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The Bourne Legacy
I can now un-ban the internet, as the weekend is over and I have seen The Bourne Legacy... twice. Yes, already! I agree with ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jade_okelani's assessment of a 7.5/10 score for the movie. Depending on how strongly one feels about its flaws, I'd even accept a 6.5. But a score lower than that is clearly being colored by the inability to accept a lead in the franchise who isn't Matt Damon, because the movie itself was solid. I don't think I liked the movie as much as I did because I like Jeremy Renner; I think the fact that I like Jeremy Renner allowed me to look past the Matt issue and judge the movie on its own merits. So yeah, I liked it -- enough to see twice during opening weekend, though okay, the Jeremy Renner might've had more than a little to do with that. Also, like all the Bourne movies, I just felt that I needed to see it again to get a firmer grasp on the plot. Or in this case, the "plot."
- I can't remember where I read it, but one review said something about how any movie that opens with Jeremy Renner bursting half naked from a body of water is promising, and I must agree.
- The biggest flaw of the movie isn't anything it does (what it does, it does well), but what it doesn't do. It could have EASILY been so much more. It was already pushing a boulder uphill what with changing leads and all the previous Bourne movies being such critical and commercial successes, which makes it extra tragic that they could have just done a few things differently to make it into an 8, maybe even 9, movie. For this franchise, the fact that it didn't suck shouldn't have been the bar. It's almost worse that it was actually a really good movie that could have been great, rather than one that just sucked. At least if it had sucked, there wouldn't be this sense of it just missing being something totally awesome.
- But I do wonder how much of that has to do with Tony Gilroy's vision and how much of it has to do with the studio, which might've given him a directive to keep things open for a potential return of Matt Damon. That would have limited how far he could take Aaron Cross. I suspect that the studio is salivating over the idea of Matt coming back, potentially to team up with Jeremy, which does the Aaron Cross character and The Bourne Legacy a huge disservice. Jeremy/Aaron, as TWoP says, is strong enough that he deserves his own arc, rather than so quickly playing second banana to Bourne. Without the Matt factor, I suspect there would have been room for richer storytelling, and they could have really rebooted the franchise and gave it some teeth, rather than made it feel like it was just treading water until Matt's return. That said, as "setup" for the Aaron Cross character it was OK; you can easily see where it might go from here. But the difference is that in the first 3 Bourne movies, the "where it's going to go" is established in the films themselves; they were all kind of left open ended as to how it was going to happen, but the intention was there. That's not the case with this movie; there's no clear sense of what the intentions are by the end, which is symptomatic of one of its biggest weaknesses... which I'll get to.
- The inability to let go of Matt/Jason is what holds this movie back, in more ways than one. It's understandable that Jason would get mentioned in the movie. After all, the timeline runs parallel to the events of The Bourne Ultimatum and it's Jason's actions from that movie that propel the events of The Bourne Legacy -- Aaron's life is in danger because they're burning down all the supersoldier programs as a result of Jason exposing Treadstone and Blackbriar. BUT it frankly got a little ridiculous how much he was mentioned, and in such heavy-handed ways. I don't think, for instance, we needed that close-up, lingering shot of Jason's name carved into the wood that Aaron was staring at while in bed at the Alaskan safe house. On the first pass, we kind of see Jason's name to the side, and that was enough, imho. Didn't then need the second pass with a long pause. After all, at that point, that name would've meant nothing to Aaron -- why would he have lingered on it?
- One problem that isn't the movie's fault, exactly, is that the trailers were misleading. Not only were there a number of scenes in the trailers that were cut from the movie, they actually fed you WRONG information. To be clear, the "cut" scenes weren't so much that entire scenes weren't in the movie, as that the particular shots they used in the trailer, weren't. It was surprising how often that was the case. Granted, I probably knew the Bourne Legacy trailer far better than I know most trailers, but still. More than that, though, the worse 'crime' was in giving us a different story in the trailer than we got in the movie -- not terribly different, but significant. (Examples: One character talks about "evaluations" that in the trailer implies is about Aaron Cross, but is actually about the LARX-3 agent. Aaron appears to save Marta from the lab shooting; he doesn't. Aaron appears to "live" at the lab facility; he doesn't.) It was a bit disconcerting to go into the movie believing that things were going to go one way based on information gleaned from the trailers, then finding out that that wasn't going to be the case at all.
- The other problem with the trailers (which were well done -- they did make me want to go see the movie, even if I felt misled afterward) is that they show a more linear narrative, wherein we get Aaron's backstory, Aaron has his physical(s), then the lab's attacked, then he saves Marta, etc. Except that's not how it happens at all. Aaron isn't even THERE when the lab is attacked. I actually think the movie would have benefitted greatly from a straightforward narrative. Maybe that would have made it artistically less interesting, and maybe Tony Gilroy was deliberately trying NOT to do that, so he could "sneak" a new lead into the Bourne franchise and get people to like Aaron before they knew what hit them, instead of being resistant from the beginning to an origin story for the new lead, but I feel like it would've made for a better, more cohesive story AND actually made people more sympathetic to Aaron, had a linear narrative been used.
- One of the big problems with the Aaron Cross character is that his "mission" for the movie is pretty self serving. He wants his chems. That's basically the entire plot. I actually missed on my first watch why they were so important to him (for some reason on first viewing of movies I have trouble 'catching' every single line that's spoken; it's like I'm distracted parsing the information I was given 5 seconds ago, so then miss what's currently going on). It was Jade who set me straight, that Kenneth Kitsom (Aaron's 'true' identity, the way David Webb is Jason's) was a man with below-average intelligence (apparently his superior officer in the Army fudged his IQ by 12 points in order to get him in. I can't imagine the Army intelligence bar is THAT high -- they're not rocket scientists, after all -- so that's pretty low on the intelligence scale) who, due to Outcome, is now enhanced both physically and intellectually. Jade said: "He was a blank canvas. Too dumb to know better, no family, and already in the army, so he had a certain code of conduct drummed into his head, and obviously he passed basic training. They totally preyed on a weak, sad, lost person." And Tony Gilroy said: "He has been given transcendence, and it is about to be taken away from him. Imagine that you couldn't be who you were anymore, having all of your lights turned off." I can totally understand and sympathize with the character when put in those terms... the problem is, the movie doesn't do that. The only reasons we get are that 1) the "withdrawal" of not taking the pill is supposedly horrible (but not, apparently, life threatening, or at least that's not discussed as a potential side effect); and 2) given that Aaron and Marta are now targets, they need Aaron in top condition if they're going to have a chance to survive. Those aren't terrible reasons, but they're definitely not as compelling as the "lights turned off" argument, which wasn't presented well or at all, or as compelling as Jason's desire to uncover the truth of his past.
- That said, I found Aaron otherwise very likable. As many other reviewers have mentioned, it's a good thing that he's a distinguishable character from stoic Jason -- we don't need a total retread of that character or plot. Aaron's more talkative, is more of a smartass, is edgy. What he isn't given, at least in this movie, is a higher purpose. It was all about survival for him, which is understandable, but as far as motives go, pretty pedestrian. Jason had that plus the whole amnesia thing. Aaron doesn't have amnesia; he knows who he is and why he joined the program. (As one reviewer pointed out, Jason was trying to uncover his past while Aaron is trying to flee his.) Aaron's fully aware that he and Marta are being hunted down, yet he doesn't make any statements to the effect that he wants to seek revenge or stop the people who are trying to kill him. It probably even makes sense that he wouldn't, because unlike Jason, Aaron knows what he signed up for, and was in the Army, so as a soldier he understands that he's expendable. However... then TELL us that. Either provide a reason why he's not chasing the bastards down (even if the actual chasing doesn't happen until the next movie), or tell us that he's going to. But don't say nothing. I mean, the message in the mirror could have even done the job. Instead of the oblique "NO MORE," maybe "I'M COMING FOR YOU," SOMEthing that indicates that Aaron cares about more than just not being stupid.
- Aaron's lack of a larger purpose is one of the big weaknesses of the movie, and where I think the studio might've had a hand in the limitation. They'd be over the moon if they could get Matt Damon back, and that hope is what kept The Bourne Legacy from being great. They couldn't commit to a higher purpose for Aaron in case it got in the way of a Jason and Aaron storyline, imho. And that's really a shame, because it took away from this movie's potential. I wanted more from the mythology and Aaron's role in it than we were given.
- I like that Aaron and Jason's fighting styles are different. Jason was Captain America-like, in that he was unwilling to take human life where it could be avoided; not the case with Aaron. Maybe because Aaron had been in the Army, or more likely because he was never conflicted about his choice to join the program to begin with (and presumably has been on plenty of missions where he had to kill people), there's no reason he'd have qualms about doing it now. In any case, he's a lot freer with his gun usage, even though his hand-to-hand combat is badass (the Manila factory scene is probably the best hand-to-hand combat scene in the series, imho). Jeremy's physicality makes it all look so believable that he's kicking asses. Not, obviously, that Matt doesn't look the part -- if anything, he is a true beefcake, while Jeremy is thinner -- but there is something about Jeremy's fighting style that looks real, while still being fluid and graceful with his moves. Several reviews have mentioned this, so I know it's not just my opinion as a fangirl. :P
- I also wish there had been some stated potential consequence for "viraling off" the pills. So he gets the flu for a day or so, big deal. There was never any true tension in their mission to get Aaron to viral off the blue pills, because there was no consequence to doing so other than putting him out of commission for a short time. (And we got very little of seeing him lose his cognitive ability.) I wish they'd told us that you could die if you stopped taking them, or that you could potentially die from the viraling process. But we didn't get that. Which leaves me to wonder why the hell everyone in the world doesn't just do it. Maybe there are long-term consequences that we don't yet know about, but the lack of mention of any kind of consequence deflates the tension. I mean, Marta tells Aaron that there were "9, then 6" program participants. What happened to the 3 who dropped off? Unless it's going to be some huge plot point next time around, why not just say that those 3 died from the viraling process (as theoretically, if Aaron was viraled off the green, all the participants would have been)?
- Also, I wish the enhancement stuff had had more significance than it did, other than getting to see Aaron scale some walls and take out a bunch of dudes. Plus, Aaron's background as someone less than intelligent wasn't the best move, imho. I mean, we saw Jason be super smart and stealthy WITHOUT the help of any pills whatsoever, and he was part of the oldest/least advanced program. If Jason had been given the green/blue pills, he'd be much more formidable than Aaron. Aaron's supposed to be from one of the more advanced programs, and is the guy they ostensibly want to carry on the franchise. That being the case, he ought to be more impressive than Jason, and not just because of chemicals.
- Speaking of the other Outcome program participants, where was the sixth? Again, unless this becomes a plot point later, I thought it was super lazy not to show us what happened to the sixth, after going through the trouble of telling us how many there were and how all but one of them died. There was Aaron and the dude he was with in Alaska, who got killed, then there were the 3 agents we saw die from taking the triangular pills (and one of them, I feel pretty sure, was number 6, who Marta evaluated in her first scene). So where was the sixth Outcome agent? They couldn't show us one more agent's death, in order to match up to the number of participants we were given?
- Had we gotten the story the trailers gave us, it also would have made more sense out of the forced romance that developed between Aaron and Marta. We would have better understood the connection that Aaron and Marta supposedly have. If he'd been living at the facility, she could have started developing feelings for him there, and vice versa, because there would have been some kind of established trust. Instead, it seems that she recently got out of a long-term relationship with someone else, and Aaron really just wants her to help him get his chems, so their quasi-romance didn't really work for me. It was kind of abrupt/came out of nowhere, and there was little to make us understand why they would have started feeling that way about one another (other than being attractive people and being on the run together. That maybe should've been enough, but it wasn't). Jason and Marie's relationship started in much the same way, but it WORKED on a character level (as a reviewer pointed out, Jason had amnesia and didn't know or trust anyone else, so his immediate connection to Marie made sense/was believable). Aaron/Marta didn't. And I'm not sure if it had to do with Jeremy and Rachel's chemistry (several reviewers claimed they had none) -- admittedly, it wasn't like they were blowing up the screen, but had the story been there, I could have gotten into it. Instead I felt like it was forced and unnecessary.
- One of the complaints that I've seen a lot was that it was 'slow.' I didn't have trouble with the pacing. It seemed about on par with The Bourne Identity, and as it was an origin story I thought it was to be expected. Anyway, I found the movie fairly gripping throughout. I actually really loved the Alaskan wilderness stuff at the beginning; I think the movie starts going off the rails a little bit once he and Marta meet up (he hides in her pantry, really? I mean, I can argue that he was there to learn info about what was going on and where he could find chems, but I don't like having to fill in their lazy blanks). I liked the action stuff we were given just fine. In fact, I thought it had a really good mix of action plus cerebral stimulation, which is quite the opposite experience that I had with the rebooted Total Recall.
- Another common complaint is that there was too much exposition. Personally I didn't think there was THAT much, and I felt like I had to forgive it because I doubt people were as prepared as I was going into the movie, lol. I felt like, if you haven't watched a Bourne movie since the last one was in theaters, some of the exposition might've been very helpful info to have. (As it is, I think a rewatch of the third movie is all the preparation you really need.)
- I had issues with the LARX-3 agent, who was supposed to be the most badass of them all. Yet he made little difference to the urgency of the movie, and was dispatched fairly easily for being the 'best' that the superagent programs had produced to date. Plus, we're told that he lacks the ability to be empathetic, which supposedly makes him more consistent and an even better supersoldier. But we didn't get to see how Aaron's ability to be empathetic is actually 'superior' to the LARX agent! Unless you want to say that it was because he had Marta with him, who made the difference in the last escape scene... but initially that wasn't even about empathy; that was just about Aaron's desire to get more pills. So yeah, too many loose ends in the movie without satisfying (or any) resolution.
- It's been universally agreed, even amongst those of us who really enjoyed the film, that the ending was super weak. It was ridiculously abrupt. Major motorcycle chase scene, which Aaron can't even finish, then it was over. WTF? It was one of those endings that was like, "But... wait. Why is it ending? There's so much stuff that hasn't been answered!" But not in a good way, the way, say, the HP books ended. Or even the other Bourne films. This one felt more like it was in the middle of a story, then Tony was like, "I don't know what else to say, so... the end." As I mentioned before, there was barely even any setup for what might come next. I mean, Aaron doesn't seem pissed or out for revenge at all. As one reviewer said, basically, the movie had no third act. It all goes back to the weak plot/lack of Aaron's higher purpose. The audience needed more than just Aaron and Marta escaping with their lives.
- As much as I kind of enjoyed the novelty of Marta saving herself (in the lab) and being the one to ultimately save them both (by kicking the LARX-3 assassin off his motorcycle -- where was the dude's gun though, btw? Why not just shoot them), it was also kind of dissatisfying in a way, because... I *wanted* to see Aaron doing the saving. Not to be sexist, but he's supposed to be the new hero. And the final save of the movie is not done by him but by Marta (granted, after a display of some impressive motorcycle skills by Aaron), while he's pretty much passed out from blood loss? And then the movie abruptly ends? Okaayyyyyy.
- Random final thought: Almost universally, Jeremy's performance is praised, for good reason. One misguided reviewer said it was RACHEL who deserved the acting accolades (she was fine, if a little shrill in parts), but as Jade says: "Jeremy Renner carried this movie on his back. :)))) I'm sorry, but anyone who says different wasn't watching the movie." Anyway, another reviewer said that Jeremy brings complexity to the role... maybe TOO much complexity. :)) I can vouch for this because I was convinced throughout my first viewing that Aaron was lying about having lost his chems while fighting off the wolves (since we didn't see it happen), and thought he had some other motive for saying he'd lost them. I was totally like, "LOOK AT HIS FACE, THERE'S DEFINITELY SOMETHING ELSE GOING ON." But apparently that 'something else' was just Aaron trying to hide how desperate he was to get a replacement for the chems he'd lost.
I think Dana Stevens in her review for Slate summed it up best: "Thanks to Renner's smart, charismatic performance and a couple of elegant action sequences early on, The Bourne Legacy mostly holds its own as a late-summer thrill ride—but only if you're able to wipe your mind clean of the knowledge that it could have been something more."
Edit: You might enjoy this Other Franchises That Need Jeremy Renner slideshow from TWoP. It goes from the totally ridiculous (Jeremy as Katniss Everdeen! Jeremy takes over for Jason Segel in The Muppets!) to stuff I'd totally see (Jeremy takes over for Johnny Depp in PotC as a new swashbuckler! Jeremy and Donald Glover reboot Men in Black! Jeremy takes over as Optimus Prime's human sidekick! "The fact that he's not Shia would instantly win viewers over to his side. Furthermore, they'd actually believe his character could score a chick like Megan Fox or Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.") Buuuuuuuuuurn on Shia. But totally true re: chick scoring.
jade_okelani's assessment of a 7.5/10 score for the movie. Depending on how strongly one feels about its flaws, I'd even accept a 6.5. But a score lower than that is clearly being colored by the inability to accept a lead in the franchise who isn't Matt Damon, because the movie itself was solid. I don't think I liked the movie as much as I did because I like Jeremy Renner; I think the fact that I like Jeremy Renner allowed me to look past the Matt issue and judge the movie on its own merits. So yeah, I liked it -- enough to see twice during opening weekend, though okay, the Jeremy Renner might've had more than a little to do with that. Also, like all the Bourne movies, I just felt that I needed to see it again to get a firmer grasp on the plot. Or in this case, the "plot." - I can't remember where I read it, but one review said something about how any movie that opens with Jeremy Renner bursting half naked from a body of water is promising, and I must agree.
- The biggest flaw of the movie isn't anything it does (what it does, it does well), but what it doesn't do. It could have EASILY been so much more. It was already pushing a boulder uphill what with changing leads and all the previous Bourne movies being such critical and commercial successes, which makes it extra tragic that they could have just done a few things differently to make it into an 8, maybe even 9, movie. For this franchise, the fact that it didn't suck shouldn't have been the bar. It's almost worse that it was actually a really good movie that could have been great, rather than one that just sucked. At least if it had sucked, there wouldn't be this sense of it just missing being something totally awesome.
- But I do wonder how much of that has to do with Tony Gilroy's vision and how much of it has to do with the studio, which might've given him a directive to keep things open for a potential return of Matt Damon. That would have limited how far he could take Aaron Cross. I suspect that the studio is salivating over the idea of Matt coming back, potentially to team up with Jeremy, which does the Aaron Cross character and The Bourne Legacy a huge disservice. Jeremy/Aaron, as TWoP says, is strong enough that he deserves his own arc, rather than so quickly playing second banana to Bourne. Without the Matt factor, I suspect there would have been room for richer storytelling, and they could have really rebooted the franchise and gave it some teeth, rather than made it feel like it was just treading water until Matt's return. That said, as "setup" for the Aaron Cross character it was OK; you can easily see where it might go from here. But the difference is that in the first 3 Bourne movies, the "where it's going to go" is established in the films themselves; they were all kind of left open ended as to how it was going to happen, but the intention was there. That's not the case with this movie; there's no clear sense of what the intentions are by the end, which is symptomatic of one of its biggest weaknesses... which I'll get to.
- The inability to let go of Matt/Jason is what holds this movie back, in more ways than one. It's understandable that Jason would get mentioned in the movie. After all, the timeline runs parallel to the events of The Bourne Ultimatum and it's Jason's actions from that movie that propel the events of The Bourne Legacy -- Aaron's life is in danger because they're burning down all the supersoldier programs as a result of Jason exposing Treadstone and Blackbriar. BUT it frankly got a little ridiculous how much he was mentioned, and in such heavy-handed ways. I don't think, for instance, we needed that close-up, lingering shot of Jason's name carved into the wood that Aaron was staring at while in bed at the Alaskan safe house. On the first pass, we kind of see Jason's name to the side, and that was enough, imho. Didn't then need the second pass with a long pause. After all, at that point, that name would've meant nothing to Aaron -- why would he have lingered on it?
- One problem that isn't the movie's fault, exactly, is that the trailers were misleading. Not only were there a number of scenes in the trailers that were cut from the movie, they actually fed you WRONG information. To be clear, the "cut" scenes weren't so much that entire scenes weren't in the movie, as that the particular shots they used in the trailer, weren't. It was surprising how often that was the case. Granted, I probably knew the Bourne Legacy trailer far better than I know most trailers, but still. More than that, though, the worse 'crime' was in giving us a different story in the trailer than we got in the movie -- not terribly different, but significant. (Examples: One character talks about "evaluations" that in the trailer implies is about Aaron Cross, but is actually about the LARX-3 agent. Aaron appears to save Marta from the lab shooting; he doesn't. Aaron appears to "live" at the lab facility; he doesn't.) It was a bit disconcerting to go into the movie believing that things were going to go one way based on information gleaned from the trailers, then finding out that that wasn't going to be the case at all.
- The other problem with the trailers (which were well done -- they did make me want to go see the movie, even if I felt misled afterward) is that they show a more linear narrative, wherein we get Aaron's backstory, Aaron has his physical(s), then the lab's attacked, then he saves Marta, etc. Except that's not how it happens at all. Aaron isn't even THERE when the lab is attacked. I actually think the movie would have benefitted greatly from a straightforward narrative. Maybe that would have made it artistically less interesting, and maybe Tony Gilroy was deliberately trying NOT to do that, so he could "sneak" a new lead into the Bourne franchise and get people to like Aaron before they knew what hit them, instead of being resistant from the beginning to an origin story for the new lead, but I feel like it would've made for a better, more cohesive story AND actually made people more sympathetic to Aaron, had a linear narrative been used.
- One of the big problems with the Aaron Cross character is that his "mission" for the movie is pretty self serving. He wants his chems. That's basically the entire plot. I actually missed on my first watch why they were so important to him (for some reason on first viewing of movies I have trouble 'catching' every single line that's spoken; it's like I'm distracted parsing the information I was given 5 seconds ago, so then miss what's currently going on). It was Jade who set me straight, that Kenneth Kitsom (Aaron's 'true' identity, the way David Webb is Jason's) was a man with below-average intelligence (apparently his superior officer in the Army fudged his IQ by 12 points in order to get him in. I can't imagine the Army intelligence bar is THAT high -- they're not rocket scientists, after all -- so that's pretty low on the intelligence scale) who, due to Outcome, is now enhanced both physically and intellectually. Jade said: "He was a blank canvas. Too dumb to know better, no family, and already in the army, so he had a certain code of conduct drummed into his head, and obviously he passed basic training. They totally preyed on a weak, sad, lost person." And Tony Gilroy said: "He has been given transcendence, and it is about to be taken away from him. Imagine that you couldn't be who you were anymore, having all of your lights turned off." I can totally understand and sympathize with the character when put in those terms... the problem is, the movie doesn't do that. The only reasons we get are that 1) the "withdrawal" of not taking the pill is supposedly horrible (but not, apparently, life threatening, or at least that's not discussed as a potential side effect); and 2) given that Aaron and Marta are now targets, they need Aaron in top condition if they're going to have a chance to survive. Those aren't terrible reasons, but they're definitely not as compelling as the "lights turned off" argument, which wasn't presented well or at all, or as compelling as Jason's desire to uncover the truth of his past.
- That said, I found Aaron otherwise very likable. As many other reviewers have mentioned, it's a good thing that he's a distinguishable character from stoic Jason -- we don't need a total retread of that character or plot. Aaron's more talkative, is more of a smartass, is edgy. What he isn't given, at least in this movie, is a higher purpose. It was all about survival for him, which is understandable, but as far as motives go, pretty pedestrian. Jason had that plus the whole amnesia thing. Aaron doesn't have amnesia; he knows who he is and why he joined the program. (As one reviewer pointed out, Jason was trying to uncover his past while Aaron is trying to flee his.) Aaron's fully aware that he and Marta are being hunted down, yet he doesn't make any statements to the effect that he wants to seek revenge or stop the people who are trying to kill him. It probably even makes sense that he wouldn't, because unlike Jason, Aaron knows what he signed up for, and was in the Army, so as a soldier he understands that he's expendable. However... then TELL us that. Either provide a reason why he's not chasing the bastards down (even if the actual chasing doesn't happen until the next movie), or tell us that he's going to. But don't say nothing. I mean, the message in the mirror could have even done the job. Instead of the oblique "NO MORE," maybe "I'M COMING FOR YOU," SOMEthing that indicates that Aaron cares about more than just not being stupid.
- Aaron's lack of a larger purpose is one of the big weaknesses of the movie, and where I think the studio might've had a hand in the limitation. They'd be over the moon if they could get Matt Damon back, and that hope is what kept The Bourne Legacy from being great. They couldn't commit to a higher purpose for Aaron in case it got in the way of a Jason and Aaron storyline, imho. And that's really a shame, because it took away from this movie's potential. I wanted more from the mythology and Aaron's role in it than we were given.
- I like that Aaron and Jason's fighting styles are different. Jason was Captain America-like, in that he was unwilling to take human life where it could be avoided; not the case with Aaron. Maybe because Aaron had been in the Army, or more likely because he was never conflicted about his choice to join the program to begin with (and presumably has been on plenty of missions where he had to kill people), there's no reason he'd have qualms about doing it now. In any case, he's a lot freer with his gun usage, even though his hand-to-hand combat is badass (the Manila factory scene is probably the best hand-to-hand combat scene in the series, imho). Jeremy's physicality makes it all look so believable that he's kicking asses. Not, obviously, that Matt doesn't look the part -- if anything, he is a true beefcake, while Jeremy is thinner -- but there is something about Jeremy's fighting style that looks real, while still being fluid and graceful with his moves. Several reviews have mentioned this, so I know it's not just my opinion as a fangirl. :P
- I also wish there had been some stated potential consequence for "viraling off" the pills. So he gets the flu for a day or so, big deal. There was never any true tension in their mission to get Aaron to viral off the blue pills, because there was no consequence to doing so other than putting him out of commission for a short time. (And we got very little of seeing him lose his cognitive ability.) I wish they'd told us that you could die if you stopped taking them, or that you could potentially die from the viraling process. But we didn't get that. Which leaves me to wonder why the hell everyone in the world doesn't just do it. Maybe there are long-term consequences that we don't yet know about, but the lack of mention of any kind of consequence deflates the tension. I mean, Marta tells Aaron that there were "9, then 6" program participants. What happened to the 3 who dropped off? Unless it's going to be some huge plot point next time around, why not just say that those 3 died from the viraling process (as theoretically, if Aaron was viraled off the green, all the participants would have been)?
- Also, I wish the enhancement stuff had had more significance than it did, other than getting to see Aaron scale some walls and take out a bunch of dudes. Plus, Aaron's background as someone less than intelligent wasn't the best move, imho. I mean, we saw Jason be super smart and stealthy WITHOUT the help of any pills whatsoever, and he was part of the oldest/least advanced program. If Jason had been given the green/blue pills, he'd be much more formidable than Aaron. Aaron's supposed to be from one of the more advanced programs, and is the guy they ostensibly want to carry on the franchise. That being the case, he ought to be more impressive than Jason, and not just because of chemicals.
- Speaking of the other Outcome program participants, where was the sixth? Again, unless this becomes a plot point later, I thought it was super lazy not to show us what happened to the sixth, after going through the trouble of telling us how many there were and how all but one of them died. There was Aaron and the dude he was with in Alaska, who got killed, then there were the 3 agents we saw die from taking the triangular pills (and one of them, I feel pretty sure, was number 6, who Marta evaluated in her first scene). So where was the sixth Outcome agent? They couldn't show us one more agent's death, in order to match up to the number of participants we were given?
- Had we gotten the story the trailers gave us, it also would have made more sense out of the forced romance that developed between Aaron and Marta. We would have better understood the connection that Aaron and Marta supposedly have. If he'd been living at the facility, she could have started developing feelings for him there, and vice versa, because there would have been some kind of established trust. Instead, it seems that she recently got out of a long-term relationship with someone else, and Aaron really just wants her to help him get his chems, so their quasi-romance didn't really work for me. It was kind of abrupt/came out of nowhere, and there was little to make us understand why they would have started feeling that way about one another (other than being attractive people and being on the run together. That maybe should've been enough, but it wasn't). Jason and Marie's relationship started in much the same way, but it WORKED on a character level (as a reviewer pointed out, Jason had amnesia and didn't know or trust anyone else, so his immediate connection to Marie made sense/was believable). Aaron/Marta didn't. And I'm not sure if it had to do with Jeremy and Rachel's chemistry (several reviewers claimed they had none) -- admittedly, it wasn't like they were blowing up the screen, but had the story been there, I could have gotten into it. Instead I felt like it was forced and unnecessary.
- One of the complaints that I've seen a lot was that it was 'slow.' I didn't have trouble with the pacing. It seemed about on par with The Bourne Identity, and as it was an origin story I thought it was to be expected. Anyway, I found the movie fairly gripping throughout. I actually really loved the Alaskan wilderness stuff at the beginning; I think the movie starts going off the rails a little bit once he and Marta meet up (he hides in her pantry, really? I mean, I can argue that he was there to learn info about what was going on and where he could find chems, but I don't like having to fill in their lazy blanks). I liked the action stuff we were given just fine. In fact, I thought it had a really good mix of action plus cerebral stimulation, which is quite the opposite experience that I had with the rebooted Total Recall.
- Another common complaint is that there was too much exposition. Personally I didn't think there was THAT much, and I felt like I had to forgive it because I doubt people were as prepared as I was going into the movie, lol. I felt like, if you haven't watched a Bourne movie since the last one was in theaters, some of the exposition might've been very helpful info to have. (As it is, I think a rewatch of the third movie is all the preparation you really need.)
- I had issues with the LARX-3 agent, who was supposed to be the most badass of them all. Yet he made little difference to the urgency of the movie, and was dispatched fairly easily for being the 'best' that the superagent programs had produced to date. Plus, we're told that he lacks the ability to be empathetic, which supposedly makes him more consistent and an even better supersoldier. But we didn't get to see how Aaron's ability to be empathetic is actually 'superior' to the LARX agent! Unless you want to say that it was because he had Marta with him, who made the difference in the last escape scene... but initially that wasn't even about empathy; that was just about Aaron's desire to get more pills. So yeah, too many loose ends in the movie without satisfying (or any) resolution.
- It's been universally agreed, even amongst those of us who really enjoyed the film, that the ending was super weak. It was ridiculously abrupt. Major motorcycle chase scene, which Aaron can't even finish, then it was over. WTF? It was one of those endings that was like, "But... wait. Why is it ending? There's so much stuff that hasn't been answered!" But not in a good way, the way, say, the HP books ended. Or even the other Bourne films. This one felt more like it was in the middle of a story, then Tony was like, "I don't know what else to say, so... the end." As I mentioned before, there was barely even any setup for what might come next. I mean, Aaron doesn't seem pissed or out for revenge at all. As one reviewer said, basically, the movie had no third act. It all goes back to the weak plot/lack of Aaron's higher purpose. The audience needed more than just Aaron and Marta escaping with their lives.
- As much as I kind of enjoyed the novelty of Marta saving herself (in the lab) and being the one to ultimately save them both (by kicking the LARX-3 assassin off his motorcycle -- where was the dude's gun though, btw? Why not just shoot them), it was also kind of dissatisfying in a way, because... I *wanted* to see Aaron doing the saving. Not to be sexist, but he's supposed to be the new hero. And the final save of the movie is not done by him but by Marta (granted, after a display of some impressive motorcycle skills by Aaron), while he's pretty much passed out from blood loss? And then the movie abruptly ends? Okaayyyyyy.
- Random final thought: Almost universally, Jeremy's performance is praised, for good reason. One misguided reviewer said it was RACHEL who deserved the acting accolades (she was fine, if a little shrill in parts), but as Jade says: "Jeremy Renner carried this movie on his back. :)))) I'm sorry, but anyone who says different wasn't watching the movie." Anyway, another reviewer said that Jeremy brings complexity to the role... maybe TOO much complexity. :)) I can vouch for this because I was convinced throughout my first viewing that Aaron was lying about having lost his chems while fighting off the wolves (since we didn't see it happen), and thought he had some other motive for saying he'd lost them. I was totally like, "LOOK AT HIS FACE, THERE'S DEFINITELY SOMETHING ELSE GOING ON." But apparently that 'something else' was just Aaron trying to hide how desperate he was to get a replacement for the chems he'd lost.
I think Dana Stevens in her review for Slate summed it up best: "Thanks to Renner's smart, charismatic performance and a couple of elegant action sequences early on, The Bourne Legacy mostly holds its own as a late-summer thrill ride—but only if you're able to wipe your mind clean of the knowledge that it could have been something more."
Edit: You might enjoy this Other Franchises That Need Jeremy Renner slideshow from TWoP. It goes from the totally ridiculous (Jeremy as Katniss Everdeen! Jeremy takes over for Jason Segel in The Muppets!) to stuff I'd totally see (Jeremy takes over for Johnny Depp in PotC as a new swashbuckler! Jeremy and Donald Glover reboot Men in Black! Jeremy takes over as Optimus Prime's human sidekick! "The fact that he's not Shia would instantly win viewers over to his side. Furthermore, they'd actually believe his character could score a chick like Megan Fox or Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.") Buuuuuuuuuurn on Shia. But totally true re: chick scoring.