Whilst browsing around aimlessly, I stumbled upon a news piece on Movieweb bringing up the existence of a film adaptation of Tom Clancy's novel Rainbow Six and the possible casting of Ryan Reynolds as John Clark. As this is very early in the pre-production process (they don't even have a script yet), this shouldn't be cause for concern. And yet, I foresee disaster on the wind.
Allow me to lay out my concerns. First, I like a lot of the work that Ryan Reynolds does. I like that he's managed to go from goofy comedies like National Lampoon's Van Wilder to rom-coms to thrillers and all the way into action movies. Quite frankly, he owns the role of Deadpool in much the same way that Adam West owned Batman. It's beyond definitive and well into the realm of iconic. Second, I like a lot of Tom Clancy's novels (the ones written by Clancy, not the ones that have his name plastered over some other writer). Towards the end of his life, some of his stuff was pretty hit-or-miss, but for me, Rainbow Six was probably his magnum opus. It paid a great deal of attention not only to the technical and mechanical aspects of counter-terrorist operations, but also to the strategies and tactics involved, as well as the logistics and political dimensions. Strange as it may sound, the concept behind RAINBOW seemed like something that could have worked in the real world. Probably not as smoothly as it did in the book, but well enough.
With all that in mind, there is a sense of dread when I contemplate the idea of a Rainbow Six movie with Ryan Reynolds as John Clark. For one thing, Reynolds isn't old enough. If they were doing the film that was reasonably faithful to the book, they'd be better casting guys like Sam Elliott or Jeff Bridges in the role, or even let Willem Dafoe reprise the role (he played Clark in Clear and Present Danger). The RAINBOW team is supposed to be Clark's "sunset post," someplace he can do something good and still be sort of in the field without all the pesky gunplay or delicate infiltration/exfiltration work. While I might buy Ryan Reynolds in a period piece for Without Remorse, the "origin story" novel for Clark, I can't see him doing Rainbow Six as John Clark without basically eliminating one of the major themes of the book and a few of the smaller ones as well.
A second problem is that the writers would need to retcon around our own heavily bungled efforts with "The War on Terror." Counter-terrorist units may undertake anti-terrorist activities, but by and large, they're supposed to be rapid reaction forces, and that was certainly the character of Team RAINBOW. Our own efforts in the real world muddled the lines between counter-terrorist and anti-terrorist activity, and heaped a bunch of basic military efforts on top of the mud to make things worse. While it's entirely possible that they might be able to hand wave it away as "oh, we learned from our mistakes," I don't think that's going to cut much ice with audiences.
The third major obstacle is the state of the current political climate. Too many of the parties in the book who were operating in a relatively reasonable fashion would have to overcome the public image of their real life counterparts in a way to allow audiences to suspend disbelief. The CIA's reputation has taken a massive hit, second only to the NSA for being in the doghouse with the American public. The current head of state for Russia is ex-KGB and not nearly as stable as his fictional counterpart. NATO is almost on the brink of crisis, faced with a renewed aggressive posture from Russia on one side and a feckless incompetent sitting on the western side of the Atlantic on the other. Even the novelty of the book's primary antagonist not being from the Middle East and not wearing the trappings of Islamic fundamentalism run amok would undoubtedly be undermined by what would be perceived as "climate change demonization" or "anti-corporate scare tactics," or both.
As much as it pains me to say, Rainbow Six is probably not a movie that should be made. The book was good. The game was good. And I'll always carry my own little fantasy film script in my head. But this is just not a good idea. In the current environment, Hollywood might have better luck adapting The Division.
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