Categories: Movies

Matt Damon Dismisses Pill Popping ‘Bourne Legacy’

Matt Damon recently spoke about his old franchise “The Bourne Identity,” and he didn’t have many flattering things to say about the recent addition to the series starring Jeremy Renner. The fourth movie in the series, “The Bourne Legacy,” was a giant letdown following the spectacular first three movies in the series. The action was not as well directed, the fight scenes were nowhere near as intense, and the plot was almost was almost non-existent.

The only thing that made the movie interesting was that it kept referencing Damon’s Jason Bourne, through TV and news broadcasts, showing the new movie occurred in the same time frame as Damon’s.

Jeremy Renner Reinvents the Super Soldier

Damon was not impressed with the movie either. His thoughts went to a different area, a key component of “Bourne Legacy’s” plot. Bourne was a specialized fighter, and part of a program that involved several agents. However, the Renner movie added the element of pills that the men took to retain their strength and intelligence to be these super soldiers. The main plot was Renner finding a way to keep the skills without having to take the pills anymore, else he lose his skills and intelligence.

“I think it’s going to make it harder for us to make another one. Because they used our characters, anything that happens in that world, that’s the ‘Bourne’ world now,” Damon said. “So the pill-popping and all that stuff happens.”

From the sound of it, Damon would not want to return to that world if the new story is that his character had to pop pills to remain in peak physical condition. It might also be distasteful because much of the movie made Renner look like a junkie who needed a fix.

Jason Bourne Never Needed Pills

Take a look at the first three Bourne movies and you see someone who has trained hard to become an expert fighter and a tactical genius. The great thing about Bourne was that he didn’t need gadgets and devices because he was just that good, all on his own. The new movie makes it look like Bourne needed gadgets in the form of pills to develop those skills, especially distressing since he never needed to use them in the movie.

There is the possibility that Bourne already received the treatment to no longer need the meds before he was shot at the start of the first movie, but that seems to be something Damon is not interested in either. With Bourne an ultimate fighting machine and Renner’s character a manufactured weapon, they seem to live in two different worlds, the later almost a sci-fi creation.

It also sounds like the reinvention of the Bourne franchise might have lost its original star for good as a result.