Reacher Set A Record For Amazon Prime By Topping The Nielsen Streaming Chart

Tom Cruise previously played Reacher in the films “Jack Reacher” and “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back.” Cruise is one of the biggest movie stars in the world, so in that sense, any actor inheriting a role from him was going to have some big shoes to fill. This is something we’ve seen, for instance, with his “Interview with the Vampire” character, Lestat, who has since been played by Stuart Townsend and will be played by Sam Reid in an AMC television re-adaptation later this year.

Cruise, however, reportedly stands 5 foot 7, and shoes are actually one way that filmmakers have made him look taller than he really is. In a movie like “Top Gun,” for example, they could film him from low angles or put him in shoes with lifts and have his co-star, Kelly McGillis, remove her heels and lower her natural height to his level by slumping.

The character of Jack Reacher, as described in Lee Child’s original novels, called for a more imposing presence, someone “extremely tall, and extremely broad, and long-armed, and long-legged,” who could make the temperature drop when he walked into a bar. Ritchson is a better fit, physically, for that kind of character, and if nothing else, his Nielsen ratings show that viewers were curious to see what he brought to the role—if not outright binging all eight episodes of “Reacher” the week of its premiere.