Reacher: X Differences Between The Show & The Movies
With an approval rating of 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, the first season of the Amazon Prime crime thriller, Reacher, can be considered one of the best debut seasons of a TV show. Based on the novels by Lee Child, the series sees the drifter Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) attempt to avenge his brother's death and uncover a major conspiracy in a small town.
Previously, A-lister Tom Cruise had also portrayed the character in two movies. Regrettably, the Cruise projects weren't so well received by critics. While the show has some major, similarities to the movies, including the fact that Reacher is a former Army Military Police officer, it's unique too.
In the Amazon series, Jack Reacher stops by the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia as he is drifting and while there, he manages to uncover a major conspiracy. In the movies, similar events occur in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Margrave isn't one of the cool fictional TV towns we'd love to move to but it sure is one that we'd love to see more of. The choice to use a fictional town is a wise one as it allows the showrunner and writers to depict it as a hellhole without the events coincidentally resembling anything that might be happening in real-life. As a result, fans get to see a town where everyone from the Mayor to the members of the elite class is reprobate and soulless. As a result, Reacher gets to engage in more heroic actions.
Alan Ritchson's Reacher is a tall, hulking figure who is more book-accurate since the character Lee Child wrote was described as being 6'5. The movie version of the character has a smaller physique as Tom Cruise is 5'7.
Cruise's Reacher could be considered one of the worst cast movie roles but the character is as good a fighter as Ritchson's Reacher. Nonetheless, the fans of the books will appreciate the TV version more since author Lee Child repeatedly suggests that it's Reacher's size that gives him an advantage during fights. Because of his small stature, Cruise's Reacher isn't as intimidating. Officers as a station are even seen making fun of him when he gets locked up.
At the end of the show's first episode, Jack Reacher discovers that the victim of the murder is his brother, Pete Jobling. In the movie, 5 people are assassinated at once. One of them is the owner of the construction site while the rest are innocent people.
Making Reacher's brother the victim lays the foundation for more action since with the discovery, comes the guarantee that the former army policeman will go on a revenge mission. And he does just that, blessing viewers with amazing fight scenes in the process. The movies have great fight scenes too but Tom Cruise's Reacher's ass-kicking ways don't always feel justified.
After Reacher is taken into custody in the Amazon Prime series, he falls for Officer Roscoe and they go on to have sex. Roscoe also appears in the books but she is non-existent in the movies.
Whether the inclusion of the romance storyline is a good thing is a matter of perspective. Some will appreciate the movie version of Reacher, who focuses on breaking the bones of wrongdoers while others will appreciate Reacher's romance storyline with Roscoe, branding it a welcome break from all the fighting.
The officer in charge of the investigation in the series is Oscar Finlay, an overqualified captain who transferred from Boston after his wife died. On the big screen, the officer in charge is Calvin Emerson.
Finlay is much more likable because he chooses to work together with Reacher instead of labeling him an outsider who should allow the local police to do their job. Emerson, on the other hand, is revealed to be corrupt, with most of his decisions being in support of the villain. Some of Emerson's mannerisms resemble those of Finlay's friend, the FBI's agent Picard, who is secretly corrupt too.
On the show, Jack Reacher and the banker Paul Hubble are the first people to be arrested for the crime. In the movies, it's the former army sniper James Barr that gets singled out as the main suspect and arrested.
Both arrests brilliantly create the path for Reacher to be the protagonist. It's while in custody that Reacher gets to ally with Finlay and Roscoe, enabling him to go after the baddies. Barr's arrest in the movie is also what influences Reacher to stop by the town in the movie and figure out what happened
The conspiracy in the series revolves around the tycoon Kliner Sr. who makes counterfeit money by bleaching $1 bills and reprinting them as $100 bills. In the movies, the conspiracy is all about former Soviet prisoner, Zec Chelovek, who is eager to get rid of a competitor in the construction industry.
Killing a business rival to have a monopoly feels like too basic a plot. It's, therefore, no surprise that the first Jack Reacher movie has mixed reviews. The series, on the other hand, has received incredible reviews, thanks to its complex plot. It undoubtedly qualifies as one of the best conspiracy TV shows. Even better is that the conspiracy spills out of Georgia and goes all the way to Venezuela.
The banker Paul Hubble is the person framed for murder in the series while in the movies, Major Susan Turner is the unfortunate innocent party. Both characters find themselves in prison together with Reacher, where the protagonist ends up neutralizing assassins sent to kill him.
While most of the plot of the first season resembles that of the first movie, the prison assassination attempt scene is borrowed from the second movie. Nonetheless, Hubble and Turner have very different personalities. Turner is a curious and courageous soldier while Hubble is a paranoid accountant who is easily threatened and has to rely on Reache for protection.
On the show, Reacher confesses to Roscoe that while stationed in Iraq, he murdered 3 civilian men that were sexually assaulting young boys. In the movie, it's Barr who is said to have gone on a killing spree. His crimes were forgotten because the US government wanted the victims dead anyway.
Barr is erased from the series, with all his important arcs dumped on Reacher. Through the confession, Reacher not only paints himself as a badass but also as a man of integrity who won't just sit and watch as people suffer. Telling Roscoe about his history also helps him bond more with her.
While all the killings happen at once in the movies, several victims are murdered on different days in the series. The killings on the small screen are also conducted by a South American hit squad.
Since they are spread out over several episodes, the killings on the show make viewers more invested. The squad that conducts the job also wears Ku Klux Klan-ish outfits, creating an eerie feeling. In the movie, only one person is the intended target, with the other 4 victims being used as a way to suggest that it wasn't about the construction company owner only.