The news that viewers may receive a Jason Bourne franchise reboot might sound promising, but I’m old enough to remember the last time that the franchise received a new face, and it wasn’t all that successful. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Jason Bourne franchise may soon find a new home. The rights to the lucrative spy series are being shopped around by WME, with industry heavy-hitters like Apple, Netflix, and Skydance reportedly meeting with the rights holders.

This might sound exciting to anyone who misses the Bourne movies and wishes viewers had gotten to see more from the amnesiac super-spy. However, although the original Jason Bourne trilogy is a rare movie series that improves with each outing, I’m cautious about getting overly invested in the future of this reboot. After all, 2012’s largely forgotten franchise outing tried to reboot the series once already, and the result was an under-baked affair that failed to do justice to the promising premise of the series.

The Bourne Legacy Was Effectively A Jason Bourne Reboot

Jeremy Renner Briefly Replaced Matt Damon As The Franchise’s Hero

Although 2012’s The Bourne Legacy was directed by The Bourne Ultimatum screenwriter Tony Gilroy, the movie failed to recapture the paranoid atmosphere of the original trilogy and its bruising, brutal action. Jeremy Renner replaced Matt Damon as the protagonist although, interestingly, he did not play a recast version of Jason Bourne. Instead, Renner played the original character Aaron Cross, allowing The Bourne Legacy to build on the universe established in the original trilogy instead of creating a new timeline for the franchise.

On the surface, this seems like a great idea. The original Jason Bourne trilogy was a superb set of spy thrillers that redefined the genre in the wake of 9/11, offering viewers an edgier, more cynical, and grounded vision of espionage more in line with Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation than Roger Moore’s James Bond movies. Indeed, even Daniel Craig’s James Bond movies borrowed Bourne’s relative realism, dispensing with one-liners and campy villains in favor of an anguished antihero and darker, grittier storylines. By 2012, the Jason Bourne movies reshaped the public’s expectations of spy movies.

As such, the reboot seemed to have a fairly straightforward job. However, the trilogy’s popularity was a mixed blessing. By the time the reboot arrived, The Bourne Legacy felt tired and flat, according to critics. The main issue was that the trilogy’s popularity gave rise to movies like Body of Lies, Green Zone, Haywire, Craig’s first two James Bond outings, and a slew of other spy thrillers that ironically made The Bourne Legacy feel redundant.

The Bourne Legacy’s Reception Suggests The Franchise Doesn’t Work Without Matt Damon

Renner’s Reboot Received Middling Reviews

The reason that Renner’s Jason Bourne reboot never received a sequel was that The Bourne Legacy felt uniquely unessential compared to the urgency of the original trilogy. Damon’s spy thrillers hummed with life and felt closely tied to real-world geopolitics, whereas the plot of The Bourne Legacy was simultaneously duller while also feeling more far-fetched. The sci-fi elements seemed to be beamed in from a sillier, campier story, but the stony-faced Renner played everything ᴅᴇᴀᴅ straight.

The result was a dour effort that lacked both the intensity of the original trilogy and its believability. Renner’s turn as Aaron Cross wasn’t the worst thing about The Bourne Legacy, but the performance did seem to reaffirm that the franchise didn’t work without Damon to anchor its action. Cross was much more like a classic action hero than Damon’s morally conflicted ᴀssᴀssin and, compared to 2016’s Jason Bourne, the reboot lacked the gravitas and surprisingly tragic edge brought by its original hero.

What A Jason Bourne Reboot Can Learn From The Bourne Legacy

The Bourne Legacy Needed To Feel More Like The Original Trilogy

For a new Jason Bourne reboot to work, the movie must avoid the mistakes made by 2012’s The Bourne Legacy. The villain of Jason Bourne’s next reboot must feel real, like the shadowy CIA operatives of the original trilogy, instead of outlandish. Where The Bourne Legacy concerned itself with killer viruses and super-soldier serums, the reboot should instead be focused on black sites, clandestine extra-governmental programs, and other realistic issues raised by the original trilogy. More than anything, the next Jason Bourne outing needs to be rooted in reality rather than over-the-top spy cinema tropes.

Thanks to Tom Cruise, the Mission: Impossible series will always have Jason Bourne beaten when it comes to wacky, larger-than-life villains and absurd stunts. Thus, the Jason Bourne series must drop the sci-fi elements and offer viewers something that feels closer to real-life espionage. This is what the original trilogy’s dim view of the CIA provided, and what 2016’s Jason Bourne tapped into surprisingly well despite almost a decade pᴀssing between The Bourne Ultimatum’s arrival and its release. Thus, any future Jason Bourne franchise reboot needs to prioritize this.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter