Of men and memory
Aug. 21st, 2007 02:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenThe Bourne Ultimatum really should have been stellar. As is, it was mostly just good. I don't want to say I didn't like it, but I definitely am disappointed on some levels, most having nothing to do with the quality of the thing or the story as a whole. I think the problems I take issue with really started in The Bourne Supremacy, for all that I really love that film. It's like with X-Men: The Last Stand--the problems of the third movie are really that movie's own fault, but they were not helped by problems in the preceding films.
What bothered me about Ultimatum is the heavier reliance on flashbacks as reveletory. Even in The Bourne Identity, they abused the snippets of memory coming back to Bourne plotline. However, by the time Supremacy rolled around, he was still, largely, operating in the dark. The suspense of Identity is that Jason Bourne has no idea who Jason Bourne is and why being Jason Bourne is so dangerous. There's really nothing that can top that--the journey of discovery of the self, literally. Supremacy did very well with tearing down the new Bourne that had been built out of the ashes of the old--no matter how he is reborn, he is still the same person whether he likes it or not.
So, if the journey is discovery then acceptance...what next? Bourne rejects his old self in Identity and defends himself and his old self in Supremacy. Where do you go from acceptance? Atonement, I suppose. And that is in there, in a way, though Bourne's exports being pored over in columnist's snark? Unbelievable. After the Plame scandal, did we ever go into detail about what, exactly, she'd done as a spy? Who she'd been in contact with? I was under the impression that no former spook is ever so eulogized. That's the mark of a damned good spy, isn't it?
The theme was off, then, and that was not helped by ret-conning or, at least, retroactively reimagining the scene at the end of Supremacy. It's sort of like the dismal view thrown on the series by the way Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines ended. T2 ended with such hope, was tied off neatly if not completely, and left unscripted. That's how the scene in Supremacy with Bourne and Landy on the phone felt, and it really hurt that it was reshot so the coyness and gratitude and relief of it were sucked out of it and thrown into seriousness once more. It would have been better to have Landy, amidst a second hunt for Bourne, possibly examined for having made that phone call several weeks previous.
I'm still not putting that right. Damn it. I did enjoy the film, but still...
I think my problem is that the formula showed too much and added too little. Like with James Bond--you knew, in the old movies, that something outlandish would happen to threaten humanity as we know it; an outsize villain with a henchman who might as well have had mutant powers would show up and menace people; Bond would screw some anonymous chick but work his way into the bed of another throughout the whole movie; and he'd save the day using gadgets revealed to him by Q in an earlier scene. Much the same way, The Bourne Ultimatum ran through the numbers and did so less effectively. Hi, actual cities in Europe, Africa, and America! Otherwise known as the, "Fabulous and real city" money shot. And here's the elaborate, if awesome, fight scene with the guy who isn't quite as good as Bourne. Awkward personal moment, check. Painful (?) memory reappearances at inconvenient times. Hello, Julia Stiles. Blustering at CIA shot. Etc etc.
Didn't like the way the problem was resolved either. Won't say more than that without a cut-tag for now.
What bothered me about Ultimatum is the heavier reliance on flashbacks as reveletory. Even in The Bourne Identity, they abused the snippets of memory coming back to Bourne plotline. However, by the time Supremacy rolled around, he was still, largely, operating in the dark. The suspense of Identity is that Jason Bourne has no idea who Jason Bourne is and why being Jason Bourne is so dangerous. There's really nothing that can top that--the journey of discovery of the self, literally. Supremacy did very well with tearing down the new Bourne that had been built out of the ashes of the old--no matter how he is reborn, he is still the same person whether he likes it or not.
So, if the journey is discovery then acceptance...what next? Bourne rejects his old self in Identity and defends himself and his old self in Supremacy. Where do you go from acceptance? Atonement, I suppose. And that is in there, in a way, though Bourne's exports being pored over in columnist's snark? Unbelievable. After the Plame scandal, did we ever go into detail about what, exactly, she'd done as a spy? Who she'd been in contact with? I was under the impression that no former spook is ever so eulogized. That's the mark of a damned good spy, isn't it?
The theme was off, then, and that was not helped by ret-conning or, at least, retroactively reimagining the scene at the end of Supremacy. It's sort of like the dismal view thrown on the series by the way Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines ended. T2 ended with such hope, was tied off neatly if not completely, and left unscripted. That's how the scene in Supremacy with Bourne and Landy on the phone felt, and it really hurt that it was reshot so the coyness and gratitude and relief of it were sucked out of it and thrown into seriousness once more. It would have been better to have Landy, amidst a second hunt for Bourne, possibly examined for having made that phone call several weeks previous.
I'm still not putting that right. Damn it. I did enjoy the film, but still...
I think my problem is that the formula showed too much and added too little. Like with James Bond--you knew, in the old movies, that something outlandish would happen to threaten humanity as we know it; an outsize villain with a henchman who might as well have had mutant powers would show up and menace people; Bond would screw some anonymous chick but work his way into the bed of another throughout the whole movie; and he'd save the day using gadgets revealed to him by Q in an earlier scene. Much the same way, The Bourne Ultimatum ran through the numbers and did so less effectively. Hi, actual cities in Europe, Africa, and America! Otherwise known as the, "Fabulous and real city" money shot. And here's the elaborate, if awesome, fight scene with the guy who isn't quite as good as Bourne. Awkward personal moment, check. Painful (?) memory reappearances at inconvenient times. Hello, Julia Stiles. Blustering at CIA shot. Etc etc.
Didn't like the way the problem was resolved either. Won't say more than that without a cut-tag for now.
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Date: 2007-08-22 04:54 pm (UTC)