The Bourne-a-thon

My neck still hurts from Jason Bourne. And no, it wasn’t from one of the amnesiatic assassin’s patented choke holds, but from being stuck in a craned position for the majority of a five-and-a-half hour epic Bourne-a-thon in which I finally was able to fill the gaping hole in my movie-watching oeuvre: the Bourne Trilogy.

Almost universally beloved, I was hoping the triumvirate might reduce my aversion to the action genre – perhaps it’s a sign of my premature aging, but all that blasting and intense background music gives me such a headache. No such luck. I found Bourne to be just as commonplace as Transformers or even (dare I say it) The Core.

But we’ll get to my own hang-ups with Action later. Let’s start by discussing the movies themselves.

If you’re one of the ten people on Earth who haven’t met Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), the story begins when a fishing boat stumbles upon a mysterious body floating in the ocean. Though shot four times, the floater clings to life and heals up aboard the ship. The man, who we soon learn is Bourne, can remember nothing, absolutely nothing of his past, but for some reason has a penchant for lethal mayhem. The trilogy revolves around Bourne seeking the knowledge of his past, wandering continually further into a rabbit hole of vaster and vaster government conspiracy.

By the end of the first movie (The Bourne Identity), through the hackneyed use of memory flashes (see for example: every amnesia movie ever made), we find out that he was a secret agent hired by a secret agency for a secret mission to assassinate a renegade militant. The mission went haywire when Bourne’s conscience got in the way of executing the man in front of his family resulting in the “sleeping with the fishes” situation that he found himself in at the beginning of the movie.

Bourne failing to pull the trigger while aiming a gun at the head of a defenseless person would become the first annoying action trope of the trilogy. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t happened SO often. At least twice a movie. “Don’t worry guys,” I assured my friends while watching a similar situation in the final chapter, “If we’ve learned anything about Jason Bourne, it’s that he doesn’t pull the trigger.” The action, or lack thereof, is indicative of the trilogies’ general G-rating as far as action movies go. Though Jason Bourne may rack up a hefty body count, he lacks the ability to make a substantive kill, to actually dispatch one of the top players.

That’s not to say that nobody “important” dies in Bourne. The beginning of the second movie (The Bourne Supremacy) sees the sudden and brutal death of Marie (Franka Potente), the second-billed lead of the first movie. Poor Marie had been pulled into the whole affair when Bourne randomly entreated her assistance as he fled government agents chasing him in Geneva. Though initially irked by his homicidal tendencies and inability to remember his past (who could blame her?), she soon begins an affair with the man, making her move as he seeks (for her safety) to alter her physical appearance in what must be the most sexually charged haircut scene of recent memory.

But ultimately, Marie didn’t add all that much to the story itself, so she was the perfect fodder for audiences hungry to feel that the trilogy was “edgy” and could keep you on your toes. The Bourne Trilogy follows the prototypical rule for movie trilogies – a first movie full of mystery, where the hero emerges, a second movie where the hero must experience defeat and suffering so to grow stronger, and a third movie where the hero ultimately triumphs - see Star Wars or the The Matrix for other examples. Perhaps this is why I found the Bourne Trilogy to be so tired. In the end, there was no real suspense to be had, since I knew that Bourne would have to stay around for the next two movies.

At the same time, each movie follows a similar general arc – Bourne starts to snoop around for information into his past, a government agency puts up its best efforts to quash the upstart, and Bourne emerges supreme and proves he can outsmart the unlimited resources of his opposition. Clean and efficient indeed, but also, simple.

Note: It’s been a busy week, so I haven’t had much time to really craft this posting, so my apologies if it feels disjointed. Contrary to popular belief, segues are not so easy.

One conceit of Action movies is that the audience is willing to accept a lack of realism in exchange for an exciting journey. This perhaps gets to the crux of my problem with the genre. In real life, we all know that one Superspy would never be able to outclass an entire network of superspies (there are no James Bonds in real life). Therefore, each action movie has some sort of Transcendentalist bent to it. That is, it perpetuates the idea that by finding some sort of mythical knowledge, wisdom, or key, a hero can essentially outshine the world. Nobody can touch him or her. If that’s true, then the way that we should read each action movie is by finding the key that allows him or her to triumph. In The Matrix, for instance, Neo learns to trust in himself and his friends that he is “The One,” which allows for him to accept his destiny and conquer the technoscape. In the Bourne Trilogy, I just couldn’t find the key. Bourne doesn’t have to learn anything to gain his power, he just has it, and the movies are less about finding oneself than about finding the right person to kill.

Caspar David Friedrich – Wanderer Above the Fog, 1818

Here’s a painting, by the way, that my 12th grade Modern European History teacher chose as a representation of the Transcendentalist philosophy. (Thank you John Morra) I think this is a perfect case where a picture can say a thousand words.

But, I have to admit, I think that Transcendentalism is pretty much bunk. While I admire the idea that wisdom and intellectualism do grant one a degree of power over the world they live in, I think that it also perpetuates the idea that one can “conquer the world,” or at least shut it out and live a solitary but self-assured existence. And overall, I just don’t care about the journey of one man, but about the way that he influences other people and vice versa. Most action movies boil down to One Man vs. The World, and I just don’t find that particularly interesting to watch.

What I’d rather see is people interacting one another, affecting one another, changing one another, constantly shifting in relativistic positions rather than representing binary absolutes. Good vs. Evil? Please. How often do we really confront issues that plain in real life? And that’s really why I think the Bourne Trilogy failed, and why most action movies fail.

Before I sound too negative about the whole genre, I should indicate that there are actually Action movies I do like, such as The Matrix (the first one). But I would argue that The Matrix is vastly different from Bourne in ways. Primarily, though it is somewhat formulaic in that it is solely Neo’s journey that we are asked to concentrate on, we get to see how he is affected by characters around him. While Morpheus and Trinity provide positive reinforcement, we also see him influenced by Cypher (the Negative Nellie on the ship) and The Oracle, whose enigmatic message ultimately proves a red herring. There’s actually quite a bit of substantive stuff that happens.

Take that in contrast to Bourne, whose chronicles are like watching a little boy play video games on level 1, then a harder level 2, and then an even harder level 3. Instead of the complex layering of different messages by different characters who represent different influences, we get a twenty minute car chase through Central Europe (Oy! Who knew being a secret agent was such a schlep?). Yes, I know that The Matrix has many drawn out action scenes as well, but in that movie the action is an irreplaceable element of the script. It actually helps tell the story about how the Matrix works, and what Neo’s role actually is. I suppose you could similarly justify the action of the Bourne movies as a description of how the world of the secret agent works, but I really don’t think it takes a straight hour-and-a-half of heart-pounding suspense to see that.

Perhaps my problem is that I feel action movies should be on the television screen. Their pulpiness is perfect for when you’re sitting around killing time, but isn’t the sort of thing that should be featured on a silver screen, where it commands that you pay it attention. If I have to pay attention to something, I feel that it should have some sort of meaning. Something other than: Jason Good; Government Baaad.

Maybe I’m completely off here. But, considering the popularity of the movie series, I really have to ask, “Did I miss something?”