Is Tom Cruise Coming Up Short?

The Jack Reacher of literature is so popular, so iconic, such a dependable generator of massive sales, you might say he’s the Tom Cruise of popular fiction.

“When they announced Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher, my heart sank.” — Lisa R. Kindel of Lexington, Kentucky

The 20 novels in Lee Child’s Reacher series have sold more than 100 million copies and generated more than $1 billion in global sales. They’ve been published in 42 different languages. Reacher is “the biggest brand in publishing,” according to Forbes.

At this point, Reacher is likely even bigger than Tom Cruise. We’re referring to his popularity — but the statement is just as true by a far more physical consideration.

The Reacher readers fell in love with is massive: 6-foot-5, 250 pounds, a prohibitively tough ex-U.S. Army MP with a 50-inch chest. But when Reacher finally arrived on the big screen, he was portrayed by none other than Cruise, who strikes a very different profile at 5-7, 150.

Cruise’s first run at portraying the character, 2012’s “Jack Reacher,” attracted some criticism about the incredible difference between the two Reachers’ statures. The movie received mixed reviews, but it was a modest box office success. So this fall brings a sequel, “Jack Reacher: Don’t Look Back,” with Cruise again trying to fill Reacher’s (much larger) shoes. A new trailer was released this week.

Of course, Hollywood is almost always more concerned with bankability in casting than being overly reverent to the original material. That’s been especially true of adapting comic book characters.

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When comic actor Michael Keaton (5-10, 160) was cast as the hero in 1989’s “Batman,” many longtime fans erupted in protest. They felt director Tim Burton was making a mockery of the superhero’s biggest theatrical appearance to date. But “Batman” eventually got the last laugh, becoming the fifth-highest grossing film in film history at the time of its release.

Perhaps emboldened by his Keaton experiment, Burton planned to turn Nicolas Cage into a big-screen Superman in the mid-1990s. At 6-0, Cage isn’t short, but he obviously looks nothing like the Superman of lore. The proposed film, “Superman Lives,” never got past the preproduction stage.

Sometimes it goes the other way. If you haven’t read the original comics, you probably instantly picture Hugh Jackman, who’s 6-2, as the wildly popular Wolverine from the “X-Men” films. However, the Wolverine of the comics stands a mere 5-3.

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Races and even genders sometimes get swapped in movie and TV adaptations. A notable example was casting Michael Clarke Duncan as supervillain Wilson Fisk (aka the Kingpin) in the 2003 superhero film “Daredevil.” The comics version of Fisk is white; Duncan, who passed away in 2012, was black.

When Marvel Studios and Netflix adapted “Daredevil” for a TV series in 2015, Fisk was played by a white actor, Vincent D’Onofrio. But race didn’t really matter in either case: Both versions of Fisk worked out because each actor matched the size and heft of the comic book Kingpin — Duncan was 6-5, D’Onofrio 6-4. But imposing size is an indispensable aspect of that character: The Kingpin must be huge.

No one’s saying Cruise lacks action-hero credentials, but for the character’s worldwide fans, can a 5-7 man ever be Reacher?

LifeZette spoke to several longtime Reacher readers, and most were unhappy to see Cruise in the role.

• The casting dissuaded Melinda Carver from even checking out the first film. “Mr. Child’s descriptions of Jack in each book, the physicality of his actions, the violence, are just not believable with Tom portraying him,” said Carver, who lives in the Cleveland area.
• “As someone who has read all 20 Jack Reacher books, I can’t believe they cast Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher again. Cruise is too small physically for the part. Period. Besides, Reacher isn’t good-looking. He’s a big hulking guy with long arms.” — Kevin Caron of Phoenix, Arizona
• “The biggest problem with Cruise playing Reacher is that he’s too pretty. Reacher has been in plenty of fights, and looks like a guy who has been in some fights.” — Craig Pittman, St. Petersburg, Florida
• “I loved all the books, so Jack Reacher’s picture is in my head, and I will never watch a movie with Tom Cruise as Reacher. I could probably have accepted most any other discrepancy, but Reacher’s size is such an integral part of the character, I just can’t see him in Cruise.” — Jane Berger, Deltona, Florida

However, longtime Reacher reader Dr. Kathryn Bingham was more understanding about Cruise’s casting: “Let’s face it, Hollywood doesn’t do faithful representation (hello? Bourne franchise, anyone?) with any measure of consistency,” she stated in an email.

“There isn’t sufficient suspension of disbelief to accept Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher,” said Bingham, who lives in the San Diego area. “That said, the storyline [of the 2012 film] is solid. If I watch the film and pretend this isn’t really Jack Reacher, but a character who happens to have the same name and experiences a familiar plot line, I can appreciate the entertainment.”