In 2002, actor Matt Damon signed on for The Bourne Identity, taking on the mantle of Jason Bourne, a man fished out of the Mediterranean sea and found to be suffering from amnesia while possessing incredible fighting, language and survival skills.
As he struggles to remember who he is, he enters into a world of pitch black ops at the centre of which is a dangerous and clandestine unit within the CIA whose leaders are out to kill him.
With his boyish good looks, effortless charm and outwardly sunny nature, Damon may have seemed like an unusual choice to play a hardened ruthless assassin, yet in Identity – and the two films that followed – he created a three-dimensional character that was complex and believable as he treads the murky waters of international intrigue and espionage.
Key to this was also Damon’s ability to project the ‘everyman’ nature of the character; a man who, despite his shadowy past, was ultimately a decent person set on doing the right thing, making him highly sympathetic and relatable.
The film was a huge success critically and commercially, leading to two further features, the equally popular The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007).
The success of the films can also be attributed to the strong ensemble casts brought in to support Damon and the filmmakers (led by directors Doug Liman who helmed Identity and Paul Greengrass who directed both Supremacy and Ultimatum) whose prime focus was character and story. The stark, gritty and adrenaline-fuelled action was always kept grounded and realistic and never got in the way of the narrative.
When audiences understand the world Jason is in, they will be able to catch up quickly
Following the success of Ultimatum, both Damon and Greengrass claimed they were done with the character – so much so that the franchise took off in a new direction with 2012’s The Bourne Legacy starring Jeremy Renner, set in the same world but minus Damon’s character. Legacy was less successful than the original trilogy. It looked like that was that for the franchise, until, in 2014, Damon and Greengrass finally confirmed they would be back for more.
Damon explains the delay. “It was a case of waiting for the world to change a bit,” he says. “Paul and I would talk constantly and the one thing that I always said was that I’d do it if he would. We would talk about projects all the time and we made another movie together in the interim (2010’s Green Zone). Every few months, it seemed like we would have a Bourne conversation, but we couldn’t seem to get anywhere until about 18 months ago.”
Frank Marshall, one of the producers of the franchise since its inception, says: “We finally came up with a story that is current and relevant to justify Bourne coming back. Paul, Chris (Rouse, co-screenwriter), Matt and all the rest of us have been discussing these possible stories and finally, one hit. One of the things that most concerned us was not just having another movie, another sequel to the last Bourne, but having a shift in the modern world that was relevant… which would then inspire us into telling a new story.”
However, the first question that had to be tackled was, “What has Bourne been doing for 12 years and what does his life look like?” says Damon. “That was the biggest question to answer, and once we got a bead on that, everything started to fall into place.”
The current climate of paranoia that pervades, in the post-Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks world, where the ordinary citizen suspects that shady government organisations are monitoring our every move as the debate over privacy vs security and safety rages on, provided the perfect background for the new Bourne story.
Set years after the events of Ultimatum, Jason Bourne is drawn out of hiding when a global power structure hell-bent on manipulating technology to cause terror and mayhem across the globe sets its reprehensible plans on their course.
Damon remarks that “the whole concept of this fourth arena of cyber warfare and what has happened with technology recently is very much in the public consciousness – our digital life, our civil liberties, to what extent people are keeping tabs on us. Bourne finds himself in this new world.”
Marshall adds that although Jason Bourne continues the fascinating story of its protagonist, the story pretty much stands alone. “You immediately fall into Bourne’s previous world – one of espionage and spies,” he elaborates. “And now, today, with satellites, surveillance and easily accessible information, people are familiar with this world.
“When audiences understand the world that Jason is in, what he’s trying to do, they will be able to catch up quickly, even if they haven’t seen the previous films. And when people know who Jason Bourne is, they will just want to see what his next move will be and go along for the ride.”
Joining Damon on this next chapter is an eclectic cast consisting of Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel, Riz Ahmed and Julia Stiles reprising her role as CIA operative Nicky Parsons.