You don’t know Jack

Like James Bond before him, the role of Tom Clancy’s CIA analyst-turned-heroic field agent Jack Ryan has had perhaps more casting changes than most diehard fans of the novelist’s globetrotting thrillers would have approved. After Alec Baldwin introduced the character in the 1990 classic The Hunt for Red October, Harrison Ford spent his post-Indiana Jones years cementing his all-American legacy with Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. Ben Affleck attempted a Clancy revival with 2002’s ho-hum The Sum of All Fears.

Now Chris Pine, Star Trek‘s cocksure Captain Kirk, steps into the role for Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, a relaunch that sees Ryan on the heels of a Russian plot to crash the U.S. economy using a terrorist attack. With just one more round commanding the U.S.S. Enterprise likely in his future, Pine is probably looking to Clancy’s classic character to sustain his career in the blockbuster business. With the studio shelling out for director and actor Kenneth Branagh and key supporting players like Keira Knightley and Kevin Costner in the mix, it is obviously thinking the same.

Riskier though is the fact that this is the first Jack Ryan film not based directly on a Clancy book—the author died last fall. Can his most iconic hero live on without him? We’ll find out Jan. 17.