I watched this over the last few weeks based on @draxen recommending it. Finished it last night on the 9/11 anniversary, which was completely unintentional but seemed appropriate. I’m not sure I’d say “superior in every way” but it’s certainly good, and I agree that anyone who liked the Jack Ryan series is very likely to like The Looming Tower also.
I liked it up until the last few episodes, which were a little too predictable, plus just for once, I’d like to have the hero save the day through smarts, and not with his amazing pistol marksmanship.
Also the whole scheme of killing the President with a radiation injected through the HVAC system is particularly silly in this scenario. The president and everybody were in quarantine for Ebola. The entire point of the system is to prevent air in the isolation room from getting released outside. You aren’t going to use the regular hospital HVAC to circulate air in the isolation room since it defeats the whole point of the quarantine.
I agree and that’s a good plothole. I’ve been thinking that the bigger problem in my mind is that they just have too much going on to focus on what would make the show better: the characters, intelligence gathering, relationships.
A terrorist mastermind planning and implementing a gas attack killing hundreds in a church in Paris, isn’t enough. They also needed another global plot to spread a non-vaccine strain of Ebola into the US, implemented with perfect timing and predicting the path of the virus carriers so that it could reach the President just as they realize they’re sick. Oh wait, that’s still not enough, we need a radioactive dirty bomb targetting a hospital where the President is recovering, of course they’ll have hospital blueprints, access keys, an ambulance, and uniforms ready to go. Let’s add some gunfights, and tie our hero to every global development in the show from the rescue of the wife and kids in Turkey to the killing of the brother at a French ski resort and the chase through the hospital at the end. The sets that do work, like the deal with the Turkish brothel owner, spend time on the relationships and process and details on getting from A to B. But then the bad guy shows up with all the hospital gear and a dirty bomb with 20 seconds of explanation. It’s just too much “stuff”.
My favorite scene in the show was the helicopter pickup of Jack from the party. I’m pretty sure they got the actual Coast Guard involved, it was just 20 seconds of footage of the helicopter but it felt like the most authentic part of the show.
Edit? Is my spoiler tag working? I never use the feature but realized I should here.
Maybe it’s because I finished the Directv show Condor a few days before this, but I found Jack Ryan to be somewhat flat, and formulaic. Condor had a nearly identical plot, but it was so much more tense, and well written, although it had it’s fair share of plot holes. I did like the Ryan picked up in the last few episodes, and kudos to Amazon for sticking with shorter series. Less filler = tighter shows.
No.
Just use the settings wheel above in the Reply box to blur your spoiler quickly and easily.
You actually did it correctly. But for some reason when you enter for a new paragraph and try to blur the whole thing, it fails. So you have to blur each paragraph separately.
-xtien
Got it, thanks.
For some reason, my multi-line spoiler tags only work if I put the start and end tags on their own line.
[spoiler]Uh oh
Terrible![/spoiler]
But when you put the tags on their own lines:
Oh all good
Multiline!
Finally finished this last night, and it was a really fun ride, plot holes and all. I thought the chemistry between Jack and Cathy could’ve been better, but I liked how she seemed age appropriate for what she’s accomplished in her career rather than some 20-some model they typically cast.
I didn’t understand the whole subplot with the drone pilot though. What was the whole point of that? Filler?
In a Clancy novel, Jack would have someone been stranded in Turkey or Syria and in need of a pilot when they stumble upon drone-pilot-with-a-guilty-conscience. I was sure it was leading up to something like that, but, nope.
You also have a bunch of different threads in a Clancy novel. Sometimes they seem unrelated and then come together. In his later books this started to get silly, almost like a parody of his own writing. I think this style of his reached its zenith with Red Storm Rising (which is not a part of the Jack Ryan universe I don’t think) and then started to go downhill. I think Debt of Honor was where it got really goofy, but I don’t recall as it’s been so many years.
-xtien
I made it half way through this but then bailed. There’s not a lot I like about it, other than Wendell Pierce, who is as great as always.
Not a fan of John Krasinski in the role (not because of association with any other role, or because of any affinity for any other Ryan portrayal, as I haven’t read the books and only seen a few of the movies) - but because he seems too goofy for the part, like a buffed up Martin Freeman who is as boring as Sam Worthington.
The fine line the show is trying to draw between humanizing villains (by imagining an Israeli carpet-bombing scene, as if that’s more realistic and less offensive) and heavy-handed portrayals to show “balance” just feel contrived and stifle the story-telling. The action scenes are far beyond the budget expected of a TV show (not surprising for Amazon though) but they’re not choreographed or filmed in particularly interesting ways - they seem like generic outtakes from Bay movie military scenes.
The female lead is terrible, doesn’t look the part and seems so misplaced and miscast that it’s hard to rationalize her inclusion other than nepotism.
All that and it suffers from 24-style magical plot armor/enhancements that bestow absurdly capable abilities upon the villains when necessary to advance preposterous scenarios, while making the competing intelligence/military alternate between being incredibly proficient/ omniscient and keystone cop incompetent.
Mainly it’s just boring. Action scenes don’t invest and deliver the way they should, the romance is awkwardly pigeon-holed in between two actors with no chemistry, contrived acts/speeches and plot, Bond villain capabilities and absurdly grandiose scheming, and a bland lead. No need to go continue with 2nd half of season.
Watching The Looming Tower. Weird to see the evil dude in Jack Ryan in it, as well as Jennifer Ehle of P&P fame, especially given her role in Zero Dark Thirty. Love their acting uniformly, though.
I hadn’t thought of it like that but I can see it now.
I found it watchable enough to finish the season, but I’m far from being over the moon as some here are.
Part of it is down to the source material - which they could have dialed back a notch for the series though, but didn’t. Jack is such an Übermensch, the “smartest guy he knows” (Cathy’s father), who also is irresistible (Cathy is instantly smitten, the French woman obviously has to make a pass at him, too), and who also has to be at the center of everything going on in the plot. It feels like James Bond, but weirder, because the character and the world of James Bond is designed to be more over-the-top. Something like the Looming Tower has a similar approach, but employs the full cast for its side plots. Here, 99 percent of the time, it’s always Jack to have the central epiphany, it’s always Jack who is the only one to be around to chase a villain. I found it boring because you knew it always be Jack to ultimately resolve every plot thread, be it finding Suliman’s wife in the refugee camp, him being the one to hunt down and kill Suliman. I guess I’m able to tolerate it as part of something that’s only as long as a movie, but not so much when it’s in a longer, serialized form. I also thought that every part of the plot was mostly quite predictable. Cathy being specialized on potentially deadly viruses and bacteria. Gee, wonder if that’ll be a thing later on…
Umm, this must have had crazy good numbers for Amazon.
Renewed for season 3 now.
Weird, thought I’d missed the release of season 2.
They have to renew it for season 4 before we get to see season 2. :)
First thought was I thought season 1 hunted they were doing Russia, but instead they seem to be veering toward Clear and Present Danger and Narcos territory.
The I see Russia.
Hmmm
The ambush scene certainly looks straight out of Clear and Present Danger. No mention of drugs so possibly different motivation for being down there, but definitely agree with @Woolen_Horde on the overall look of the thing.