The New Jack Ryan Movie Could Get A Marginally Better Title

Jack Reacher and John Carter may have taught Paramount a lesson: don't give your new franchise starter just a generic man's name. Reports indicate that the studio has seen the light and will be retitling the latest Jack Ryan movie to the slightly better Jack Ryan: Shadow One. 

It's hard to say exactly what kept audiences away from Jack Reacher (which is actually excellent) and John Carter (which is flawed but very good), but those titles couldn't have helped. At the time we were all baffled - why would the studio give these films such crushingly generic names? John Carter got changed from A Princess of Mars because of fears of Mars in the title and the idea that 'Princess' indicated it was - ew! - a girl movie. Why the movie formerly known as One Shot (still pretty fucking generic) became Jack Reacher is anybody's guess. 

Jack Ryan was in a different place always. This isn't the start of a new franchise but rather the SECOND reboot of a long-running, if intermittent, one. It's the new film in the Tom Clancy series that previously had Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck playing the main character, and included movies like The Hunt for Red October, Sum of All Fears and Clear and Present Danger. This time Chris Pine is playing the CIA analyst who gets caught up in international intrigue in the form of an evil Russian oligarch played by Kenneth Branagh. 

Jack Ryan: Shadow One is still a garbage title, but it's miles above Jack Ryan.