Just finished reading “the book”. Now I’ve seen the 4 Clancy movies and read the corresponding books. It seems to me that the larger the book is, the more degraded the movie will be…most of the time. Patriot Games and Red October were relatively small books, the movies were very faithfull to the books, hence awesome movies. If the book is already a best seller, don’t stray from the formula. Clear and Present Danger tried to catch a lot of the elements in the book, but I think it overall missed the enjoyable parts, and , for me, ruined the John Clark character. Sum of all Fears is a weird situation . I liked the movie, but it departed SO much from the book, it was hardly recognizable. I think in this case, they just got the basic ideas (terrorists, nuclear bomb, Russia vs USA, etc) a few character names, and made a completely new movie. Albeit a good one, I hardly think it could carry the name. I enjoy, for some reason, to chronicle the differences between movies and books, so :

– Chronologically, Sum of all fears happened after Clear and Present Danger (I.E. Ryan is older and the Deputy Directer Central Intelligence) I guess they wanted to target a younger crowd with Affleck

– The President,National Security Advisor, Director Cabot, are all a bunch of idiots

– The bad guys were Palestinians and allies that were bitter of the Soviet fall, and wanted to get back at them and America for bringing them down. (The Soviets funded anti-western revolutionary/terrorist groups)

– The few Germans in there were former East German communists who were bitter for the same reason

– The bomb actually malfunctioned and the explosion was around 15-20 kilotons (Hiroshima was about 1500 kilotons) This is the reason that people can run around realatively close to the center of the blast.

– No one got anywhere near an American carrier group. (I think a couple planes got shot at a little) That was my biggest problem with the movie. To think a US carrier group could be that relatively vulnerable is unbelievable.

– Although John Clark had a better role on this movie than Clear and Present danger, they forgot about Chavez, and they didn’t use him nearly enough.

– The President and Director Cabot were no where near the bomb (Bomb was in Denver)