Jason Bourne is coming back – but what do we want from him this time?

The Guardian

8 hours ago

What do you consider to be the end of Jason Bourne? For connoisseurs, Bourne's story definitively ended in 2007's The Bourne Ultimatum, which masterfully wrapped up the story that began five years earlier with The Bourne Identity. For the less discerning viewer, it ended with 2016's scraggy and inconsequential Jason Bourne. For the three people who watched the USA Network's 2019 series Treadstone, it ended there. So which is it?
Trick question, because Jason Bourne is never actually going to end, ever. This week, NBCUniversal has won a bidding war to acquire all non-publishing rights to Robert Ludlum's Bourne and Treadstone properties in perpetuity. The deal, described as 'very large', means that Bourne is now firmly as much a part of Universal as Jaws, Jurassic World and the Minions. It also means we are never getting rid of him. As the Universal Pictures president, Peter Cramer, said: 'We're energized to continue expanding the Bourne universe into the future with exciting new stories for global audiences.'
This is potentially very interesting news, because if any franchise needs a shot in the arm, it's Bourne. While its first three movies are rightly regarded as peerless, things really went off the rails after that. There was 2012's The Bourne Legacy, made without Matt Damon during that weird time where every franchise on Earth seemed to hire Jeremy Renner as its new face. There was 2016's Jason Bourne, where Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon attempted to depict Bourne as a slightly narky nightclub bouncer. And then there was Treadstone, which didn't feature Bourne at all and was canned after a single season.
It might have been a wobbly couple of decades for the franchise, but it's important to remember just how revelatory Bourne was at the beginning. As soon as The Bourne Identity landed in 2002, with its grounded, propulsive, parkour-based action, it instantly made every other film in its genre look creaky and ancient.
It was released in the same year as Die Another Day and, while Bond outgrossed Bourne two to one, the pure athleticism of the latter made the former – with its phalanx of invisible cars, diamond-faced baddies and shoddy CGI – look ready for the glue factory. Pierce Brosnan was ditched, Daniel Craig was hired and, tellingly, Casino Royale ended up being stuffed to the gills with an absolute Bourneload of parkour.
Already there is talk of bringing Matt Damon back into the fold, with Deadline revealing that a script by Joe Barton has been written but not greenlit. And this would be the most sensible avenue, since people automatically equate Bourne with Damon and, thanks to his leading role in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey next year, his stock has rarely been higher. However, he is also in his mid-50s, which puts him squarely in 'Liam Neeson in Taken' territory, which isn't necessarily the best long-term strategy for the franchise.
Then again, the character isn't exactly wanting for source material. Although Robert Ludlum wrote three Bourne books before his death in 2001, many, many more have been knocked out by various other writers since then. Maybe there'll be an adaptation of 2009's The Bourne Deception, or 2016's The Bourne Enigma, or this year's The Bourne Vendetta, or next year's The Bourne Revenge. There is now such a glut of Bourne books that perhaps the character needs to be reset with a younger actor to get them all made.
One thing to avoid, perhaps, is deepening the mythology too much. Treadstone proved that any appetite the character has for the Bourne franchise begins and ends with the character of Jason Bourne. We're already drowning in watered-down IP, so the thought of sitting through a spin-off property about the madcap adventures of Julia Stiles sounds absolutely exhausting.
Most pressing of all, though, is making sure that there is a place for Jason Bourne in the current landscape. Since the peerless original Bourne trilogy ended, James Bond has lived and died and been bought by Jeff Bezos. The MCU burst into life, dominated the market and then slowly asphyxiated on its own bloat. The go-to action blockbuster reference for a long time was Mission: Impossible's maximalist stuntwork, but even that came unstuck in the end.
We find ourselves in exactly the place we were at the start of the century. The action world has stagnated, and there is a window for something to come along and revolutionise the game. Jason Bourne already did this once. If he can come out of retirement and do it again, the investment will be more than worth it.