The Best & Worst Jack Ryan Adaptations, According To IMDb

Since 1990’s “The Hunt for Red October,” Tom Clancy has been a frequent pick for adaptation on film and television. The late author’s signature brand of technical espionage and cat-and-mouse geopolitics lent itself naturally to the big screen, and the success of “Red October” spawned a whole Clancy franchise.

As is often the case, though, the quality of these adaptations has wavered over the years, with some absolute highs and equally notable lows. This is especially true of the movies and series centering Jack Ryan, Clancy’s frequent protagonist. The vast majority of Clancy screen adaptations have involved Jack Ryan, with five different actors playing him in major projects since Alec Baldwin first donned the CIA analyst’s mantle in 1990. But how do these different versions stack up against each other? And which is definitively the best?

To answer those questions, we go to the fans. Every Jack Ryan series and movie to this point has over 100,000 user ratings on IMDb, giving us a pretty clear idea of how audiences feel about each version. “The Hunt for Red October” is near the top, as you might expect, but the number one spot actually goes to the only Jack Ryan TV show, rather than one of the movies. At the time of this writing, “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” — the Prime Video series starring John Krasinski as the eponymous character — holds an 8.0 across 182,000 user ratings, granting it the gold medal. Given the positive reception to the show and its impressive production design, that’s not too surprising. But how do the movies stack up?

Right below “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” on the IMDb rankings is “The Hunt for Red October,” the film that started it all. Released in theaters six years after Clancy’s original 1984 novel was published, the film quickly eclipsed the book in terms of widespread cultural recognition, thanks in large part to Sean Connery’s outsized performance as Russian submarine captain Marko Ramius. The film holds a 7.5 score on IMDb across 220,000 ratings, while its Metacritic score — composed entirely of critical reviews — is much lower at 58/100.

Following “Red October” on the IMDb rankings are the two Harrison Ford Jack Ryan movies, which directly followed Baldwin’s one-and-done turn as the character. 1994’s “Clear and Present Danger” holds a 6.9 score across 111,000 ratings, just barely edging out its 1992 predecessor, “Patriot Games,” which holds a 6.8.

These three also have the highest Metacritic scores of all the Jack Ryan films, but the order is a bit different. “Clear and Present Danger” has the highest score there with a 72, “Patriot Games” is second with a 64, and “Hunt for Red October” drops from first to third with its 58. Clearly, opinions on these films aren’t monolithic, but most viewers would agree that they all outshine the movies that came later.

After Harrison Ford’s two-film stint as Jack Ryan, the franchise tried to keep things going in the 21st century with a new, younger star in the role. The part ultimately went to Ben Affleck, who was a major A-lister in Hollywood in 2002 when “The Sum of All Fears” premiered. The studio paired Affleck with Morgan Freeman for a pretty big-name duo helming the marquee, but the film didn’t achieve the same level of acclaim as its predecessors.

The movie’s IMDb user rating right now sits at a 6.5 — not that much worse than the 6.8 of “Patriot Games.” However, the film also has a much lower Metacritic score at 45 and some Rotten Tomatoes numbers to match — a 59% approval rating from the critics and a 49% approval rating from regular moviegoers. Despite critiques, the film did well at the box office, grossing nearly $200 million worldwide on a budget of just $68 million. Even still, a sequel with Affleck never came about, and it was more than a decade before anyone would try to make another Jack Ryan movie.

That successor finally arrived in 2014, this time with Chris Pine in the leading role. “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” took a different approach by creating a new story instead of adapting an existing Tom Clancy novel. The result? The lowest IMDb score in the franchise with a 6.2. Given the reactions to the last two Jack Ryan movies, perhaps Amazon was wise to greenlight a TV series instead.