No lectures please about how the movies don't follow the books at all. I'm aware, I just don't care. I love this series. The summer of 2002 saw Damon out-acting Affleck to lead Bourne to a bigger box-office than The Sum of All Fears. (Well, let's face it, I could out-act Ben Affleck.) I got excited about The Bourne Identity something like a year and a half before it came out. I remember seeing 4 pieces of information on the internet that justified the excitement.
1. Doug Liman - Fresh off two little pictures by the titles "Swingers" and "Go", as director (btw, there's a Mr. and Mrs. Smith TV show in production?!)
2. Franka Potente - This was the first English-language film I'd become aware of her involvement with (Blow hadn't come out yet) since seeing her in Lola Rennt and Der Krieger und die Kaiserin.
3. Mr. Matt Damon Man - Okay, I wasn't really a fan yet (Bourne changed that), but I'd seen him in plenty of movies to know he could carry a film. Everything he's done since has just solidified his reputation as an actor even more than a movie star.
4. A single still from the film - This was actually probably the biggest source of excitement for me. If I remember it correctly, it was a movie still of Damon standing in a wide-open area in an obviously European city. (I wish I could find that still, but I've seen the movie so many times, I'm not sure I'd recognize it anymore.) It was and is that European-ness that pushed the first two films beyond most other spy thrillers. And not in a James Bond way with all the gadgets (this was before Casino Royale.) Bourne is a man alone, smarter than everyone around him, and capable of taking down anyone without raising his heart rate.
And so we come to the start of promotion for Ultimatum. Admittedly, I'm not thrilled that Paul Greengrass is returning instead of Doug Liman. The story and acting was great in Supremacy, but the car chase scenes were ridiculous in the fact that everything was shot in shaky handheld closeups so we can't even see what's going on. Doug Liman kept the camera back away from the car and let us see that it was all really happening there in front of us.
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