MATT DAMON!

[Skywalker]

I read the first novel, as a kid, in the 1970s, and even I could see that J.B. was an Americanized knockoff of J.B., right down to the loss of memory being a plot point (Bond suffers amnesia at the conclusion of You Only Live Twice, if memory serves, and has tried to kill M by The Man with the Golden Gun). But whereas Fleming at least tried to develop Bond as a character, Ludlum was all endless dialogue and plot, murky as it was. I couldn't even listen to the book on tape, read by the late, great Darrin McGavin, because the narrative itself was so banal. But the thin framework that was the novel was great for a film that essentially is one big chase.

Sorry, that part just made me giggle.

 

[yakueb]

I would agree that Bourne is a ripoff trilogy, but not just of Bond. To me it seems that the novels were crafted by lifting ever cliche story idea to appear in a spy novel and smash them into one ridiculous mish-mash.

I mean, he even has no memory! It's like Ludlum watched any one random anime, Rambo II, a couple of bond flicks, Enemy of the State, got high and played Splinter Cell, then sat down and popped out the convoluted and nearly unreadable Bourne Identity.

I know, it is considered one of, if not the best, spy novels of all time, but it still sucks. I think it is because, for the most part, spy novels suck.

Now THAT I agree with.

Never read the books, never interested in spy novels at all... but the movies... don't knock the movies!

I'm gonna go ahead and knock the movies too. For me, it is impossible to make a good film when such and amazingly tired and ultimately amateurish device such as amnesia is used; in every story, the audience and the character learn something about who they are. So when the main character starts the work as a blank slate, that means that the author gets a free pass: The character doesn't have to evolve at all, he just has to figure out who he is! Secondly, when you start to write you discover who the character is and then make a story that fits around him in a logical way, or you make a character that fits into your story. If you start with a character that isn't a character, then that's just sloppy writing. Connected to that is the fact that amnesia in bad fiction, like Bourne, is so terrible convenient: He doesn't know anything about himself at all, but he can still field dress a rifle and do martial arts. Again, a bad writing process turned into a narrative: You have a character that can do just about anything, but you don't have to know anything about him. The author can just start dropping hints until he figures it all out.

Also, MEMORY DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY!
There is no way to lose your personal memories and retain all of your functional ones; the brain doesn't store them in two different places. The first time he started kicking and name taking he would remember his training, and then it would all start to come together. Memory is an index of references.

On to the Screen Adaptation!
Besides the stated bad writing, the Bourne movies were what I call Stupid Action Movies, where half of the screen time is dedicated to kicking and blowing stuff up instead of moving the plot and developing the characters. A good word for it would almost be vapid; the action is there to 'thrill' the audience, but I am no longer 'thrilled' by such spectacles. Give me some content! For the James Bond analogy, Casino Royal was a smart action movie, where there are only a few fight scenes where all that is going on is that people are fighting. For the entire rest of the movie we are watching Bond as he attempts to Salvage his Humanity, and then towards the end he gives up on this goal (when he is betrayed by his lover) and he becomes even more cold blooded and contemptful than before. It's fantastic.
Quantum was a stupid action movie wherein most of the picture is nothing but Danial Craig running away from people in all sorts of machines, or blowing them up. It tries in the last 10 minutes to make the movie as cerebral as Casino, and of course, it fails. Hard.

The Bourne Movies are like Quantum: They want to be deep, and they want to make you think about what it means to not know who you are (Get it! Ha Ha Ha, wait, no, it really is that simple of an allegory), but instead it blows stuff up.

Yawn.

 

[24thcenstfan]

Matt Damon!

I was never on board with him as Kirk anyway...going all the way back to when his consideration was just a kernel of a rumor. I felt that he was too old for the part, too name brand and not versatile enough of an actor to make me believe he was Kirk.