A new newsletter, on a Friday? You lucky so and sos. From me to you, happy Barbenheimer weekend. Part two on Monday.
One last time, a message to us from the past.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jason Bourne can’t come close to really matching its predecessors. It’s easily the weakest of the Damon Bourne movies, failing to really add much of a spark to the franchise’s well-worn formula. It’s more or less content to play out familiar action and character beats in a recognisable sequence, leaning on what’s known to work rather than taking a leap of faith with riskier new concepts.
Yes, it’s me again, with a reminder that my writing capabilities topped out almost a decade ago. One for the road.
I have gone on the record to defend some truly indefensible movies on the Internet in my time. There is a positive 8/10 review of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies out there carrying my name. Ditto for The Amazing Spider-Man 2. I would stump for absolutely anything.
The fact that I did not for Jason Bourne is concerning. Very concerning indeed.
Welcome to Jason Bourne, part one.
I had either forgotten or purposely memory-holed this, but we were threatened for some time with a sequel to The Bourne Legacy.
You have to assume that a tired sense of franchise obligation, or studio desperation fuelled this, because it wasn’t as if the people were really clamouring for more Aaron Cross. The Bourne Legacy was the most expensive film in the franchise to date, but the least successful at the box office - and the first Bourne that critics turned their noses up at. It didn’t seem to do much better with audiences, either, receiving a B CinemaScore.
Lest you think a B CinemaScore is good, I would like to show you an image.
Yeah.
(Sometimes I forget how badly The Flash did, and I have to pause to laugh. Every generation - and by generation I mean single year - gets its Morbius.)
Nevertheless, you know how the IP game goes. If there’s juice in that fruit, even a drop, that fruit will be fucking strangled. So it goes, and so it went. Universal were all-in on The Return of Aaron Cross. The crowd goes wild!
By 2013, Gilroy hasd been rehired to write the script, and a face that is familiar to us stepped on board as director.
It was… Justin Lin?!
Huh. What? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
It was a lateral move. Lin had just stepped out of the directing chair for Furious 7 due to its insane production schedule, and so he was free. He was a proven action director with a good relationship with Universal who could work comfortably within franchise combines. It’s predictable enough to be a little boring, in fact, like hiring James Mangold for Indiana Jones.
A summer 2015 release date was set, and Renner signed back on. Not Rachel Weisz, though she may have sensed that the franchise was fond of killing women and stepped back. We’ll never know.
This is because The Return of Aaron Cross, tragically, never went anywhere. Aside from the hiring of a new writer in 2014, the only news was that it had been pushed back a full year to July 2016.
To the date that Jason Bourne would end up occupying.
What happened is that one day, Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass woke up and decided they wanted another crack at it. Maybe that didn’t happen. Maybe Universal wooed them over several months to revitalise a flagging franchise. Actually, that one seems to have been the case. In September 2014, the news broke that both men were back for a new Bourne, and that this new film would be taking the summer 2016 release of The Return of Aaron Cross.
According to reporting at the time, The Return of Aaron Cross was not dead, merely delayed, but come on now. This was Chanel vs Walmart. Chanel was back, Walmart was dust. The Return of Aaron Cross was dead, and I can only assume that he was mourned by his three dedicated fans.
Interestingly, a by-product of this wheeler-dealing was that Tony Gilroy once again departed the franchise. Reading between the lines of his benching from the Ultimatum script, we can probably assume his working relationship with Greengrass was poor. In any case, this meant Gilroy was free to take on the Rogue One reshoots, which led him on the path to Andor. Could have been worse.
As a result, this was the first Bourne film on which Greengrass contributed to the script. He was joined, slightly oddly, by his long time editor Christopher Rouse, whose only screenwriting credit to date is on this movie. We’re putting a pin in this untested screenwriting partnership. Believe you me.
Okay. So. What are we doing here?
The business side of it all makes sense. The Bourne Legacy disappointed, and nobody was all that excited by the idea of a Renner-led version of the franchise, so Universal went back to the winning formula to juice the brand again. Jason Bourne sits nicely into the trend of “fixed it” sequels to sceptically received predecessors, like Ghostbusters: Afterlife to Ghostbusters 2016, or Prey to The Predator, or Terminator: Salvation to Terminator 3, or Terminator Genisys to Terminator: Salvation, or Terminator: Dark Fate to Terminator Genisys.
(I’d be lying to you if I said that we’ll get into the trilogy of failed Terminator trilogy set-ups in this newsletter, but they’re always in my thoughts. I aspire to have the resilience and obliviousness to failure of the Terminator franchise one day.)
But why are we here… story-wise? Why is Jason Bourne here, after all these years, when he had swum off into the horizon? What reason did he come back for? The movie Jason Bourne asks these questions, but we should ask them also.
As we’ve covered, the Bourne franchise is a slipperier historical document than it looks. It’s easy to put the original trilogy in the basket of post-9/11 paranoid popular cinema, but Identity’s timeliness was a complete accident rather than one of design, and it’s only by Ultimatum that the trilogy really locks into the nervous cynicism of the time. Legacy, thanks to its general disinterest in politics, doesn’t even really compute as a reflection of its times, except as an accidental snapshot of the Jeremy Renner moment.
The War on Terror had wound down, or at least had shifted into an entirely different shape. The financial crisis had worked some of its way through the system. Obama was President, but circa 2014 we were neither in the Yes We Can optimism of the early days or the feverish Trump meltdown of the endgame. It was all a little transitional at the time. The mid-2010s hadn’t quite sorted out their frenetic nightmare vibes just yet.
Hmm. Maybe there’s something there. Identity, as originally conceived, was a product of a similar political holding pattern, reflecting a world suddenly full of unexplored quiet dark spaces for nasty guys in suits to plot. That could be a vibe, updated for 15-odd years later. No shortage of nasty guys in suits in 2016. There’s a lot more meat on the bone with regards to the surveillance state aspects of the original trilogy, too. In a world of iPhones and smart watches and 4G, tracking Jason Bourne looks a little different. There’s something to say about all that, right?
Speaking of…
In 2013, National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden leaked tens of thousands of classified files detailing the NSA’s invasive surveillance practices to several journalists. It was quite a big deal, but we’re not really here to talk about that. If you’d like more real-world detail on the subject, then mosey on over to friend of the newsletter Isaac’s discussion of the Snowden documentary Citizenfour. It’ll keep you covered.
I notice that the description refers to Captain America as “The Fighting Avenger”. What? Has anyone ever called him that?
Anyhow. Two lines in this trailer, released just a few months after the Snowden disclosures, stick out.
“We’re going to neutralise a lot of threats before they even happen.”
“This isn’t freedom, this is fear.”
Oh shit, right? Marvel were going there. Timelier and timely. Considering the movie had shot before the Snowden fallout, this looks like the kind of lucky-break prescience of Glass Onion’s Elon Musk-alike or Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning’s evil ChatGPT. This was our first chance to see Hollywood respond to this faith-shaking revelation of American governmental overreach, and the glimpse we got here looked legitimately interesting.
But. You know. Marvel movie.
The Winter Soldier, by many measures, is a pretty good movie. It’s high-tier for the MCU. It’s comfortably the most interesting directorial effort by global threats the Russo brothers. For about two-thirds, it’s a taut and fun slice of pop paranoia. Sure, it can be described fairly as “we have Alan J. Pakula at home” but Alan J. Pakula at home still tastes pretty darn good.
What The Winter Soldier is not is a substantive intervention into the debate about government surveillance. It’s… not a lot more than what the above trailer offers. The movie tees up a lot of interesting arguments about how governments use national security as an excuse to infringe upon citizen’s rights, briefly has us think about how heroic characters like Nick Fury are perpetuating these systems and then mostly forgets about them while it focuses on all the fun action and character things going on elsewhere. By the time it circles back, it’s ready for the shocking reveal that the evil surveillance was actually the secret plan of hidden Nazis.
Should we have expected better? Probably not. This was a $200 million product from a mega corporation. Expecting serious critique of American policy is kind of a fool’s errand. Also, I thought it was pretty deep when I was 15.
It’s useful, though, to consider what the approach here is, which I am going to call political-flavoured, or “politics drink” (like ‘juice drink’ but for politics, get it?).
Politics-drink storytelling is mainstream filmmaking’s favourite way of engaging with social issues. The recipe is quite simple. You raise an important issue that’s been in the headlines - be it gender inequality, climate change or government surveillance. You have characters trot out some classic talking points for and against the topic, which will be more than enough dialogue for a trailer.
Then you throw a flashbang in one direction and run away in the other, hoping the audience forgets. You get on with the exciting spectacle. You return to the talking points periodically, enough to remind the viewer they exist, but never as the main focus. If you’re skilful enough, you will have a character involved come to some kind of resolution so the audience feels like there’s been an answer to the debate, but that bit isn’t necessary. You conclude, and cross your fingers that nobody notices your movie had no actual perspective on the issue.
Et voila. Politics drink.
Blockbusters shallowly engaging with political issues is nothing new, but politics drink feels like a specifically post-2010 thing. Politics drink is about headlines and social media and fast-burn, quickly-forgotten debates. It’s about fuelling breathless Entertainment Weekly stories like “Captain America tells a superhero story for the Snowden era” and quick-bite interviews at press junkets. It is not there to be looked at for long, or examined. It is a vibe. It’s an impression of importance.
It’s Jamie Lee Curtis talking about how the new Halloween movies are a study of generational trauma.
We’re not going to get into how any of this is relevant to Jason Bourne in this newsletter. This is a part one, and if 2023 in film has taught us anything, it’s that resolving things is for suckers.
I have said this about other years before, but I truly believe that things were rough in the streets, at the cinema, in the summer of 2016. The summer season started with Captain America: Civil War, which, fine. Acceptable. Then came a procession of fools.
Memorial Day weekend brought the two-car pile-up of flopsequel X-Men: Apocalypse and Alice Through The Looking Glass, perhaps the least successful imaginable follow-up to a billion dollar movie. Warcraft maintained the status of the video game movie as a joke. I haven’t seen Finding Dory, but ugh. Independence Day: Resurgence offered a legacy sequel without the star everyone liked from the first one. Even a Steven Spielberg joint - the mostly forgotten The BFG - flopped. Ghostbusters 2016, through little fault of its own, is now a waypoint on the path of American collapse into fascism.
The worthwhile movies of the summer were lost in the dross. The Nice Guys fell out of sight, robbing us of the Gosling/Crowe detective franchise we deserved. Nobody watched modern classic comedy Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. The best Star Trek of the revival lot, Beyond, was by far the least successful.
It was bad. It was bleak. But I haven’t even gotten the worst part yet.
I saw another new release the weekend I saw Jason Bourne. This new release would knock Bourne, then on its second weekend, off the #1 spot, and then would run the table for the remainder of the month. The two movies - Jason and this one - are fused together in my mind, a nightmarish chimera of post-quality blockbuster bullshit.
It’s fucking Suicide Squad.
Christ. Even the name shivers my timbers. I had hoped that the existence of the good and fun The Suicide Squad might overwrite the existence of its terrible brother, like when I write a cover letter for somewhere I’ve applied to before, but unfortunately not. 2016 Suicide Squad still exists. It always will.
I think about the Suicide Squad soundtrack all the time. Negatively. I think about whether “Heathens” by Twenty One Pilots or “Sucker for Pain” by Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa & Imagine Dragons w/ Logic & Ty Dolla $ign ft X Ambassadors is worse. I think about the song with the Action Bronson verse that begins “I use milfhunter.com to ease the pain”.
I’m so, so tired. Why did they do a “Bohemian Rhapsody” cover? Why are all the classic, massively overused songs from the movie like “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Black Skinhead” not on the soundtrack, but “Fortunate Son” is? Why? Why can’t I sleep?
I was nursing a theory for some time that my experience of watching Suicide Squad in close proximity to Jason Bourne gave me an unkind view of the latter. This turned out not to be the case, but their unholy association will continue in my mind forever.
I think that my childhood ended that weekend. I really, genuinely do. I think that couple of days at the start of August 2016 killed my innocence forever. On one hand, an embarrassing entry into a genre I still loved. On the other, the uninspired, unimaginative, thought-free return of a franchise I thought I wanted back.
More on that next time. I did say about the part one thing.
Next time: Alright, let’s do this one last time.
It’s been a good run… I hope. Still, all things - good or bad - come to an end, and so we are closing up this project by digging into Jason Bourne, a surprisingly apt symbol of how nostalgia is evil and will kill us all. Plus some of my finest Canva designs, as we check in on James Bond, Tom Cruise, Vin Diesel and more. See you Monday!
Just want to say that I distinctly recall reading an interview with Gilroy where he harshly criticized Greengrass. He hated what Greengrass did to his original script for Supremacy and thats why he did not want to be involved with him on Bourne any further.