When it comes to naming the finest trilogy cinema has ever had to offer, the first three outings for Matt Damon’s iconic amnesiac spy Jason Bourne are more than worthy of attention. Doug Liman may have set the blueprint with Identity, but it was Paul Greengrass who took things to an entirely new level with Supremacy and Ultimatum.
The trio can each be ranked among the greatest espionage thrillers of the 21st Century, and when you put them together and examine the narrative throughline, blockbuster cinema hasn’t gotten much better since the turn of the millennium. And yet, because money talks louder than anything else in Hollywood, the note-perfect ending to the third chapter was far from the finish line.
Jeremy Renner’s spinoff The Bourne Legacy was lukewarm to put it lightly, and felt like Universal doing whatever it could to maintain the brand’s momentum until Greengrass and Damon were eventually convinced to reunite for another globetrotting shaky-cam extravaganza.
When that day came, though, Jason Bourne ended up as the worst-reviewed effort yet. Prior to release, anyone who claimed there was a chance the end product would fare worse than Legacy would have been laughed at, but it did at least overcompensate for the critical apathy by securing the saga’s highest box office total ever.
Rumblings of a fifth Bourne haven’t gone away regardless of how little people seem to want it, but for the time being, Damon’s most recent and crushingly underwhelming stint as the Treadstone dismantler has been unraveling conspiracies on the most-watched rankings of both Prime Video and iTunes, per FlixPatrol.
Published: Mar 14, 2023 03:30 am