"We seldom get into trouble when we speak softly. It is only when we raise our voices that the sparks fly and tiny molehills become great mountains of contention."
Movie
watchers and moviemakers alike seem to like sequels. Everyone’s
already familiar with the cast of characters and whatever world they
inhabit, so a second installment (or third, or fourth, and so on)
lets everybody just pick up where they left off. What we get is a
new story, new adventure, same old faces.
But
what about if the same old faces aren’t available anymore? Does
that mean no more sequels? Not in this life! But there are no hard
and fast rules for how to proceed, either, so sometimes it works and
sometimes it stinks.
One
technique with mixed results is the ol’ switcheroo, where the
producers just replace one actor with a different actor and hope
nobody notices. The most famous example of this is perhaps from the
world of television, five seasons into the very popular Bewitched,
when Samantha’s husband stopped being Dick York and started
being Dick Sargent. York had seriously hurt his back and was unable
to continue, so he was replaced, without announcement or explanation,
and the show continued for a few more seasons.
Alec
Baldwin was Jack Ryan in The
Hunt for Red October,
but Jack Ryan looked a lot more like Harrison Ford by the time
Patriot
Games
was released, and he kept looking like Ford for even more sequels.
Richard Harris was wonderful in his portrayal of Dumbledore in the
first two Harry
Potter
films, but his sudden death forced a recasting and Michael Gambon
played the wizard for the balance of the sequels. In both of these
cases, the recasting apparently had no negative effect, and perhaps,
at least in the case of Harrison Ford, caused the series to become
even more popular.
Michael
Keaton brought Batman to life on the big screen, twice, and was
followed by Val Kilmer and George Clooney in rather ghastly sequels
that effectively killed the franchise. Not entirely their fault; the
writing and the direction were also atrocious.
But
what about a sequel where not only is the star in absentia, but the
character is also missing? How do you make that work and capitalize
on the previous films? Well, the answer to that question appears to
be: do what Tony Gilroy did with The
Bourne Legacy.
Gilroy
wrote the screenplay for the first three Bourne films, all based on
books by Robert Ludlum. They all starred Matt Damon as Jason Bourne,
they were all very fast-paced, action-packed, and suspenseful, and
they all made piles of money because fans really loved them. As one
of those fans, I was skeptical but hopeful about whether this sequel
could live up to the family name. I need not have worried.
Gilroy,
along with brother Dan, penned a plausible plot that expanded upon
the Ludlum universe that he was already intimately familiar with.
Then he directed the film (only his third directing effort) in a
matched pace to the previous three films, digging deeper into a vast
government cover-up of a black ops program that has created teams of
super soldiers, Operation Outcome. One of the Outcome agents is Aaron
Cross, and he narrowly escapes termination in the opening minutes of
the film as the CIA is pulling the plug on the whole program and
destroying all evidence, including the agents themselves.
They
also nearly wipe out the top-secret team of researchers who have
developed the chemical enhancements for the Outcome agents, but Dr.
Marta Shearing barely escapes with her life. Dr. Shearing becomes the
unwitting companion to Aaron Cross, and is played quite convincingly
by the ever-malleable, ever-beautiful Rachel Weisz. Cross is played
by Jeremy Renner, a familiar face of late in such movies as Mission
Impossible —The Ghost Protocol and
The
Avengers.
Renner’s intensity and physicality match his rugged good looks
and his subtle skills as an actor. There is clearly chemistry between
Weisz and Renner, which translates into chemistry between Shearing
and Cross.
They
race halfway round the world against time and impossible odds in an
attempt to create a virus for Cross that will permanently leave his
mind enhanced now that the supply of chemicals that once did the job
has been destroyed. As is to be expected, it is all they can do to
stay one step ahead of a growing list of people out to kill them in
an effort to whitewash their dirty, little, secret program.
Other
notable cast members include Stacy Keach as Retired Admiral Mark
Turso, USN, and the cool and calculated Edward Norton as Retired
Colonel Eric Byer, USAF, who are some pretty high-powered, dark-room
janitors trying to clean up this very messy situation. David
Strathairn also reprises his role as Operation Blackbriar supervisor
Noah Vosen.
Although
Jason Bourne is mentioned in the film more than once, his relevance
to the story is very much in the background. Certainly, having seen
the previous three films makes understanding this one easier, but you
could reasonably enjoy this film without having seen any of them. Why
you’d want to is another question, because they’re all
excellent and available on Blu-ray and DVD.
And
it seems a good bet that there will be more from this
Ludlum-inspired-universe-sans-Ludlum. The movie clocked in at about
two hours and 15 minutes but seemed much shorter, and the ending
seemed more of a comma than a period.
So
no one should feel short-changed about the change in actors here.
This was no bait-and-switch trickery where you think you’re
getting one thing and you end up with a cheap substitute. This was an
excellent screenwriter-cum-director who simply and brilliantly
expanded the horizon line of a franchise that might have otherwise
been put into cold storage.
So
go watch The
Bourne Legacy
and enjoy the ride. And check your ticket stub; somewhere, in fine
print, there is a disclaimer that says
the management reserves the right to substitute Jason Bourne with a
character of equal or greater value.
Andy Lindsay can frequently be overheard engaged in conversations that consist entirely of repeating lines of dialogue from movies, a genetic disorder he has passed on to his four children and one which his wife tolerates but rarely understands. When Andy's not watching a movie he's probably talking about a movie or thinking about a movie.
Or, because his family likes to eat on a somewhat regular basis, he just might be working on producing a TV commercial or a documentary or a corporate video or a short film. His production company is Barking Shark Creative, and you can check out his work here www.barkingshark.com.
Andy grew up in Frederick, Maryland, but migrated south to North Carolina where he met his wife, Deborah, who wasn't his wife then but later agreed to take the job. Their children were all born and raised in Greensboro, but are in various stages of growing up and running away.
Andy (or Anziano Lindsay, as he was known then) served a full-time mission for the Church in Italy, and today he teaches Sunday School, works with the Scouts, and is the Stake Video Historian.