The Bourne Redundancy
Aug. 10th, 2012 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficThe first three Bourne films really got the shakycam ball rolling after Saving Private Ryan took it out of the only-use-if-you-know-what-you're-doing bin, but we can forgive that because they're genuinely good movies. Nothing fancy, just interesting plots, interesting characters, interesting arcs, and okay action so long as you've taken your Ritalin.
The Bourne Legacy--not so much. For starters, look, I don't own these movies on DVD. I watched them in theaters, but it's been a while. This movie takes place during The Bourne Ultimatum (that was the third one, right?), which is kinda weird, because as I recall, Matt Damon was fucking up all sorts of shit during that movie, but everyone here is really worried about Jeremy Renner. I mean, this is 2007, right? What are they so worried about, guy was still on The Unusuals or something.
I don't need my hand held, but maybe just a quick recap? But anyway, I guess all you need to know is that there's a leak, so the bad guys who weren't killed in the first three movies (apparently there were a lot; like, a chick, and the warden from Prison Break, and Edward Norton!) decide to kill everyone involved to cover their tracks. Because what better way to keep things quiet than to (for instance) use a Predator drone to blow up people in Alaska or stage a workplace shooting rampage at a laboratory?
Aaron Cross (Hawkeye) isn't too pleased with that, because it cuts off his supply of mind-altering government drugs. Literally mind-altering; he was mentally handicapped, but these pills make him so smart he can rig up a fire extinguisher so it shoots a nail at a guy (I'm not sure why he does this, since all it does is momentarily distract the guy, not kill him or anything, Cross still has to fistfight him. Why not just throw something at him? He wasted a perfectly good fire extinguisher!). But he's running out, so he needs to get more--this is the plot of the entire movie.
I did have a hard time taking the film seriously once I realized that Cross's only goal was literally not to go full retard. Sorry, sorry--oh, and given that this is a much more elaborate plot point than just "I'll die if I don't get pills" and the eventual solution leaves him bed-ridden and weak, you'd think there's be a scene where he regresses to mentally handicapped and it's all dramatic or he's really weak and has to do something difficult. But no, he just gets a super-pill and recovers from the super-pill in time for the climax.
One thing that strikes me--a lot of people criticize Star Trek and Doctor Who for padding out storylines with technobabble--stuff that isn't clever or plot-advancing, it's just people saying random shit like "Let's reverse the polarity of the neutron flow." I think fifty percent of the spoken words in this movie are that, just with the science swapped out for Tom Clancy. No one at the--this movie introduces a new shadowy evil government agency, I don't remember the name, I'll just call them Mean SHIELD--no one at Mean SHIELD ever speaks casually, or with slang or nicknames or anything. It's never "I need thirteen red-fingers right fucking yesterday or the boss-man is going to waste me!" It's always "I need actionable intel right now, we have a persistent situation with multiple conflict triggers!"
Poor Edward Norton I don't think ever gets to talk like a human being. You know, he's like this Oscar-nominated actor, and all he says is "I want everyone reviewing this airport footage! If you don't have security clearance, check with Sergeant Myers, he'll get you situated." That's not dialogue. That's middle management. Why am I watching this?
In other movies, they'll at least have the bad guys do something clever to establish them as being really hard to beat, like they're tracking the good guy and the Big Bad goes "Check every banana stand in a five-mile radius--this son of a bitch loves bananas after he kills." And the audience goes "Oh my, he is clever. How is the hero going to outsmart him?" But no one in this movie does that. They just get a hundred guys together and brute-force the problem until one of them literally sees Aaron Cross's face on the passport he used.
There's one entire scene where the bad guys are interrogating Rachel Weisz, apparently for no other reason than to find her gun so they can stage a suicide. This scene goes on for like five minutes and nothing happens. We find out that the government apparently has mind-control technology (which never comes up again) and that's it. Couldn't we go straight to them trying to kill her and Aaron Cross saving her? Why are there five minutes of meaningless back-and-forth in this movie?
There are two rules I must ask action movies to abide by. One: If the hero is being pursued by the police for a crime he didn't commit, he can't kill a cop. That's just good manners, yet I'm pretty sure Aaron Cross snaps the neck of a security guard. Not, like, an evil security guard or anything. This guy thinks he's just guarding a pharmacy. Didn't this whole mess start when Matt Damon refused to kill a murderous African dictator because the guy had kids? And now we're just knocking off rent-a-cops? And c'mon, Aaron Cross is genetically engineered, you're telling me he couldn't just knock the guy out? Matt Damon knocked plenty of people out, and he was just a dude. He wasn't even supposed to be Good Will Hunting smart in those movies and he still pulled it off.
Second: If your hero is a genetically-engineered badass and the movie introduces an evil genetically-engineered badass who's been genetically-engineered even better than Jeremy Renner, I'm gonna expect them to fight. Sure, they can chase each other around for a while and shoot a little bit, but I expect there to be a fight to the death. Here, the guy's chasing Jeremy Renner, they're both on motorcycles, so you expect them to crash into some dramatic locale and get up and have their fight. I mean, as soon as they said the bad guy was genetically engineered to have "minimal empathy," we were pretty much promised a showdown.
But no, Rachel Weisz kicks him and he crashes his motorcycle and that's it. And then they crash their motorcycle and for some reason the genetically-engineered super-badass dies, but the genetically-engineered average-badass and the random Rachel Weisz survive.
I guess they think they're subverting the cliche of having an exciting climax that's fun to watch and entertains you and is worth spending eight bucks on, but I like that cliche in my action movies. If I didn't want to see Jeremy Renner punch an evil maybe-clone to death, I'd rent that Jeremy Renner/Scarlett Johannson romantic comedy that only exists in my mind. And Safe did the exact same thing! A fucking Jason Statham movie! What if other movies started doing this?
Comedy: "Fuck, my cousin Stu's on the way! He's a wild animal, guys! He makes Gene Simmons look like Mother Theresa! When he gets here, shit's going down!" (later) "Well, Stu's flight got canceled, I guess he can't make it, so we can calmly attend to the situation without that additional complication."
Drama: "Mom... Dad... I know you're the Republican candidates for President and Vice President, but... I'm gay." (later) "Well, I thought about it, and I guess I like women after all. Don't worry, I didn't tell anybody about liking dudes."
Romance: "Leslie, I don't care if you're about to get married to some rich guy your parents approve of, I have to tell you how I really feel!" (later) "On second thought, I guess I'd better keep that to myself."
And after all that, killing the guy doesn't even accomplish anything. He's just a minor flunky. The heroes are still being hunted by the government, they haven't so much as inconvenienced the bad guys, and they haven't even fallen in love! They just kinda seem to like each other. All the other Bourne movies tended to end with someone getting a comeuppance, or with Bourne coming to some realization, something. You can't just have Moby sing that cool Jason Bourne theme song and call it a day. You have to resolve something. This movie actually unresolves stuff, where it turns out everything Jason Bourne did to expose the government got ignored somehow?
C'mon. Come. On.
The Bourne Legacy--not so much. For starters, look, I don't own these movies on DVD. I watched them in theaters, but it's been a while. This movie takes place during The Bourne Ultimatum (that was the third one, right?), which is kinda weird, because as I recall, Matt Damon was fucking up all sorts of shit during that movie, but everyone here is really worried about Jeremy Renner. I mean, this is 2007, right? What are they so worried about, guy was still on The Unusuals or something.
I don't need my hand held, but maybe just a quick recap? But anyway, I guess all you need to know is that there's a leak, so the bad guys who weren't killed in the first three movies (apparently there were a lot; like, a chick, and the warden from Prison Break, and Edward Norton!) decide to kill everyone involved to cover their tracks. Because what better way to keep things quiet than to (for instance) use a Predator drone to blow up people in Alaska or stage a workplace shooting rampage at a laboratory?
Aaron Cross (Hawkeye) isn't too pleased with that, because it cuts off his supply of mind-altering government drugs. Literally mind-altering; he was mentally handicapped, but these pills make him so smart he can rig up a fire extinguisher so it shoots a nail at a guy (I'm not sure why he does this, since all it does is momentarily distract the guy, not kill him or anything, Cross still has to fistfight him. Why not just throw something at him? He wasted a perfectly good fire extinguisher!). But he's running out, so he needs to get more--this is the plot of the entire movie.
I did have a hard time taking the film seriously once I realized that Cross's only goal was literally not to go full retard. Sorry, sorry--oh, and given that this is a much more elaborate plot point than just "I'll die if I don't get pills" and the eventual solution leaves him bed-ridden and weak, you'd think there's be a scene where he regresses to mentally handicapped and it's all dramatic or he's really weak and has to do something difficult. But no, he just gets a super-pill and recovers from the super-pill in time for the climax.
One thing that strikes me--a lot of people criticize Star Trek and Doctor Who for padding out storylines with technobabble--stuff that isn't clever or plot-advancing, it's just people saying random shit like "Let's reverse the polarity of the neutron flow." I think fifty percent of the spoken words in this movie are that, just with the science swapped out for Tom Clancy. No one at the--this movie introduces a new shadowy evil government agency, I don't remember the name, I'll just call them Mean SHIELD--no one at Mean SHIELD ever speaks casually, or with slang or nicknames or anything. It's never "I need thirteen red-fingers right fucking yesterday or the boss-man is going to waste me!" It's always "I need actionable intel right now, we have a persistent situation with multiple conflict triggers!"
Poor Edward Norton I don't think ever gets to talk like a human being. You know, he's like this Oscar-nominated actor, and all he says is "I want everyone reviewing this airport footage! If you don't have security clearance, check with Sergeant Myers, he'll get you situated." That's not dialogue. That's middle management. Why am I watching this?
In other movies, they'll at least have the bad guys do something clever to establish them as being really hard to beat, like they're tracking the good guy and the Big Bad goes "Check every banana stand in a five-mile radius--this son of a bitch loves bananas after he kills." And the audience goes "Oh my, he is clever. How is the hero going to outsmart him?" But no one in this movie does that. They just get a hundred guys together and brute-force the problem until one of them literally sees Aaron Cross's face on the passport he used.
There's one entire scene where the bad guys are interrogating Rachel Weisz, apparently for no other reason than to find her gun so they can stage a suicide. This scene goes on for like five minutes and nothing happens. We find out that the government apparently has mind-control technology (which never comes up again) and that's it. Couldn't we go straight to them trying to kill her and Aaron Cross saving her? Why are there five minutes of meaningless back-and-forth in this movie?
There are two rules I must ask action movies to abide by. One: If the hero is being pursued by the police for a crime he didn't commit, he can't kill a cop. That's just good manners, yet I'm pretty sure Aaron Cross snaps the neck of a security guard. Not, like, an evil security guard or anything. This guy thinks he's just guarding a pharmacy. Didn't this whole mess start when Matt Damon refused to kill a murderous African dictator because the guy had kids? And now we're just knocking off rent-a-cops? And c'mon, Aaron Cross is genetically engineered, you're telling me he couldn't just knock the guy out? Matt Damon knocked plenty of people out, and he was just a dude. He wasn't even supposed to be Good Will Hunting smart in those movies and he still pulled it off.
Second: If your hero is a genetically-engineered badass and the movie introduces an evil genetically-engineered badass who's been genetically-engineered even better than Jeremy Renner, I'm gonna expect them to fight. Sure, they can chase each other around for a while and shoot a little bit, but I expect there to be a fight to the death. Here, the guy's chasing Jeremy Renner, they're both on motorcycles, so you expect them to crash into some dramatic locale and get up and have their fight. I mean, as soon as they said the bad guy was genetically engineered to have "minimal empathy," we were pretty much promised a showdown.
But no, Rachel Weisz kicks him and he crashes his motorcycle and that's it. And then they crash their motorcycle and for some reason the genetically-engineered super-badass dies, but the genetically-engineered average-badass and the random Rachel Weisz survive.
I guess they think they're subverting the cliche of having an exciting climax that's fun to watch and entertains you and is worth spending eight bucks on, but I like that cliche in my action movies. If I didn't want to see Jeremy Renner punch an evil maybe-clone to death, I'd rent that Jeremy Renner/Scarlett Johannson romantic comedy that only exists in my mind. And Safe did the exact same thing! A fucking Jason Statham movie! What if other movies started doing this?
Comedy: "Fuck, my cousin Stu's on the way! He's a wild animal, guys! He makes Gene Simmons look like Mother Theresa! When he gets here, shit's going down!" (later) "Well, Stu's flight got canceled, I guess he can't make it, so we can calmly attend to the situation without that additional complication."
Drama: "Mom... Dad... I know you're the Republican candidates for President and Vice President, but... I'm gay." (later) "Well, I thought about it, and I guess I like women after all. Don't worry, I didn't tell anybody about liking dudes."
Romance: "Leslie, I don't care if you're about to get married to some rich guy your parents approve of, I have to tell you how I really feel!" (later) "On second thought, I guess I'd better keep that to myself."
And after all that, killing the guy doesn't even accomplish anything. He's just a minor flunky. The heroes are still being hunted by the government, they haven't so much as inconvenienced the bad guys, and they haven't even fallen in love! They just kinda seem to like each other. All the other Bourne movies tended to end with someone getting a comeuppance, or with Bourne coming to some realization, something. You can't just have Moby sing that cool Jason Bourne theme song and call it a day. You have to resolve something. This movie actually unresolves stuff, where it turns out everything Jason Bourne did to expose the government got ignored somehow?
C'mon. Come. On.
