Jack Ryan: Ghost War director Andrew Bernstein: We live in times of conflict and moral ambiguity

Jack Ryan, a former US Marine and stockbroker, is the protagonist of 14 bestselling novels by Tom Clancy, starting with Patriot Games in 1987. Apart from video games and series, there have been six film adaptations of the Ryanverse, from The Hunt for Red October in 1990 to Jack Ryan: Ghost War, which released recently and is currently streaming on Prime Video. The actioneris a continuation of the series, Jack Ryan, which aired for four seasons on the streamer between 2018 and 2023.

John Krasinski, reprises his role in Ghost War, playing a reluctant Ryan, who is brought back to active duty when there are rogue agents out to destroy the world. There were aspects of Jack Ryan that director Andrew Bernstein was determined to both protect and challenge.

Protecting the integrity

“The version I was most excited to protect was the integrity of the character that we had established,” Bernstein says, speaking over a video call from New York City. “It was also important that the audience learn something new about this character. We were going to put him in a situation where we were going to test what we thought about him, the knowledge we had about him, and then further expand that knowledge.”

Bernstein says the filmmakers wanted to challenge Ryan’s assumptions about the world. “The exciting thing about Ghost War is Ryan coming into the film thinking one thing and leaving thinking something else. The reason he does that is because he’s challenged by the situations. The relationships that are important to him force him to confront his thinking about what the world is, was, and will be.”

Jack Ryan, Bernstein says, is all about the personal stakes. “That’s what the audience signs up for. They are interested in Jack Ryan, his relationships, and how they influence his actions. Getting the intimacy right is important to us. We spent a lot of time talking and thinking about it, and then ultimately grounding that in huge geopolitical stakes that influence Ryan’s decisions and make him confront what he thought he knew and what he doesn’t know.”

That dichotomy, Bernstein says, contributes to the thrill in Ghost War. “Jack Ryan has always been grounded in the geopolitical stuff, but it’s the personal aspects of the character and how he grows through the film, that make it exciting.”

All about character

Bernstein adds how the character is central part of the story in the film and the series “We slowly reveal who he is and how he reacts. When we need to go big, we’re obviously able to entertain the audience with big action set pieces, and explosive personal stakes. The fun of the movie is that it can be small or large when it needs to be, in a way that makes sense in the course of the film and doesn’t feel fabricated.”

Speaking about the parallels between the film and the real world, Bernstein says, “We live in times of conflict and moral ambiguity. That is what intelligence operatives all over the world are dealing with. They are forced to confront their assumptions about what they thought in the past and what the future is going to look like.”

Secret sauce

Those are important moral questions that make for great drama and character studies, Bernstein says. “As long as the world keeps changing and putting us in places where we are forced to confront our assumptions about the world, our characters are going to be doing the same thing, and those stories are always rich to tell.”

That’s why people love espionage stories, Bernstein says. “It puts these people in interesting situations. Finally, spy stories also honour the service that all these people do and highlight their commitment to their jobs, which is important, and also part of the Jack Ryan legacy.”

While Jack Ryan stories often feel uncomfortably close to real-world headlines, Bernstein says Jack Ryan: Ghost War was made before current events. “It was a story we wanted to tell, one we’ve been thinking about for a long time. What’s great about Tom Clancy is that his stories are prescient. Even though what Clancy talked and wrote about had nothing to do with the current situation, it was aligned with a global feeling,” he concludes.

Jack Ryan: Ghost War is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video