The man with two gunshots wounds and no memory has come a long way since The Bourne Identity, which is what led star Matt Damon to back away from the series after three installments. When the fourth movie, a spin-off featuring a new character played by Jeremy Renner, stumbled with critics and audiences, the lucrative franchise suddenly needed a resurgence to maintain its commercial appeal. In a move that surely made distributor Universal Pictures very happy, two-time series director Paul Greengrass and Damon agreed to come back for another film, and the Renner sequel was bumped to make room for the returning duo.
Don’t feel too bad for Renner, though. His second film is still slated for production, which leaves the Bourne universe on an odd two-way track. The team seems to be acknowledging this identity crisis (get it?) with this film’s title, Jason Bourne, which abandons the series’ usual title structure to specify that this film is about Damon’s Jason and not Renner’s Alex Cross.
The trailer spends much time addressing the very question that made Damon leave the series in the first place: where else can this character go? It keeps things vague with references to Edward Snowden and a mysterious ‘it’ within the CIA that Bourne was previously unaware of, but it doesn’t lose sight of the high-octane action that was the series’ selling point, either. Two big set pieces are revealed and Greengrass’ signature hand-held camerawork returns. This all seems to indicate that the fifth film will take the series back to the style of the second and third entries, but where the series will go long-term remains a fitting mystery.
Jason Bourne is directed by Paul Greengrass and stars Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, and Vincent Cassel. It will be released in the U.K. on July 28th, 2016 and in the U.S. on July 29th, 2016. International release dates can be found here.
Are you excited for the return of Greengrass and Damon? Let us know in the comments!
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