‘People Are Going to Hate Me for Saying This’

Alan Ritchson is probably one of the few men in Hollywood who has not been rumored to play the new James Bond, but he wouldn’t want the role anyway, as he believes he is already playing the American version with Jack Reacher. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the actor explained how, despite loving Bond, he has some issues with the character, and believes that Reacher is the “American James Bond.”

Both characters have had huge success, with Daniel Craig’s most recent Bond movies delivering a solid box office performance and Prime Video’s Reacher being one of the most successful shows on the platform with the release of its second season earlier this year. Beyond that, Ritchson told EW:

“It’s funny, I kind of feel like Reacher is the American James Bond, and I’ve never had more fun playing a character. [I’m a fan of] those larger than life, over the top action thrillers and spy movies and the heists that are smart and ahead of the audience. That’s really great, but I feel like Bond, to me personally – people are going to hate me for saying this – I love Bond, but I feel like it is all a little misogynistic and predictable at this point.”

Ritchson is certainly going to incur the wrath of die-hard Bond fans with his comments. However, for the actor, there is something outdated and too predictable about the Bond franchise after 60 years, but Reacher doesn’t have the same issues. He continued:

“Reacher, to me, is like the American Bond, and I think it’s a cool way to go about doing it where it’s a little less purposefully cool. He’s not in on how slick he is. I don’t feel like we can have characters these days that are in on the joke. Either they know that they’re funny, they know that they’re smart, they know that they’re very cool or capable or invincible – I feel like it reduces the stakes of the stories, and we’ve seen too many movies, we’re too savvy as an audience to be entertained by that.”

Alan Ritchson is Bored with Predictable Super Spies

While there are very few movies that don’t end the way we expect, with the good guy beating the odds to defeat the villain, save the world, and ultimately make everything right in the world, Ritchson believes that it is more about the way characters like Bond are seen as flawless that needs to change. He said:

“What we want is, when there’s life and death stakes, characters that are not so sure that they’re going to make it, but they just maybe by the skin of their teeth figure it out. And that feels more human to me. That’s more my story. We’re all just figuring it out, and we want to escape somewhere where we trust that somebody will. And maybe it can even be done in sort of a superhero fashion, but we still want to know there’s a humanity to the people that we escape to. That’s me, personally, at least. A lot of people can disagree with that and will.”

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Of course, Ritchson’s comments may come a bit late in the day to be completely true following Daniel Craig’s final outing as Bond in No Time To Die, which saw the super spy finally come up against an inevitable death that even he could not escape. The death of Bond in the 2021 release became the perfect end for Craig’s time in the role, and delivered the kind of surprising ending that is probably right in line with what Ritchson wants to see more of.