When Reacher made his first appearance in Killing Floor, it was obvious that he was a larger-than-life character tailor-made for the big screen. But it took fifteen years for Reacher to make the transition from printed page to the cinema, a process marked with considerable controversy: hard-core Reacher readers strenuously objected to the casting of action star Tom Cruise in the role of Reacher, citing their respective heights: Cruise stands five feet seven inches; Reacher stands six feet five inches.
The bottom line: Does size really matter?
It obviously matters to hard-core Reacher fans, who find the casting incomprehensible. They can’t envision Cruise in the role because in their minds the role unequivocally demands a giant of a man, not merely a man who’s a giant in the film industry but lacks the requisite height.
Pro wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is, in fact, six feet five inches tall and weighs 265 pounds. He’s also heavily muscled. In terms of physical appearance, he’s unquestionably intimidating, and no sane man would pick a fight with him. Clearly, in a one-on-one engagement, size matters.
In a perfect world, an actor chosen to play Jack Reacher would have Dwayne Johnson’s physical bulk, Daniel Craig’s steely gaze, Tom Cruise’s intensity, and Harrison Ford’s humanity, all in one package.
We don’t live in that world. We live in a world of compromises, further handicapped by real-world constraints that must be dealt with by the film industry.
Paramount Pictures, which released Jack Reacher (December 21, 2012), ponied up $60 million to produce what they hope is the first in a long-running Reacher film franchise.
Their investment paid off. Domestically, the film took in $80 million, and an additional $23 million in video sales; internationally, the film took in an additional $137 million. Clearly, Paramount had, from their point of view, made the right financial bet, and with a bankable film star; casting, after all, is a matter of fan opinion, but at the end of the day, the receipts at the box office trump everything else. And on that note, Cruise delivered the goods; he got the general movie-going audience to come see his flick, because they remembered him in the role of Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible film franchise.
The first Reacher film reviewed fairly well, and its respectable, but not spectacular, box office paved the way for a sequel, which is currently in the works, based on Never Go Back. And, once again, Tom Cruise will be cast in the title role, despite the objections of Reacher readers who have joined forces to speak in a united voice on social media to renew their protests regarding casting.
Cruise is no stranger to casting controversies. When cast as the Vampire Lestat in Interview with the Vampire, an adaptation of Anne Rice’s novel of the same name, Rice fans—and, indeed, Rice herself—were adamant in their opposition toward Cruise in the title role, without the benefit of having seen any footage. “I was particularly stunned by the casting of Cruise,” Rice wrote in the Los Angeles Times (1993), “who is no more my Vampire Lestat than Edward G. Robinson is Rhett Butler.”
But after seeing the film, Rice had a change of heart and sang Cruise’s praises in his title role. “From the moment he appeared, Tom was Lestat for me . . . The guy is great.”1
Cruise wasn’t so fortunate the second time around, with Reacher fans. There was no way they would accept him in the film role because of his diminutive size, to the frustrations of Child and Cruise alike.
As Child explained, repeatedly, “With another actor you might get 100% of the height but only 90% of Reacher. With Tom, you get 100% of Reacher with 90% of the height.”2
Cruise chimed in: “Firstly, I’m very sensitive to it. This is Lee’s book and Lee’s character. Him giving me his blessing is what made me do it. If he hadn’t, then I wouldn’t have done it. Lee told me that the reason he wrote him that size [six feet five inches] is because that was just one element to his character, and that opened the door to me playing him.”3
At the end of the day, Reacher fans of the books, as opposed to the movie adaptations, must accept the cold reality that the $217 million in receipts at the box office for Jack Reacher came principally from a non-Reacher-reading audience; in other words, the hard-core fans who had actually read the novels and went to see the film adaptation were a small, if ardent, subset of Reacher filmgoers. The majority who saw the film were either Tom Cruise fans or wanted to see an action-adventure movie, without regard to fidelity of the literary character in question.
The numbers on the review website Rotten Tomatoes buttress Paramount’s decision to cast Cruise; critics gave it a 62 percent rating (respectable but not spectacular), and the public gave it at 67 percent rating.
In other words, despite the hue and cry from the collective fandom of Reacher fans who have read all the novels, we should not expect Paramount Pictures to suddenly have a change of heart and say, “Tom Cruise is too short to be Jack Reacher.”
That’s just not going to happen.
My own feeling is that because the available pool of actors makes casting Reacher a challenge, compromises are inevitable. And while I agree that Cruise is height-challenged in terms of being Reacher, he’s clearly a man who brings an intensity to the role that ultimately will carry the day.
Lee Child and Paramount consider the matter “case closed,” with which I concur.