Clancy's CIA guy Ryan gets makeover

LOS ANGELES -- He's got no web-shooters and no license to kill. He needs a chopper to fly and steers a desk, not an Aston Martin. He never wears a cape, never hides behind a mask.

Yet paper-pusher Jack Ryan has become a durable screen hero, protecting the world with the same devotion -- if not the flair and fashion sense -- of James Bond, Spider-Man, Batman and other larger-than-life superheroes.

The central figure in Tom Clancy's enormously popular political and espionage thrillers, Ryan was first brought to the screen by Alec Baldwin in "The Hunt for Red October" in 1990, then by Harrison Ford in 1992's "Patriot Games" and 1994's "Clear and Present Danger," and now by Ben Affleck in "The Sum of All Fears."

An ex-Marine who's more a scholar than a soldier, CIA analyst Ryan is the academic who writes the reports that the real operatives act on. He's an ordinary man thrust into extraordinary circumstances, foiling Irish terrorists in "Patriot Games" or helping a Russian submarine commander defect in "Red October."

At a key moment in the new film, when Ryan is about to meet the president and other top leaders, he finds himself stuck in casual clothes and has to commandeer a suit coat and tie.

"James Bond would never be caught dead in the wrong clothes," Affleck said. "Ryan's someone more grounded in reality. He's a more flawed and vulnerable guy."

'That's not bad stuff'

Mace Neufeld, who's produced all four Jack Ryan films, said the character's continuing appeal is that he could be the guy next door and that he's a man of utter principle and honor.

In one of the Ryan films, his CIA nemesis "refers to him as a Boy Scout, not in a good way but deprecatingly," Neufeld said. "In many ways, I think that's one of the appeals of Jack Ryan. I was a Boy Scout a long time ago. The oath was on my honor, do my best, do my duty to God and country. That's not bad stuff, and it's what Ryan is all about.

"He's incorruptible, which I think makes him someone audiences want to identify with. He's a good guy in a tough and sometimes very bad world."

Neufeld and director Phil Alden Robinson said they already had a rough cut of the film late last summer and did not make changes in light of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. They began screening the movie for test audiences last fall and found viewers accepting of the film's terrorism sequences.

"Audiences are so much smarter than they're given credit for," Robinson said.

Other Ryan books such as "The Cardinal of the Kremlin," "Debt of Honor" and "Red Rabbit," due out this summer, may give the character a long life in Hollywood.

"There'll be a Jack Ryan franchise as long as the movies are successful," Affleck said. "I hope I'm not the guy who screws up the whole thing."