> Being a *huge* Tom Clancy fan, I'm really looking forward to this movie. I've read every single one of his books, but I've only gotten around to seeing two movies: Clear and Present Danger, which sucked because the plot was altered a good deal...

Is that truly a legitimate criticism, though? Movies based on books need to stand on their own, no matter how faithful or unfaithful they may be. Some movies are *too* faithful, adapting material not as well suited to the screen as to a book, or attempting to incorporate themes that can't be done justice in the shorter time allotted to film. In the end, it doesn't really matter if a movie is faithful or not to its source material: if it stands on its own as a good story, competently executed, then it's a good movie. I think Clear and Present Danger is just that. You may not LIKE it, and that's a valid statement to make even without supporting it, but I don't think it's fair to say it "sucks" because it's different from the novel.

I have to wonder, though, why you're so excited about this movie if you have an 0 for 2 track record on Clancy adaptations and aren't too sure about the star.

> The subject matter? *shrug*
> I'm sure some people will be upset over it. But someone is always upset over something.

Probably. I think I was unclear when I talked about that, though. I figured there would be people that would get all up in arms over it and those that would have better sense. I was more curious about the movie itself. Because *what* movies are about rarely matters. It's *how* they treat what they're about that makes all the difference: the movie's intrinsic worth, what it accomplishes, how it affects the viewer, its place in history, everything. The most casual comparison of Saving Private Ryan and Pearl Harbor illustrate just how insufficiently "a World War II film" describes a movie. Equally insufficient is "a movie about international terrorism." So my wondering about The Sum of All Fears was asking the question "how does the movie handle the subject of terrorism and what does it say to its audience"? Most people will probably walk out of the theater without consciously thinking about that question, but you don't have to think about what you observe for what you observe to have an impact. Crop out the extremists on both ends of the spectrum, and how people will react to this movie will depend entirely on the movie's handling of its subject. Will people overlook the subject matter completely and receive the film as escapism instead of as a reminder of September 11th? Will people find it exploitative of the current world climate or something intelligent that the world *needs* right about now? Will people be more comfortable forgetting that terrorism exists or realize it must be faced? I'm not even sure I can formulate all the proper questions into words.