The Sum Of All Publicity Photos

That man will one day be President of the United States!

It's Chris Pine riding a Ducati as Jack Ryan - Tom Clancy's CIA analyst hero/Libertarian mouthpiece - in the upcoming Jack Ryan. Put that together with the upcoming Jack Reacher and you begin to think that Paramount's creativity these days is Jack Shit.

But anyway! The picture is our first look at young Ryan, who has been played by Ben Affleck, Harrison Ford and Alec Baldwin over the years. I like the character, at least in the confines of Clancy's novels, and I'm interested in seeing what this reboot does with him. To be honest, I don't know that I could give you much insight to the character beyond his later years politics (Executive Orders, the book where Ryan becomes president, is filled with long, boring digressions into tax code bullshit*). I've read all the Jack Ryan books, but the reality is that he's pretty much just a solid, stand-up white American who loves America and hates flying. There's not a ton of other shades to the guy.

Which is cool, actually, because I think we need a couple of straight-ahead, right-leaning action heroes these days. I don't know how right-leaning this Ryan will be - the film is written by Steve Zaillian and directed by Kenneth Branagh - but I hope he's at least right-leaning enough that he's happy to kill some terrorists without giving it a second thought. 

This picture is from the actual shoot, which began today. It doesn't tell you much about the movie except that this Jack Ryan rides foreign-made bikes, which feels distinctly un-Clancy. Wasn't there a Harley available?

Jack Ryan comes out Christmas 2013. Maybe they'll come up with a new name by then.

* Except for The Ryan Doctrine, which is largely what Obama has adopted. Ryan's way of dealing with attacks on American soil and possessions is to simply kill the guy who gave the order, which very much predicts Obama's drone war.