What Is Jason Bourne's Legacy?

'The Bourne Legacy' comes out in cinemas this Monday. I for one will be seeing it as soon as possible. It is a very risky sequel; to do a Jason Bourne movie without Jason Bourne sounds ridiculous, but from what I've heard and seen, it is quite good. So what exactly is Jason Bourne's legacy? In this post I will go through the plots of each film, highlighting the impact Jason has. I will take a stab in the dark as to what 'The Bourne legacy' is about, and what the future holds for this franchise.

Naturally lets start at the beginning. 'The Bourne Identity' tells the story of a man who's body is recovered at sea by a fishing crew. Upon inspection they find out that the man is still alive and he seems to have forgotten everything, including his name. Eventually he begins to remember smaller details about his life and soon finds out that his name is Jason Bourne, but also finds out that he has many different personas, each one with a passport for a different country. He also finds tens of thousands of dollars (tens of thousands more in different currencies) and a gun. This he doesn't like, and begins to really question what he was in his past life. Now under the name of Bourne, and with his new friend Marie Helena Kreutz, he travels from country to country in search of his real identity. But someone else is not happy to see him alive, and is frantically trying to track him down.

We find out that Bourne was involved in a assassination attempt, which for unknown reasons, he messed up and ended up in the sea with two bullets in his back. We also find out that Bourne is part of a programme called Treadstone, which is an experimental, top-secret black ops program of the CIA. It recruited only U.S. Service members to turn them into assassins and was formed in a direct response to the Congressional Act which banned the U.S. from partaking in any assassinations. It used a behaviour-modification program to break down the assassins' morality and make them near unstoppable living weapons. After the morality break down, presumably, the assassins received advanced training in sniping, hand to hand combat techniques and tradecraft. The last surviving member of Treadstone is Bourne. The successor to Treadstone was Operation Blackbriar (which I will talk about later).

In this film, Bourne shakes the faith in Treadstone. It is clear the the agents are wound too tight, and you never know what will make them snap. Bourne leaves a trail of colateral damage from Austria to Paris, every time the CIA comes into contact with him, the more likely he is to bring the whole system down on them.

'The Bourne Supremacy' is set two years after the events of 'The Bourne Identity'. Jason Bourne thought he has walked away from his past, but now the past catches up with him when the CIA threatens to ruin his new life. Bourne and Maries have maintained their anonymous underground existence. Fuelled by splintered nightmares and haunted by the past he cannot remember, Bourne moves Marie from city to city, trying to remaine one step ahead of the threat implicit in every unexplained stranger's glance, every 'wrong number' phone call, believing that without warning, he might get pulled back into the world he has tried his best to leave behind.

In berlin, a CIA officer under Deputy Director Pamela Landy is trading $3million for the 'Neski Files', documents about the theft of $20million from the CIA seven years earlier. During the exchange, a Russian assassin named Kirill arrives to intercept the selling. He plants two bombs in the basement electrical circuit: one on the main and the other on a sub-line with Jason Bourne's fingerprint. The bomb on the main line kills the power while kirill kills the agent and the source, and steals the files and money, which he gives to Russian oil magnate Yuri Gretkov. Kirill then travels to Goa to kill Bourne, but Bourne flees with Marie. Bourne is used as a cover for the Russian assassin. The CIA goes after Bourne.

'The Bourne Ultimatum' is where we finally find out more about Operation Blackbriar (which was only mentioned at the end of 'The Bourne Identity'). Blackbriar is essentially the umbrella program for all of the CIA's black operations, including 'lethal action'. One of the many pro's in regards to Blackbriar is the ability for it's commanders to make real-time decisions instead of awaiting for authorisation from Washington D.C.

In 'The Bourne Ultimatum' Bourne is once again brought out of hiding, this time inadvertently by London-based reporter Simon Ross who is trying to unveil Operation Blackbriar in a series of newspaper columns. Bourne sets up a meeting with Ross and realises instantly that they're being scanned. Information from the reporter stirs a new set of memories, and Bourne must finally uncover his dark past whilst dodgong The Company's best efforts in trying to eradicate him. Whilst Pamela Landy has decided to leave Bourne alone, CIA Deputy Director Noah Vosen has other plans. He believes Bourne is still dangerous and must be eliminated, before he finds out his true identity and takes the CIA down with him.

As far as I know 'The Bourne Legacy' is about the CIA desperately trying to cover their tracks after information about Treadstone and Operation Blackbriar is revealed. The CIA decides to dispose of their other black ops programs, which includes the termination of their field agents. However Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), an agent from Operation Outcome, escapes from being executed and, with the help of an Outcome scientist (Rachel Weisz), sets out to get his latest fix of agent drugs (that last bit I got from the plot summary section on the Wikipedia page).

Take a look at the trailer for 'The Bourne Legacy':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdtUdEoE-Q4

The trailer and poster have always been seen the with word "There was never just one", which leads me to believe that Operation Outcome is an upgraded version of Treadstone. We hear the phrase "he's Treadstone without the inconstancy" and Cross says "I'm more than just a science project". When you put this with the Wikipedia part about agent drugs, you get that Operation Outcome is using special drugs to enhance their agents and make them better killers (they possibly use them instead of morality breakdown). As far as we know Jason Bourne will not appear in this movie; it isn't about Bourne himself, but the effect his actions are having. The CIA is scared, it isn't just cutting off any loose ends, it's cutting out everything in relation to their black ops operations.

One thing I've noticed, is that they've changed the running theme. In the first three films (you can kind of leave 'The Bourne Supremacy' out of it because it isn't mention, but it is evidently there) the theme is "look what they make you give". We hear it during the barn house scene in 'The Bourne Identity', spoken by the assassin to Bourne, and at the end of 'The Bourne Ultimatum' spoken by Jason Bourne himself. This theme of what they've done to these men, what they've made them give up; their identity, their past and eventually, their life. In the new film, they seem to be going with the theme "There was never just one", so they may be abandoning the quest into what they did to the likes of Bourne, and instead looking closer into how many others they did it to (and how they advanced their techniques  to get better results).

What's interesting to me is that there is actually a novel called 'The Bourne Legacy', not written by Robert Ludlum however, but by Eric Van Lustbager in 2004. Lustbager has wrote several Bourne books, these being: 'The Bourne Legacy' (2004), 'The Bourne Betrayal' (2007), 'The Bourne Sanction' (2008), 'The Bourne Deception' (2009), 'The Bourne Objective' (2010), 'The Bourne Dominion' (2011) and 'The Bourne Imperative' (2012). I don't know much about these novels but I do know that in novel 'The Bourne Legacy', Bourne is the main character, so it is clear that they're following the trend of only loosely following the novels (they did the same with Ludlum's trilogy). It also makes me wonder why they decided to make a new lead character rather than sticking with Bourne. As far as we know, they've just taken the name from the novel.

What is certain is that if this film is successful, we will see more Bourne films, and there is clearly enough material for them to use (whether or not they stick to it is another matter). Personally I hope it is a good film, because I really enjoy the first three films. I want Jason Bourne to appear at the end of this movie, it will tie in all the films. Bourne was the first, he was the beginning, he has to be there at the end.