Blog

After four seasons of action, the characters of “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” return for a tie-in movie directed by Andrew Bernstein, “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War” on Prime Video.

The film takes place after the series finale, where the heroic Jack Ryan, played by John Kransinski, is thrown back into the world of espionage after leaving the CIA. The film follows Ryan as he teams up with CIA colleague Mike November (Michael Kelly), CIA boss James Greer (Wendell Pierce) and stranger Emma Marlow (Sienna Miller) to stop a rabid and ruthless black ops unit with eyes and ears everywhere.

The stakes are high in this fast-paced movie. Filled with twists, turns and explosions, the film’s elevated budget and complex action sequences make it obvious there was an objective to make this film feel larger than life. 

Having directed multiple episodes of the television series, Bernstein (“Ozark,” “The Outsider”) told The Phoenix in a roundtable interview the movie had to feel different.

“I didn’t want to repeat what I had done before,” Bernstein said. “The action had to be bigger, the stakes the characters were living through had to feel bigger, so that in an hour and 40 minutes it felt like a race as opposed to long, drawn-out episodes of storytelling.”

The movie follows an international mission in London and Dubai. Rather than using visual effects, Bernstein and the crew opted to shoot on site, capturing elaborate action sequences in real time.

“It’s one of the hallmarks of the movie and franchise,” Bernstein said. “We go to those places and try to take advantage of what they offer and drop the audience right into them. It’s all movie magic, but not visual effects movie magic.”

Kransinski (“The Office,” “A Quiet Place”) is one of many actors to portray CIA analyst Jack Ryan, following the likes of Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck and Chris Pine. His performance got him a Screen Actors Guild Awards nomination for Outstanding Male Actor in a Drama Series in 2019. 

However, Kransinski’s contributions extend off the screen as well with the actor serving as producer and co-writer of the film.

“[Kransinski] has lived in Jack Ryan’s shoes longer than all of us,” Bernstein said. “As a director, it’s great to have somebody who is so steeped in that history but also deeply understands the ins and outs of the filmmaking process. And [with] a movie of this size, it’s always great to have a sounding board with somebody who knows all that stuff.”

The film’s size sparked discussions between collaborators about raising the personal stakes for these characters and how exactly to go about it.

“Anytime we can put our characters in conflict in an interesting way, it makes for great drama and hopefully a better movie,” Bernstein said, adding that it “wasn’t easy” to execute certain plot points like killing off characters.

However, Bernstein said the decision had to be made in order to execute the vision he and collaborators had for other characters in terms of their growth and asking themselves new questions.

The thrilling film leaves room for the Tom Clancy series to continue, whether it be in the form of new seasons or more films.

“As the world changes, Jack Ryan will keep changing,” Bernstein said. “There’s no loss for story. I’d love to see us make more of these. I’d love to see more of who Jack becomes in this crazy world we live in, and go from there and keep entertaining folks.”

“Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War” is available to stream now on Prime Video.