After reading the news that Paramount has tapped Sam Raimi to revive the Jack Ryan franchise (The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears), I had one thought: who could have predicted this? And then I quickly had another thought: didn’t Paramount already attempt to youngify this character?

Regarding my first thought, I believe the Fark.com subby snarked it best by presuming “Jack Ryan might be wielding a chainsaw in his next film.” Sure, the joke is a bit obvious, and a bit outdated now that Raimi has done three very tame Spider-Man flicks, but the guy did manage to slip a chainsaw in the second (aka the best) installment with that terrific horror-homaging surgery sequence. So, perhaps it’s not even a joke; maybe Ryan will wield a chainsaw. The better — because it’s less plausible — joke would be to speculate that Ryan will be fighting skeletal terrorists (I didn’t say it was the funnier joke).

As for my second thought, it’s interesting that Paramount announced a decision to go younger with the Ryan character, who was originally portrayed by Alec Baldwin (at age 32) and then by Harrison Ford for two films (at ages 50 and 52) and finally by Ben Affleck (at age 30), who had also been reportedly selected in order to youngify the series. Besides the point that Baldwin, Affleck and rumored new player, Ryan Gosling, have portrayed or will portray the character around the same age (Gosling will be 30 when the film is scheduled for release, in 2010), and that only Ford was an “old” Ryan, I really thought Hollywood was past the concept of younger being more commercial. After all, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone and even Ford himself have recently returned to big franchises despite being near-codger ages.

Plus, it isn’t like Paramount would or could ever go really young. Never mind the fact that a teenage or early-20s Ryan wouldn’t yet be old enough for any worthwhile plots — except maybe for stories set during his Marines career, which wouldn’t really be the same as the CIA adventures — we’re beyond the need for more junior spy films (the first Agent Cody Banks did fine business, but does anyone remember Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker?).

Either way, this being sort of the third reboot of the franchise — as adaptations of single novels, the films are easier to isolate as not necessarily being parts of a series — may be more confusing or worthless to moviegoers than Paramount thinks. Apparently these new films won’t even be based on any of Clancy’s existing novels (or even pre-conceived yet unwritten ideas), meaning the studio could just as well rename the character. How much of America really understood that all four prior films featured the same character? Certainly it was noticeable that Ford was the same guy in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, but otherwise Red October and Sum of All Fears could have easily been about Joe Schmo and John Doe, respectively. I have a hard time believing that character names are really that big a sell.