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I wanted to create a topic to talk about the first three Bourne films: The Bourne Identity (2002), The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) featuring Matt Damon as Jason Bourne. The fourth film called The Bourne Legacy (2012) about a new character called Aaron Cross played by Jeremy Renner. The fifth film, Jason Bourne (2016) with Matt Damon soon to be released.

I’m a big fan of the Bourne trilogy for its themes (identity, conspiracy cover ups by those in power), learning more about Jason Bourne’s background in each entry, the performances, the action and Extreme Ways playing over the closing credits.

The Bourne Ultimatum is the best installment of the Bourne trilogy. The Bourne Ultimatum has my four favourite moments in the trilogy and those are: the Waterloo station sequence, the on foot chase between Jason Bourne/Desh Bouksani/Nicky Parsons in Tangiers, Jason Bourne ringing Noah Vosen and THAT ending.

In second place, The Bourne Identity (I know there’s some who rate it as the best of the series) and The Bourne Supremacy in third. When it comes to film trilogies a weak link can be picked out with ease or with difficulty and The Bourne Supremacy is an example of the latter. The Bourne Supremacy is a very good film but not at the level of the first and third. The Bourne trilogy is one of the best ever film trilogies.

The Bourne Legacy has to follow the first three Bourne films which were well received by critics and get people to accept a Bourne film without the title character. I was open to the fourth film providing it’s of the same quality as the brilliant original trilogy. Critically, it wasn’t. I’ve never seen it.

I was surprised with the announcement of Jason Bourne as I vaguely remember Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass said they wouldn’t return without each other and the story had to be right. I hope so and if it is, I’ll be seeing my first film from the series in the cinema. On the off chance it isn’t, least there’s the original trilogy to go back to. I’ve not watched any trailers for the new movie.

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1. I dig the transformation of Jason Bourne from baby faced assassin to grizzled veteran.

2. I enjoy the Bourne movies knowing that they don't have much to do (if anything) with the Ludlum novels I grew up reading in High School.

3. I hated the premise of the Bourne Legacy movie, especially since it had absolutely nothing in common with the transitionary Eric Van Lustbader novel.  Hopefully they won't acknowledge the Super Soldier Serum in this latest movie.

4. I can't wait until this comes out on DVD for another installation of the Jason Bourne improvised weapons drinking game.

5. I still mark out a little when I hear the opening chords of Extreme Ways.

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10 hours ago, J.T. said:

2. I enjoy the Bourne movies knowing that they don't have much to do (if anything) with the Ludlum novels I grew up reading in High School.

I read the first one, and it was painfully awkward and clunky in its prose.  The sort of bestseller which made me wonder how the hell that guy's books ever became popular in the first place.  The most ridiculous part was where the Franka Potente character goes into an endless monologue, speaking about herself in a hypothetical third-person scenario... and keeps using the word HE as the pronoun describing herself.  Just pure fucking incompetence.  And using real-world terrorist Carlos The Jackal as the villain in a fictional spy thriller felt exploitative and unearned.  

As for the movies?  They're pretty goddamned great.  I agree that the second one is weaker than the other two (I never saw The Bourne Legacy: Tokyo Drift 3D, it seemed like a desperate attempt to slap the Bourne name on something completely unconnected), but all three of them are above-average action flicks in an era which sadly doesn't see very many of those.  

Hell, they even managed to do a shockingly good job with jittery handheld shaky-cam cinematography and epileptic strobe-light rapid cutting in the action scenes.  Most of the time, that shit just gives me a headache and makes me curse the name of Michael Bay; but the Bourne flicks managed to keep things coherent.  Even though it's moving very fast, it's still easy to see what's going on.  Everything makes sense, you can tell where everyone is and what they're doing, and that's an incredibly rare thing among action flicks which are shot in this style.  

 

For topic of discussion: is this the best threequel or trilogy-ender ever?  Ultimatum is in a pretty rarefied classification, since most franchises and trilogies tend to thoroughly drop the ball by the time they get to the third entry.  Even the good ones tend to be like "okay, Return of the Jedi, Men in Black III, Godfather III, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Day of the Dead, Rocky III, Rambo 3, The Girl who Kicked a Hornet's Nest, Army of Darkness, The Dark Knight Returns, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, Hatchet III, Shrek 3, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Predators, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Mission Impossible III, Son of Frankenstein, Tetsuo: The Bullet Man, Nightmare on Elm Street 3, Ocean's Thirteen, Captain America: Civil War, Clear and Present Danger, Star Trek III, and Lethal Weapon 3 don't exactly suck, but they're still not as good as what came before".  What other examples are there?  I'm not sure if stuff like Goldfinger/Skyfall, LOTR: Return of the King, or HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban should count, since none of those were really intended as trilogy-enders (RotK is just the last act of one long preexisting story, and the others are merely Entry # 3 of much longer franchises).  

The only clear-cut examples I could think of Threequels Which Are Maybe The Very Best Part Of A Trilogy were Back to the Future 3, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The World's End, Three Colors: Red, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Return of the Living Dead 3, and Toy Story 3.  Personally I'd include Iron Man 3 on that list, but I know I'm very much in the minority on that one.  Maybe Revenge of the Sith would count, considering that it's so vastly superior to the preceeding two episodes.  

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Even the good ones tend to be like "okay, Return of the Jedi, Men in Black IIIGodfather III, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Day of the Dead, Rocky III, Rambo 3, The Girl who Kicked a Hornet's Nest, Army of Darkness, The Dark Knight Returns, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, Hatchet III, Shrek 3, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Predators, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Mission Impossible III, Son of Frankenstein, Tetsuo: The Bullet Man, Nightmare on Elm Street 3, Ocean's Thirteen, Captain America: Civil War, Clear and Present Danger, Star Trek III, and Lethal Weapon 3 don't exactly suck, but they're still not as good as what came before". 

I thought MITB III was probably the best of the trilogy even though I likely had more fun watching the first two. MI:III is better than the first two films as well. There is other stuff i disagree with but won't bother with.

Quote

The only clear-cut examples I could think of Threequels Which Are Maybe The Very Best Part Of A Trilogy were Back to the Future 3, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The World's End, Three Colors: Red, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Return of the Living Dead 3, and Toy Story 3.  Personally I'd include Iron Man 3 on that list, but I know I'm very much in the minority on that one.

I thought Back to the Future 3 was the least liked of the series? I'm in that minority as well as far as Iron Man 3 goes.

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On 15/06/2016 at 11:39 PM, Jingus said:

I read the first one, and it was painfully awkward and clunky in its prose.  The sort of bestseller which made me wonder how the hell that guy's books ever became popular in the first place.  The most ridiculous part was where the Franka Potente character goes into an endless monologue, speaking about herself in a hypothetical third-person scenario... and keeps using the word HE as the pronoun describing herself.  Just pure fucking incompetence.  And using real-world terrorist Carlos The Jackal as the villain in a fictional spy thriller felt exploitative and unearned.  

As for the movies?  They're pretty goddamned great.  I agree that the second one is weaker than the other two (I never saw The Bourne Legacy: Tokyo Drift 3D, it seemed like a desperate attempt to slap the Bourne name on something completely unconnected), but all three of them are above-average action flicks in an era which sadly doesn't see very many of those.  

Hell, they even managed to do a shockingly good job with jittery handheld shaky-cam cinematography and epileptic strobe-light rapid cutting in the action scenes.  Most of the time, that shit just gives me a headache and makes me curse the name of Michael Bay; but the Bourne flicks managed to keep things coherent.  Even though it's moving very fast, it's still easy to see what's going on.  Everything makes sense, you can tell where everyone is and what they're doing, and that's an incredibly rare thing among action flicks which are shot in this style.  

 

For topic of discussion: is this the best threequel or trilogy-ender ever?  Ultimatum is in a pretty rarefied classification, since most franchises and trilogies tend to thoroughly drop the ball by the time they get to the third entry.  Even the good ones tend to be like "okay, Return of the Jedi, Men in Black III, Godfather III, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Day of the Dead, Rocky III, Rambo 3, The Girl who Kicked a Hornet's Nest, Army of Darkness, The Dark Knight Returns, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, Hatchet III, Shrek 3, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Predators, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Mission Impossible III, Son of Frankenstein, Tetsuo: The Bullet Man, Nightmare on Elm Street 3, Ocean's Thirteen, Captain America: Civil War, Clear and Present Danger, Star Trek III, and Lethal Weapon 3 don't exactly suck, but they're still not as good as what came before".  What other examples are there?  I'm not sure if stuff like Goldfinger/Skyfall, LOTR: Return of the King, or HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban should count, since none of those were really intended as trilogy-enders (RotK is just the last act of one long preexisting story, and the others are merely Entry # 3 of much longer franchises).  

The only clear-cut examples I could think of Threequels Which Are Maybe The Very Best Part Of A Trilogy were Back to the Future 3, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The World's End, Three Colors: Red, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Return of the Living Dead 3, and Toy Story 3.  Personally I'd include Iron Man 3 on that list, but I know I'm very much in the minority on that one.  Maybe Revenge of the Sith would count, considering that it's so vastly superior to the preceeding two episodes.  

Cool you agree with me saying The Bourne Supremacy is the weakest film in the trilogy.

The Bourne Legacy was on TV the other night and I fell asleep not long into it.

There are good third films in their own right: Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), Men in Black III (2012), The Dark Knight Rises (2012) and Captain America: Civil War (2016).

Die Hard with a Vengeance and Men In Black III are the best sequels from those series. The Dark Knight Rises is definitely the worst film from the Dark Knight trilogy. I've difficulty deciding whether I prefer Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) or Captain America: Civil War (2016). I've seen the former a couple of times while I've only watched the latter the once. I look forward to seeing it on DVD release. I'd give the nod to Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

The only threequels I rate 100% as the best entry: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). That's it. I can see arguments for The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003) if that counts going by Jingus and Toy Story 3 (2010)

On 16/06/2016 at 6:16 AM, Brian Fowler said:

I just now saw the tag you cheeky bastard. ;)

Seriously though, fuck Ultimatum. I honestly enjoyed Legacy more than that pile.

LOL. Cheers, Brian.

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  • 2 weeks later...

You know, I've seen all 3 of the Damon Bourne movies, and I enjoyed them all to varying degress.  But for the life of me, I cannot tell any of those movies apart, and I don't think I could tell you the plot to any of them besides the general premise of "amnesiac kicks ass in search of answers."

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49 minutes ago, EVA said:

You know, I've seen all 3 of the Damon Bourne movies, and I enjoyed them all to varying degress.  But for the life of me, I cannot tell any of those movies apart, and I don't think I could tell you the plot to any of them besides the general premise of "amnesiac kicks ass in search of answers."

Not sure I agree with that.  Plus the third movie had a brilliant narrative device that you almost never see sequels try to do.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, I saw Jason Bourne last night.  Definitely a step in the wrong direction.  I think it pulls too much from the plot devices from the trilogy. 

You'd think that the CIA would figure out that drawing Bourne out from hiding usually ends in disaster, yet they continue to poke the dragon with a stick. 

As much as I dislike most of the Van Lustbader novels, I think heading in the direction of those books is a better way to go; let Bourne initiate the action and investigate the evil plot himself rather than have the CIA constantly haranguing him out of retirement.

It is all I expected the movie to be, but I still felt a little disappointed by it.  At least they had the good taste to ignore the Super Soldier formula shit from Bourne Legacy.

Shining spots were Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel, and Tommy Lee Jones who turned in tremendous performances and the remix of Extreme Ways fucking rocks.

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I liked the move but the shaky cam needed to be reigned in.  There were a couple of shots where I couldn't see text messages the characters were reading because the camera was shaking.

The chase down the Vegas strip was cool but them driving in front of Bally's and then a second later crashing into the Riviera kinda took me out of it.

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On 7/29/2016 at 8:11 AM, J.T. said:

You'd think that the CIA would figure out that drawing Bourne out from hiding usually ends in disaster, yet they continue to poke the dragon with a stick.

Knowing how things work in DC, I say it is very believable that they would believe it is okay to poke the dragon with a rubber stick in hopes it will turn out better than all the previous times they tried.

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On 14 June 2016 at 7:20 AM, The Natural said:

I was surprised with the announcement of Jason Bourne as I vaguely remember Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass said they wouldn’t return without each other and the story had to be right. I hope so and if it is, I’ll be seeing my first film from the series in the cinema. On the off chance it isn’t, least there’s the original trilogy to go back to. I’ve not watched any trailers for the new movie.

I enjoyed Jason Bourne as a film, watching a film in the series at the cinema for the first time and hearing Extreme Ways mouthing the words to it! Jason Bourne is defintley the weakest of the Matt Damon movies. It's like I said, there's still the original trilogy I can revisit and that's what the new film has against it, the standard/bar raising of said trilogy.

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