In his 1984 debut novel, The Hunt For Red October, Tom Clancy introduced a character with the blunt, all-American name of Jack Ryan. The former Marine-turned-CIA analyst has since become Clancy’s best-known creation, appearing in over 20 high-stakes novels. Ryan has also had multiple on-screen lives, with Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, and Chris Pine each stepping into his shoes.

Now, the reluctant hero is back in the new Amazon Prime Video series, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. This time, he’s played by John Krasinski, who’s gone on from The Office to drama (Promised Land), action (13 Hours) and seat-gripping horror (A Quiet Place, which he also directed). Krasinski has just the right everyman quality to play Ryan, while the eight-episode format allows for more novelistic depth than a two-hour movie.

So, to set the stage for Amazon Prime Video’s Jack Ryan, we’ve prepared a comprehensive briefing on the character’s on-screen history.

Alec Baldwin, The Hunt For Red October

We first met Jack Ryan in the form of an early-thirties Alec Baldwin, complete with slicked hair and a turtleneck. (It was 1990, after all.) Hurrying to the airport for a business trip, he promises his young daughter he’ll bring home a baby brother. Jack Ryan, we quickly learn, is far from a gruff action hero. He’s a bookish, fastidious family man bestowed with the looks of ‘90s Alec Baldwin. So bookish, in fact, he can’t help schooling a flight attendant on the science of turbulence.

Ryan is revealed to be a CIA analyst who knows submarines like he knows turbulence. In a pivotal scene, he’s called on to brief the Joint Chiefs of Staff about Red October, a Russian sub gone rogue. (Its wily captain, Marko Ramius, is played by the definitely-not-Russian Sean Connery.) Ryan freezes in the hall outside the briefing, his face blank with stage fright. So begins our guy’s journey from pencil pusher to unexpected protagonist.

Baldwin – who had a very busy decade following The Hunt For Red October – is convincingly vulnerable in the role, while never quite shedding his leading man charm.

Then, just two years later, there was a new Jack Ryan at the movies…

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Harrison Ford, Patriot Games And Clear And Present Danger

The Hunt For Red October‘s sequel, Patriot Games, saw Harrison Ford take over from Baldwin. (It’s complicated.) While the movies were only two years apart, Ford’s age – he’s 16 years older than Baldwin – makes for a different Jack Ryan experience.

The Ryan we meet in Patriot Games is now retired from the CIA and on vacation with his family in London. After intervening in a terrorist attack (when has a vacation ever gone well in a thriller?), he’s unwillingly cast back into the fray.

Ford is a natural fit for Jack Ryan, bringing his signature low-key wryness to the role. While Ryan is still much happier solving problems than punching bad guys, Patriot Games ups the action-hero stakes, pitting him against Sean Bean’s vengeful Irish radical.

Ford returned in 1994’s Clear and Present Danger, which finds him back behind a desk at the CIA. He’s older and more experienced, but still the same reticent Jack Ryan at heart.

Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger buoyed Ford’s remarkable ’90s run, which also included The Fugitive and Air Force One. (In later novels, Jack Ryan actually becomes the President of the United States. If that ever becomes a movie, they know who to call.)

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Ben Affleck, The Sum Of All Fears

The Sum of All Fears is something of the forgotten Jack Ryan movie. Released in 2002, eight years after Clear and Present Danger, it set out to reboot the spy series for a new decade. Despite coming soon after the September 11 terrorist attacks, its blockbuster spin on international terrorism still delivered at the box office.

All these years later, though, you might know it as, “Which one was that?”

For this outing, Jack Ryan came with the square-jawed Hollywood good looks of Ben Affleck. The role landed in Affleck’s leading man glory years, after Armageddon and Pearl Harbor but before the Daredevil and Gigli cliff. His Jack Ryan is closer to Baldwin’s rookie than Ford’s worldlier version, and you already know there’s a convoluted plot that throws him in the deep end. Affleck does his best to convey brains over brawn, but this is no-one’s essential Jack Ryan adventure.

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Chris Pine, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

A new decade, another Jack Ryan reboot. Twelve years after The Sum of All Fears, the character went back to the beginning for 2014’s Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. Of the available Hollywood Chrises, Chris Pine took the title role, coming straight off his second run as Captain Kirk in Star Trek: Into Darkness.

Pine’s Jack Ryan survived a helicopter accident while serving as a US Marine in Afghanistan. In recovery, we see him fall in love with his future wife, Dr Cathy Muller, a character who appears more fleetingly in the earlier movies. (In Shadow Recruit, she’s played by an American-accented Keira Knightley.)

Our hero’s path to the CIA is shepherded by a wily Kevin Costner and the usual scheming Russians and terrorist plots are in there, too. Pine’s Boy Scout charisma is fitting for a young Jack Ryan – although, unlike Baldwin, he clearly prefers tailored suits to turtlenecks.

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John Krasinski, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan

John Krasinski arrives in the iconic role with a lot more canvas than his predecessors. While Harrison Ford previously led the field with two movies, Krasinski gets eight hours to build his Jack Ryan.

The Amazon Prime Video series finds the character at the start of his career as a CIA analyst. True to Clancy’s vision, Ryan is intelligent and capable but happy to stick with a desk job. It’s hardly a spoiler to say he’s soon flung out of his comfort zone and into the field.

In this iteration, Ryan’s prickly boss Jim Greer is played by the brilliant Wendell Pierce, best known as Detective Bunk on The Wire. (Expect fireworks from Greer and Ryan’s sparring scenes.) The cast includes Abbie Cornish as Ryan’s other half, Cathy, John Hoogenakker as black ops tough guy Matice, and Ali Suliman as suspected terrorist Suleiman.

You can also expect globetrotting set pieces, a twisty plot that ratchets up to the final hour and Krasinski in his element as a regular guy who didn’t set out to be the hero. Some things never change for Jack Ryan.

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(Lead image: Amazon Prime Video)

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