Fans Really Love John Krasinski As Jack Ryan, But They Really Hated Amazon’s New Movie
John Krasinski got ripped to play Jack Ryan, and the end result has always felt like a good fit for the Prime Video series. The actor has given Tom Clancy’s CIA analyst a steady, thinking-man’s action movie hero energy that makes sense for the character and has helped the series build a loyal audience. That makes the reaction to the 2026 movie release, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War, sting a little more. This is not one of those critic-versus-audience situations, as everyone seems to be in agreement: We love Krasinski as Ryan, but hated this new Amazon movie.
According to Rotten Tomatoes, the new action movie is sitting at 44% with critics and 41% with audiences, based on 39 reviews and more than 250 ratings. That is basically both sides of the aisle looking at Jack’s comeback and saying, “Yeah, this ain’t it, chief.”
The setup should have worked. After retiring from the CIA, Jack Ryan is pulled back into the world of espionage when an international covert mission uncovers a deadly conspiracy. Wendell Pierce and Michael Kelly return as James Greer and Mike November, with Sienna Miller joining as MI6 officer Emma Marlowe. On paper, that sounds like the kind of “get the band back together” spy-thriller fans would happily hit play on.
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One audience reviewer, Barbara B. (@RT85830823), said she liked the Jack Ryan series but felt the movie fell short because of its rushed story, distracting green screen work and artificial lighting. Another viewer, Hu B. (@RT68453707), was even blunter, saying:
Drivel. As a Jack Ryan and John Krasinskey fan, really let down by this. Nearly two hours we won’t get back. Seems like someone at Amazon took a TV series script and jammed it into a movie by cutting out 80% of the story.
That complaint lines up pretty closely with what critics have been saying, too. In our earlier coverage of Ghost War reviews, several critics praised Krasinski’s return while taking issue with the movie around him. Collider’s Tania Hussain said the Office alum was still “charming and commanding,” but argued the movie felt too safe and hollow. The Wrap’s Zaki Hasan said what fans loved about the series seemed to get lost in the shift to a feature-length format.
(Image credit: Amazon Prime Video)
Jack Ryan Fans Are Not Totally United, But The Complaints Are Loud
To be fair, some audience members did enjoy the movie. One viewer called it a “full-action”, “entertaining” watch and said they did not understand the negative reviews. Another said that Krasinski is perfect for the role and hoped the series would continue. Others landed somewhere in the middle, calling it a “solid watch” or saying it felt like a long episode of Jack Ryan, which they did not mind and highlighted as a positive.
Still, the harsher reactions are hard to miss. Many longtime Jack Ryan fans complained that the movie felt less like a serious spy thriller and more like an advertisement for Dubai. One reviewer called it “a good cure for insomnia,” while another said they couldn’t wait for it to be over.
That seems to be the central problem. Fans do not appear to have turned on Krasinski as the beloved character. In fact, many of the complaints are rooted in disappointment because people liked him in the role and wanted him to return to work. The issue is that Ghost War seems to have flattened what the series, streaming with a Prime Video subscription, did well: the slow-burn tension, the room for character work and the sense that Jack was thinking before firing.
For longtime fans, the reunion with John Krasinski, Pierce and Kelly may still be enough to justify pressing play, and there are certainly some high-octane twists that should have shown through. Yet those nearly matching critic and audience scores tell a pretty clear story. Critics and viewers often passionately disagree, but on Jack Ryan: Ghost War, they seem to have hit the same unfortunate target: This one is a snooze fest that may not be worth warming up the TV for.
