The Bourne Misadventure?

I love the Bourne films; they’ve done wonders for my opinion of Matt Damon and are quite rare for an action film: great set pieces with a thoughtful storyline.

The trilogy, I use the term because that’s how I view the story, explores Jason Bourne’s attempt to find out who he is but also why he is. It’s a constant struggle, with every answer opening up a bigger question. The third film, last summers blockbuster The Bourne Ultimatum, was well placed to be the end of the story but three Oscars and a ton of money made means talk of yet another sequel.

I think it’s a bad idea. I know film appreciation means very little in the face of rational economics but the story and the character are best served as they stand in the three films. The only way I could see this working would be to set it before the trilogy but even then it’d lose much of its human dimension (the search for who he is) because he was little more than a emotionless killing machine with no interest beyond his mission.

Bourne works because it’s about a journey from one place to another, about redemption and finding new life out of the bad of the old. To add another film furthering this idea would label it and undermine the earlier films. To do a prequel would, for me, detract from those films.

Bourne again? No thanks!