2. Jack Ryan - The Hunt For Red October, Patriot Games, Clear And Present Danger, The Sum Of All Fears, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
Role in the team: The Strategist Most heroic Jacks have a tendency of flying by the seat of their pants, rushing into action without thought and often winding up in an even stickier situation as a result. There are not so many that use brains over brawn or are able to formulate plans based on what is happening around them. That's why the brains of the operation when it comes to Jack heroes must be Tom Clancy's ever re-invented Jack Ryan. Played by four different actors in five different movies, Ryan has been changed around more times than most franchise characters. While the versions played by Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford are much more fondly remembered than those by Ben Affleck and Chris Pine, there remains common elements throughout them all, principally that Ryan has always been a little nerdier than all action spy heroes Bond, Bourne and Bauer. As a CIA analyst and, in probably his most interesting Ford version, a Naval Academy professor and later a Deputy Director at the CIA, Ryan is an action hero, but one that is just as concerned about investigating and figuring out the whys and wherefores of a situation before allowing people to rush off half cocked and, say, start a nuclear war with Russia.
