"The Bourne Legacy" - 2012 - movie review

I've delayed posting a review of this film because, frankly, I didn't know whether or not I would be playing directly into the hands some marketing demon by doing so. Ultimately I decided that it would be worth writing about only if I kept the focus squarely on those marketing demons and their little plan to trick unsuspecting movie goers into laying down their hard earned money on this existential calamity.

Sitting through "The Bourne Legacy" was one of the strangest experiences of my movie-going life. It's a sequel, in the sense that it's the 4th film of the Bourne franchise, but it's not because events here are allegedly running parallel to events in the 3rd Bourne film; "The Bourne Ulitmatum". It's a reboot in the sense that it's attempting to reset our experience and expectations of all thing's Bourne, but it fails in that by relying so heavily on the idea of the original central character (as portrayed by the original actor) remaining intact. It's a remake - even more so than it's contemporary "Total Recall" - but it denies it's remakeness, insisting instead that it's simply here to expand the Bourne universe

So it's a spin-off, which is the term historically given to attempts at narrative "expansion" of an established storyline. But the film makers seem reluctant to use that term and I can see why. A spin-off succeeds by taking a secondary character and developing him or her. What the makers of "Legacy" have done is simply shifted the burden of the narrative onto the supporting characters and filled the void in the film's center with a clone of the former central character.

I've seen plenty of sequels, prequels and spin-offs yet I've never had the kind of experience I had here where there were times when I felt what I was watching were simply out-takes from "Ultimatum", or an alternate edit of that film. As if they'd filmed 2 different actors in the lead and then released both cuts 5 years apart. At no time did I feel like I was watching a spin-off or experiencing an expanded universe because Jeremy Renner's character was a carbon copy of Matt Damon's, right down to the marginal gal-pal.

Bear with me here as I set the "way-back" machine in order to try and illustrate my point. What if producer Norman Lear decided to make an "All in the Family" spin-off using the same supporting characters from the original show and orbiting them around a carbon copy of Archie? What would be the point of that? That's not how you do a spin-off or get "expansion". You get expansion by following the adventures of the Meathead after he moves away from Archie. And you'd kill that expansion by saddling the Meathead with a next door neighbor who was indistinguishable from his famous father-in-law, giving that clone-character the majority of screen time and calling the spin-off "Archie's legacy".

If they really wanted to expand the Bourne universe they would have delved into Noah Vosen's rise and fall. Or the life and times of master soldier-programmer Dr. Albert Hirsch who created all these human terminators. Or they could have followed Nicky Parsons as she tries to re-start her life in the aftermath of events in "Ultimatum". Any of those narrative threads would have represented expansion of the universe. Simply sidestepping out of Matt Damon's character into Jeremy Renner's identical yet supposedly completely independent character is not narrative expansion, it's just a marketing trick intended to make us think there's something new here while keeping the door open to future boffo-box-office in the form of Matt Damon's possible return.

But there is nothing new in "The Bourne Legacy". You've seen it all before, heard it all before, experienced it all before with a different actor hitting the marks. It's all professionally done and everything with all the supporting actors doing their best to earn their paychecks. The fight scenes are well choreographed and the film moves along at a brisk pace and all that. It's just that it's not going anywhere. It's like you get on the bus, sit there for 2 hours and then get off without having moved an inch.

The studio could have done everyone involved an enormous favor by simply announcing that Jeremy Renner was taking over as Jason Bourne and got on with it. It's not like that kind of thing has never been done before, and done successfully, as "Skyfall" will no doubt prove for the 23rd time next month.