In case anyone is interested, after seeing the new movie and being tossed about 900 new acronyms, programs, and organizations, I decided to do a little research and make a flow chart of how they all fit together in the Bourne movie universe.
Everything was either actually referenced in the film, is a real organization above where the groups in the film would be, or is a reference from the novels that I used to differentiate the unnamed military analogues of the Emerald Lake/Treadstone programs which were joint military/CIA (Silverlake and Treadstone71 are the book versions). The logos are real life, from the books, or real world logos tweaked a bit to fit the movie universe:
As far as the film itself goes, I give it a "B."
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Spoilers to follow:
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Bourne traditionally ends up in hand-to-hand combat against another Treadstone or Blackbriar agent who matches him physically, mentally, and skills-wise, so it was a bit disappointing that Cross never had to physically fight the badass agent LARX-3 that chases him throughout Manila at the end of the film, especially after all the buildup he was given. Instead he gets killed in motorcycle chase (albeit a good chase, although reminiscent of the motorcycle/rooftop foot chase in
Ultimatum except in reverse).
Reminiscent is really what could describe the entire film (with the exception of the lack of the fight above), to be honest. There's another shootout of Cross against a CIA hit team around a huge winding staircase like in
Identity. There's the usual Bourne movie cliché of a bunch of CIA analysts sitting in a room full of monitors, using their unbelievable data mining and tracking skills and access to every camera and satellite in the world to basically shout out "That's Jason Bourne/Aaron Cross!" like a high tech version of
Where's Waldo. There's the usual conversations about how amazing the agents they're chasing are and how someone doesn't have clearance to see this. The agents are an improvement over Treadstone, but they still have the usual downside (in this case, emotional attachment) that has to be phased out in the next batch. As usual, the CIA (and this time a new agency called NRAG that oversaw both the CIA's and the military's assassin programs) is spending more time trying to kill its own agents instead of putting them to use. And then end on a Moby song.
So if you want to see a serviceable entry into the film series that doesn't break any new ground but is reasonably entertaining, this does the job. Otherwise, wait for video.
