Bourne Again

As Jason Bourne's memories start to come into focus, is the franchise finally ready to settle down and stop running?

By Eric Alt

The question was inevitable. After all, audiences like their franchises in neat packages of three — once you step beyond that, people are (often correctly) skeptical. You could argue that we don't need an Indiana Jones 4, and you'd meet no argument whatsoever if you said we'd have been better off without an additional Lethal Weapon. So after Bourne Ultimatum, the third go-round in the shoes of amnesiac former assassin Jason Bourne (or is it David Webb?), is Matt Damon finished?

"The story of this guy's search for his identity is over, because he's got all the answers. So there's no way we can trot out the same character, when so much of what makes him interesting is that internal struggle," says Damon, explaining his hesitance to look ahead. "So if there was to be another one, it would have to be a complete reconfiguration. Where do you go from there? If we came out with a fourth one and suddenly I got bonked on the head, you guys would be like, 'Are you kidding me?'"

In Ultimatum, Jason Bourne's fragile memory starts to come into focus right around the time he meets a journalist (franchise newcomer Paddy Considine) who has gotten a little too close to the infamous Treadstone covert ops department. Finally, Bourne (and the audience) is getting some real answers, but, luckily for us, he still has to crash a few cars, crack a few necks, and pay a few visits to some exotic locales before all is said and done. Because, in the end, according to director Paul Greengrass (who returns after helming The Bourne Supremacy), those elements and not the political subtext are what truly make a Bourne movie.

"When you're coming to a Bourne movie, you're coming to have some fun. It's a Saturday night movie," he explains. "Now, the Bourne world is the world that's right outside our door. You've got to believe that whatever story Bourne's engaged in could be happening. But I don't come to a Bourne movie to make any kind of statement. It's not a private soapbox for me or for anyone. I wouldn't want to go out on a Saturday night and see Dick Cheney."

He laughs, but in a world in which the American government is tapping its own citizen's phones, the idea of an all-seeing, all-knowing government agency willing to kill to keep its secrets doesn't seem so far fetched. Even Greengrass has to relent a little.

"You must never lose the sense of adventure, the sense of excitement. What makes Bourne special is that it marries that sense with intelligence and it doesn't underestimate its audience. To me [the 'real world' elements] are the dash of Worcestershire sauce, the bit of chili, but it's not the meal."

What constitutes the meal, for the audiences at least, is the Bourne movies' insistence on racking up the frequent-flier miles. Over the course of the three films, we've been taken from Switzerland to Paris to Greece to India to Moscow to London to … the locales just keep adding up.

Greengrass nods approvingly: "These films take you on a journey. Unlike a lot of films, if we're in Tangiers, we're in Tangiers. We're not on some back lot somewhere." This sense of reality also proves to be the primary inspiration behind the franchise's other major selling point: white-knuckle action.

"I really liked [doing] the Tangiers sequence, the running along the roofs," says Damon, referring to a portion of the film in which Bourne escapes an opposing agent on scooter, motorcycle, and then on foot through the densely crowded Moroccan city, "because it's Bourne just 100 mph flat out. All those things we just kind of came up with once we got on the real location. That's the fun stuff. You get a bunch of guys together and go, 'Okay, what would be the smart thing to do here?' And we kind of figure out those sequences. Then, when we cut them together, and they actually work, it's a good feeling."

What presumably doesn't feel as good is when Bourne has to take on his nemesis, played by stunt performer and choreographer Joey Ansah, hand-to-hand. In fact, it was at that moment that Damon realized just how long he's been running alongside Bourne.

"The first movie I was 29 and this one I was 36, and I definitely felt my age," he says. "Particularly because, in the big fight scene in Tangiers, Joey, the guy that I'm fighting, was like 23 years old. When the first movie came out he was in high school! And he's in really good shape and he's already a much better athlete than me, so I was like, 'Oh, man, Joe, you're killing me. You've got to slow down.'"

With age taking a toll and plot lines wearing thin, Damon seemingly has no problem saying good-bye to Bourne after Ultimatum. But he's quick to acknowledge the very significant role it's played in his career. "There hasn't been a role that's had a bigger impact on my life," he says. "Maybe Good Will Hunting, because it pulled Ben [Affleck] and I out of total obscurity, but in terms of having an impact on my career — just as an example, between Supremacy and Ultimatum, there were three movies that I really wanted to do, I loved the scripts. All of these movies were, on the face of them, going to be absolute box-office misses." Those films, it turns out, just happened to be the critically-acclaimed and awards-show-lauded Syriana, The Good Shepherd, and The Departed.

"I didn't hesitate [to do them] because I knew I had the Bourne Ultimatum off in the middle distance and that there was going to be an audience that was built in for that," Damon explains. "So it allowed me the creative freedom to do all these other movies."

After hooking up with George Clooney and Brad Pitt for three Ocean's films and then globe-trotting through three Bourne films, is Damon going to make it a point to avoid franchises for the remainder of his career?

"I'm trying to only do franchises," he jokes. "In fact, the guys who wrote the movie Ocean's 13 also wrote Rounders and I said to them — because Rounders was a bomb when it first came out but now it's done really well on video — I said, 'You guys are writing the wrong sequels, we should be doing Rounders 2!'