Before Reacher, Alan Ritchson Starred In A War Movie With A Back To The Future Star

Many fans of "Reacher" might not have been all that familiar with series star Alan Ritchson prior to the show's debut. If so, it certainly wasn't down to a lack of projects on the actor's résumé. Ritchson really broke through by playing Jack Reacher and, as such, must have seemed to some as if he'd come out of nowhere to play the bulky ex-military policeman. But the man has actually been toiling away since the early 2000s.

In his now two-decade career, Ritchson has appeared on screens both big and small in a variety of projects, including "Above the Shadows" (an overlooked MMA movie that's now streaming on Prime Video), multiple seasons playing Hank Hall/Hawk on DC's "Titans," and two "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movies (though Ritchson hated filming them). The actor's long career actually stretches all the way back to 2006 when he first played Arthur Curry/Aquaman on The CW's "Smallville" (though he also appeared on "American Idol" prior to that in an embarrassing part of Ritchson's past that the "Reacher" crew used to prank him on-set).

Of course, many fans of the actor will know about his "Titans" stint and the fact he played Raphael in what were some fairly high-profile "TMNT" reboot films. What they might not know about, however, is Ritchson's horror war movie, in which he starred with a "Back to the Future" actor.

Before "Reacher," Alan Ritchson appeared in one of the worst TV series ever in the form of "Fred: The Show," in which he played "Expired Cow" back in 2012. It was hardly one of Ritchson's best roles, but every actor has low points in their filmography. 2020's "Ghosts of War" might be another example.

This British horror war film stars Ritchson as Private Butchie, one of five soldiers charged with guarding a chateau in the French countryside during WWII. Brenton Thwaites, Kyle Gallner, Theo Rossi, and Skylar Astin made up the rest of the central cast, who have to defend the mansion against not only German troops but also forces of the supernatural. At least that's how things appear, though the film takes a wild turn part-way through, upending everything that came before it. It's at this point that Billy Zane's Dr. Engel is introduced.

You might not have expected Reacher and Match from "Back to the Future" to appear alongside each other in a little known horror war film, but here it is for those interested. Match — so named for the match he would constantly chew on — was one of three high school bullies that made up a gang led by Thomas F. Wilson's Biff Tannen in 1985's "Back to the Future" and represented Zane's first feature film role. The character showed up again in 1989's "Back to the Future Part II" as well as in several comics and video games. While "Ghosts of War" is far from the cultural behemoth that is the "Back to the Future" property, it does take a sci-fi twist of its own. That is, however, the only thing this film and Zane's former franchise have in common.

"Ghosts of War" was released on DirecTV on June 18, 2020, and judging by the Rotten Tomatoes score, which sits at 38% based on 40 reviews at the time of writing, it wasn't all that well received. Kevin Maher of The Times (UK) gave it decent enough marks, writing, "You'll be pleasantly surprised — but you probably won't watch it again." Similarly, RogerEbert.com's Nick Allen gave the film a begrudgingly positive review, opining that while the supernatural elements held the movie back, "they're not what you'll be thinking about after the film is over."

Otherwise, the reviews were pretty dismal, though not quite as bad as you might imagine. At issue appears to have been those supernatural elements, which, rather than adding an interesting twist to a war film, mostly made things more confusing and cluttered. That is, according to the bulk of "top critics" on RT, with Dennis Harvey of Variety writing that the film "gradually disappoints because its thematic ambitions add more clutter than depth to a story that's most effective at its simplest." In his review for The Hollywood Reporter, Frank Scheck was slightly more blunt, writing, "Makes you long for the days when American G.I.s didn't have to fight supernatural beings as well as German soldiers."

"Ghosts of War" was Alan Ritchson's only film of 2020. The following year, he'd make his directorial debut with "Dark Web: Cicada 3301," which was also a mash-up of genres that actually fared slightly better with critics than "Ghosts of War." Of course, all of this was really just preparation for his debut as "Reacher" in 2022, after which his star began to rise considerably. Still, if you're a fan of Ritchson, "Ghosts" is an interesting and overlooked moment in a career that had quite a few such moments prior to "Reacher," like when Ritchson secretly played the lead (in a sense) in Robert Zemeckis' blockbuster fantasy adventure "Beowulf."