rules
🕑 Added 2020-08-31 13:00:04 +0000 UTC
CIA analyst Jack Ryan has become a multi-decade obsession. It keeps being remade. Adam argues that the rules set up by Patriot Games are not feeding the political drama we have come to expect. It’s actually designed to be a family drama, something its successors fail to grasp.
Features:
Adam Ganser: https://twitter.com/therealganz
Abe Epperson: https://twitter.com/AbeTheMighty
Comments
Scriptmonkeys
Family drama or political thriller, I never cared for this movie. I simply couldn’t get past Harrison Ford responding as to why he did what he did: “Rage.” Steven Wright emoted more in his stand-up than that. While it’s not as clear in the movies, in the books Jack Ryan is something like a political thriller version of Forrest Gump. In Patriot Games he’s just enjoying the day with the family, stumbles into a terrorist attack and ends up knighted . Later, as discussed, president when a 9-11 like attack on the Capitol kills the President, Supreme Court, and most of Congress (a certain segment of the population made a mess in their pants reading that “dream scenario”). Ryan has just been made vice-president because the original VP was a rapist. Mama always said Republican is as Republican does. As for the notion that this movie or even the James Bond movies aren’t political, I’d have to disagree. As you guys noted, McTiernan didn’t do it because of the politics. Even Variety called it “anti-Irish” (admittedly, the reviewer’s last name was McBride but still). It may sound like a dusty liberal wheeze, but everything is political—I’d say this is especially true of a film that is, at least in part, a political thriller. The reasons this movie and others like it may not feel political is because the politics advocated are for the status quo and the terrorists represent agents of change. For Clancy, a conservative Republican darling, any group opposed to a US ally was pretty much a terrorist organization until they learned to work within the system. So, a bomb in a backpack in a marketplace was cowardly terrorism, but a missile launched from a jet launched from a carrier with high tech guidance systems was cool. Clancy himself was obviously an Irish-American (and he asserted it profusely in response to the clap back on this book/movie). However, one can be Irish and also be an Anglophile—which he was.
Small Beans
Yep. That's his name. John Neo.
Tim Carroll
So, apparently I was the only one who had to stop the podcast for a second when they thought that Thomas Anderson - aka Neo, was named John?
Robert Daniel Pickard
In the words of my dad “Tom Clancy seems like the kind of guy who hangs around police stations”
