I’ve started thinking about how the 2000s were a long time ago.
That sounds like a Captain Obvious statement, but I don’t think it is. For some time, I was accustomed to thinking about the span of my life as one big cultural mulch - that anything from the 21st century was all broadly categorisable under “modern”. I guess that’s in part because the decades of the 20th century have been so cleanly defined in our cultural imagination, while the 2000s and 2010s seem somewhat formless.
I was thinking about this because I saw somebody post the trailer for Mission: Impossible II as seen on home video of the time. This both reminded me that Limp Bizkit was once exceedingly normal in our culture, and that there used to be trailers for forthcoming releases before you were allowed to get to the DVD menu.
The nature of old trailers is something has been ripe for stale parody, pretty much as soon as they were made. Trailer Guy Voice is a fossilised joke at this point. Still, though, these things are fascinating cultural objects. They’re like tree rings, illuminating the great distance between the past and now.
Anyway, here’s the trailer for The Bourne Identity.
It’s all too fitting that this really does have Trailer Guy in it.
(Quick side note: Trailer Guy was actually a man named Don LaFontaine, a prodigious voice artist who passed away in 2008 at the young age of 66. In a fitting tribute to his gigantic impact on pop culture, trailer voiceovers pretty much stopped following his passing. Godspeed, Don.)
To me, this trailer illustrates a vast ocean between 2002 and 2023. Practically everything here is unfathomable to me. What was the idea here? Did people think this was cool? Why was this sort of thing the first thing any major movie studio went for when marketing their blockbusters? Who approved the tagline “Danger is Bourne”, and why did they do that?
Some answers are lost to time. The past is a foreign country, and they don’t speak our language there.
Welcome to The Bourne Identity. It came out a long time ago.
Here’s where the personal memory element of this here newsletter series stretches a little thin. I have a vivid recollection of The Bourne Ultimatum as my entry point into this series, and that movie occupies a very important place in my memory. Identity and Supremacy, meanwhile, I just watched on DVD.
I don’t know when for certain. It seems logical that I would have sought out the earlier movies as soon as Ultimatum got its hooks into me, but I have a vague notion that a little time passed. Fumbling at the blurriest of blurry memories, I could try and pinpoint my eventual DVD catch-up to a holiday that was either in 2009 or 2010, but that is truly a shot in the dark. Truthfully, while I assume I watched Identity and Supremacy close together, I can’t be certain of that either.
Memory is a bastard. We’ve said this before. We’ll say it again.
What is absolutely clear is that Identity was not my first Bourne movie, despite being the first Bourne movie. I approached this film, an introduction to the character and the franchise for anyone not versed in the Robert Ludlum extended universe, as a return to a familiar story. This was, of course, not what anyone should do, and the wrong way to go about it, but as if child me gave a shit. I needed more Bourne, and more Bourne was out there for me.
Our past two series have covered franchises that began in fairly smooth, assured fashion before plunging into the choppy waters of creative differences and production hiccups and all that highly complicated jazz. Not here. No, sir. The Bourne series got to its production problems right away.
There are two main creative figures, at least one of whose influence is felt across every movie in some way, in this franchise: Paul Greengrass, the shaky-cam pioneer who helmed Supremacy, Ultimatum and… Jason, and Tony Gilroy, co-writer of the first four films who took on the directorial reins for Legacy. Neither of them directed Identity.
This is the second Doug Liman film we have covered in as many months, actually - he also directed my beloved Edge of Tomorrow. Turns out Doug makes a habit of chaotic blockbuster productions.
It was supposed to be simple. A mid-budget adaptation of a best-selling airport paperback spy series: back in the day, that was enough to land the ball in the net before it had even been thrown.
Hollywood used to make only these. Back in the 1990s, every blockbuster was called something like Hot Fusion, based on a hit book about a sweaty guy played by Michael Douglas who gets into a bind because a foxy lady stole his pen at work and then sued him for gender discrimination and it would make $150 million. It would age so poorly due to its overwhelming misogyny that to watch it in the present day would be an exercise in layers-deep irony, but this would bother few people at the time.
(This is a good reminder to listen to You Must Remember This, the Hollywood history podcast that’s currently covering the erotic thrillers of the 1990s. I can assure you that Hot Fusion is a 1% exaggeration, max, on how things were back then.)
The issue began when Gilroy decided that he would essentially adapt the book in name and vibe only - keep the premise of an amnesiac assassin washing up with gunshot wounds, shuffle a few of the plot points, and then whole-cloth the rest. Soon enough, he began to squabble with Liman, who kept changing the script and would eventually bring the film’s second credited writer, William Blake Herron, on to that effect.
Liman was a right squabblebox throughout production. He was previously known for indie dramas and comedies, and back in the distant days of 2002, it was a far less common Hollywood practice to transfer a director from that world into the blockbuster space.
(Nowadays, of course, you can direct a $15 documentary about your shoe and they’ll hire you to direct Thor 8, but whatever.)
The story of The Bourne Identity’s production, then, is a classic case of creator bumping up against the studio over and over. The studio wanted a down-the-line action thriller with lots of gun violence, Liman gravitated towards grounded indie drama, and sparks flew at the clashing.
In the middle of it all was poor Matt Damon, who transitioned across the shoot from a staunch defender of Gilroy’s original script to the mediator who helped get Liman’s ideas across by disguising them as his own. Damon is comfortably as important to these films, and to their success, as Vin Diesel or Tom Cruise are to their specific franchises, but the story of the Bourne franchise can very much pass him by. He’s an amiable gun for hire, plugging away quietly while the creatives above him bicker. I respect that.
Reshoots dragged on, delaying the release date from 2001 to summer 2002, and the quiet farmhouse interlude at the start of the third act became a centrepiece for the action vs. drama squabble. They compromised, eventually, but the whole ordeal evidently pissed Liman off. He walked before the sequel..
Covering the original The Fast and the Furious last year (have at that newsletter, if you fancy, here), we covered the odd liminality of early 2000s blockbusters which found themselves influencing, and therefore became grouped with, the forthcoming decade’s crop of big budget films, but were a product themselves of influences from the previous decade.
Well, we’re at it again. The Bourne Identity does not feel so conspicuously dated as Fast - in fact, clean up the technology and update the fashion, and the story could play out more or less the same in the present day - but the long tail of the 90s still feels visible here. It’s not so quintessentially 90s as my hypothetical Hot Fusion movie, but there’s a whisper of the Michael Douglases and the hideously retrograde gender values of the prior ten years on the wind here.
Identity is, as previously mentioned, not a loyal adaptation of the original, but you can be darn sure that it’s an airport paperback brought to screen. For the significant majority of the film, at least, this is old school pulp at its chewiest - a detective thriller turned on its side, heaped to the brim with plot and incident and clean-cut character archetypes. It does not feel like an action thriller in its construction. The action is mostly great, but it is both less frequent and less important than you’d assume, subordinate to the film’s - and you suspect Liman’s - actual narrative priorities.
It’s an interesting contrast to Ultimatum, in fact, which feels much more comfortable as a straight thriller. Compare how much Jason Bourne talks in this one (quite a bit) to the final instalment of the trilogy (not much), and you can feel the quiet shift in priorities across the three movies.
(This is to say nothing of Jason Bourne, where the minimalist dialogue cranks up to running-joke levels. Trust me, we’ll get there.)
I have no idea if those paragraphs sounded like compliments, but they were meant to be. In its airport paperback lane, Identity is a triumph. The opening act in particular, which is the bit that hews most closely to the original book (according to Wikipedia), is an absolute treat, a humming narrative machine of gradual reveals and widening of scope until we finally begin to understand what kind of story we’re in.
It helps that the original premise, as adapted from Ludlum, is delicious. There’s a guy on a boat and he can’t remember anything and he’s been shot twice and he’s a secret assassin and the government is hunting him? Like, hello! That’s what movies are made of. That’s how all movies should start. Give me a silly little mystery. Give me a very confused man. Give me guys in offices striding about and getting stressed as hell. Mwah. Perfect.
The old school approach extends to the generous time Identity spends with its love story. This is exactly the kind of thing that major blockbusters - and shows, if we’re going there - are increasingly categorising as unimportant, so it feels all more striking to see a relatively recent blockbuster actually put the work in.
The Bourne Identity’s romance is where Liman’s indie kid side really comes out to play. Really, it’s remarkable how quiet and low-key Bourne and Marie’s scenes are, and how naturally the movie invests you in their relationship. They sit and talk, and then they sit and talk some more, and then there’s a massive fistfight, but even the aftermath of that is explored delicately and without melodrama. It’s actually quite impressive how many romantic one-liners Matt Damon rattles off, and how blissfully unaware his line delivery is. Ditto how Franka Potente cuts through the potentially confusing thicket of Marie’s motivations and makes her completely cogent as a character. They’re two hot people who are hot together. It’s sweet. It’s a 2000s-era mumblecore romance that somehow slides perfectly into a wacky pulp novel thriller.
Circling back to the above point - why don’t we do this more? Why is American pop culture so skittish about romantic storylines these days? Truly, I get it. Friendship is a powerful bond and we must elevate it to equal status. You don’t have to convince me of that. But once we’ve affirmed the power of friendship, and that people can thrive on their own, and that not everyone is ready for a relationship, and all these things that are obviously true, can we get back to putting two hot people in a room and letting them cook? Love stories in fiction don’t have to diminish the characters’ independence. We have to move past this false dichotomy. We can do it, but we have to do it together.
(Yes, that’s correct. This is my SydCarmy manifesto. Their love is real, and their love is powerful, and I will not back down from this point.)
The mumblecore aspect is almost completely absent from every subsequent Bourne movie. Bourne becomes more of an ascetic action monk with every movie, and when we circle back to doing a new love story thing in Legacy, it’s far more in the vein traditional action movie romance subplot. That’s a helpful indicator of how Identity, despite setting the general tone and narrative structure out for the rest of the franchise, nevertheless feels like a bit of an outlier.
In some ways, that’s productive - as mentioned, this is comfortably the most emotionally grounded the series would get, and probably offers the cleanest and most cohesive vision of Jason Bourne as a character. In some ways, it’s just interesting in a neutral sense, like how the action scenes are far less reliant on the wild camerawork that Paul Greengrass would make into their main aesthetic, or the enjoyably dated early 2000s needle drops.
I suppose it’s as good a time as any for a musical interlude.
The Paris chase scene, where Bourne and Marie career around alleyways and down stairs in a beaten-up red Mini, is probably the best-remembered set piece in Identity. We can, however, easily forget the song that soundtracks it. That’s why I’m here. I’m doing the remembering.
Why am I making a point of Paul Oakenfold’s dance track “Ready Steady Go”? For a very good reason, reader. A very good reason indeed. See, this is not the only 2000s action movie to use “Ready Steady Go” as a needle drop.
The moment I realised I could relevantly sidebar about the 2006 film Stormbreaker, which spectacularly failed to kickstart a film franchise based on Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider series, I was thrilled. I knew that the newsletter had finally come together to tell a real story.
The Alex Rider books were part of a hot mid-2000s trend in YA, alongside series like CHERUB and Young Bond, to tell spy stories for kids. You could go to school and be an extrajudicial government agent all in one day! Naturally, I ate all of this up, less as a relatable story about what could happen to me, because even at a young age I knew I would be a shit spy, and more a fun story about the things other, cooler people could do.
Stormbreaker was a bad movie, but it did have an absolutely incredible cast, including Ewan McGregor, Damian Lewis, Bill Nighy, Sophie Okonedo, Andy Serkis, Robbie Coltrane, Alicia Silverstone and Micky Rourke. It also produced some absolutely incredible promotional art, like the image above, and introduced me to the song “Feel Good Inc” at a very young age, so I think its contributions to society have balanced themselves out.
There’s now an Alex Rider adaptation on Prime Video on its third season. I wish it all the best.
In other ways, this does feel like the first movie in a franchise that didn’t quite know it was a franchise yet, Fast and the Furious style. Undoubtedly, it doesn’t help that I watched this after Ultimatum, which offers the pure experience of watching David Strathairn march into analyst offices and bark “Alright, people” at his employees like 28 times.
The criticisms I offer here are less genuine criticisms and more personal gripes, but you know that’s kind of the score with this newsletter.
Anyway, I couldn’t help but notice that the CIA office politics and conspiracy paranoia lacks a little sauce here. It’s not the fault of the cast, which has legends/heroes Chris Cooper and Brian Cox (fuck off) quarterbacking. It might be a little to do with the general office decor that we spend time with, which looks colourful and kitschy and genuinely off-putting in every CIA scene.
I don’t actually think it’s the decor. Unless? Maybe I do, actually. There’s something in that.
If I were to offer a slightly more intelligent answer than “the CIA offices are too red”, it might be that the series hadn’t grown into its cultural context yet. The Bourne movies are an artefact of the War on Terror, a snapshot of a murky and confusing time when nobody knew who or where the good guys were. As we’ll get to, that’s one of the reasons why Jason Bourne falls so flat.
(Yes, if you’re wondering, this is another Love and Thunder situation where we’ll be spending the whole series winding up a punch to give to the final movie covered.)
A direct consequence of Identity’s production palavers is that it began shooting well before its final release date - in October 2000 to be precise. This movie therefore belongs to the odd and very specific class of blockbuster shot before 9/11 that would inevitably come to be associated with it anyhow.
(For another example, please do go and check out the original 2001 teaser for Spider-Man, which prominently features the Two Towers, and was pulled from circulation for obvious reasons. It is wild.)
Identity obviously struck a chord post-9/11, with its “enemy within” plots and shadowy government manoeuvres, but its actual historical context belongs more clearly to the post Cold War vagueness of the 90s, in which America was just sort of rooting around for an enemy to spend its days. At the time, when the 2000s-era paranoid aesthetic had yet to really develop itself, this accidental evocation probably felt powerful enough. From the vantage point of now, seeing further Bourne movies with a clear sense of contemporariness on the horizon, Identity’s political aspects can’t help but feel dated and fuzzy, a precursor to the series figuring out exactly what it wants to say.
Again, I cannot be certain if any of that is valid criticism or a product of my weird viewing order and personal preferences. I can’t promise you lot anything.
Extreme ways are back again.
Moby wasn’t a new face by 2002. “Extreme Ways” is a cut from his sixth studio album, in fact. He had already gone from breakout to has-been across the 1990s, with the failure of his 1996 album Animal Rights nearly sending his career off the deep end. The Dean Pelton lookalike and enthusiastic vegan turned it all around, though, with the release of Play in 1999. That album catapulted him back to commercial and critical success - the kind of cachet that gets you onto The Bourne Identity’s soundtrack.
“Extreme Ways” is great. We’ll go on about its iterative remixes and reuses in past and future newsletters, but here feels like a good moment to enjoy the song on the simplest possible terms.
It’s an advertisement for the joys of shrewd sampling. The song uses two building blocks from decades-old tunes and layers them into an intro that just makes you sit forward in your seat. The mystery! The intrigue! The different moods you’re taken through before the vocals even kick in! It’s like a cinematic zoom in from establishing shot to outdoor shot to finally meeting our main character, each step adding more detail and changing the perspective.
Also, like a lot of great pop, the lyrics are vague enough that it can be applied to just about everything. The song is really about Moby going wild in bars and clubs, but the vibe is so nonspecific that it somehow fits with perfect snugness onto the story of an amnesiac spy finding his girlfriend in Greece. Early 2000s soundtrack choices often prioritised vibe over perfect thematic resonance, and I love that for the era.
The Bourne Identity was released in the US on 14th June 2002. Five months later, the fourth and final James Bond film starring Pierce Brosnan, Die Another Day, would come out.
Placed against each other, and the David vs. Goliath of it all jumps out. The Bourne Identity was a mid-budget ($55 million) studio programmer with a star with plenty of status but few proven action chops. Die Another Day was the $142 million mega blockbuster from a franchise coming up on 40 years of history. Predictably enough, the Bond film made more money than the latter, but that’s the only metric by which it succeeded. Otherwise, Die Another Day was a laughingstock, the unfortunate endpoint of an exhausted franchise’s downward spiral. Nobody liked that shit.
The Bourne Identity, meanwhile, was the new kid on the block, impressing critics and making back its budget over three times over. The gauche, CGI-infused indulgence of the Bond series found its counterpart in the analogue grittiness of this new arrival, and it suddenly felt like a much better fit for the times. The Bourne trilogy would march on apace, while the Bond franchise floundered about for years in search of a completely new direction.
By the time James Bond returned in 2006, it was Bourne that was doing the influencing. By 2008, well, Bond was practically copying Bourne’s homework. Read more about that here if you like.
(Narrative circularity.)
Next time: This out of order Bourne trilogy comes to a close with part two, The Bourne Supremacy, which brings our old friend Paul Greengrass and his shaky, shaky camera back into the fray.
Also, an extended discussion on the trope of fridging.