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The Reacher casting debate split my book club in two last night
We got together at Dana's place in Portland to talk about the Jack Reacher books after the Amazon show wrapped up season two. Half the group swears Alan Ritchson is the perfect Reacher because he looks like the 6'5" slab of concrete from the books. The other half says the show misses the whole point, that Reacher's brain and his drifting lifestyle matter more than his size. I landed in the middle, but then things got heated when someone brought up the Tom Cruise movies and called them unwatchable. I had to step in and remind everyone we were supposed to be talking about how the show handles the hobo justice vibe, not just the casting. So we voted on one scene, the diner fight from the first book, and argued for 40 minutes about whether the show's version was too clean. Anyone else ever had a book club nearly implode over a casting choice, or is my group just extra dramatic?
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black.mark21d agoTop Commenter
...and honestly my book club banned me from picking anything with a casting debate after I spent a whole meeting defending the guy who played Rollo from Vikings as a potential Reacher. I get why your group split, Ritchson looks like he could fold a car door in half but the show makes him way too chatty. The books have him drifting through towns like a ghost with a library card, and the show turns him into a quippy action hero sometimes. My vote goes to the diner fight being too clean too, I reread that scene last week and in the book he's basically a blur of violence with broken glass everywhere. The show made it look like a carefully choreographed ballet which just feels wrong for a guy who fights like a wrecking ball.
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