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Comment by larrydag | Hacker News Reader

Wasn't the Jason Bourne films character driven adult action? I found those films compelling because I felt I was discovering Bourne's character along with him.

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Identity and Supremacy, I think it's fair to say. Bourne has a certain vulnerability and both cat and mouse are sympathetic and compelling characters. By the time I got to Ultimatum and beyond it felt mostly like it was milking the franchise and covering the same ground over and over.

A note here: The Bourne Identity, Supremacy and Ultimatum are based in books (which have a better, richer and kinda different story when compared to the movies ).

I would reccomend having a look at them.

I read Bourne Supremacy and could barely stop laughing from all the hoary Chinese stereotypes. Ludlum’s editor must have been on vacation. Any of the Matarese books were better than that one.

e: NYT in 1986 agrees with me. - https://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/09/books/chopping-down-a-for...

If you want a good series that's more "realistic" but along the same lines of interesting cat / mouse play, check out the John Rain series by Barry Eisler. It's extremely, meticulously well researched.

Oh, and it's more recent, so you can see how it works with modern day technology rearing its head.

Ludlums books often had issues with the final act, he didn't seem comfortable with endings so things often just get very extreme and almost "and then the world blew up" at the end.

Those movies are from 20 years ago, not really evidence they're still making movies like that.

The last one came out just two years before this article, though the original trilogy ended nine years before that.

The last in the trilogy was 2007, so eleven years before the article and fifteen years ago now.

I didn't see the later movies, but their reception made me think the format had changed.

Sorry, took me reading your post several times to figure out 9+2=11. My mistake.

Also the book trilogy they were based on was written about 35-40 years ago.

And the 2011, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

The Jason Bourne films were fast-editing driven adult action. The character was an emotional blank slate infused with innate combat and spycraft knowledge, perfect for the audience to self-insert into for a power fantasy. What really drove that movie wasn't the character, but the snappy action editing.

Bourne movie is responsible for a decade of shaking cam misery. Only very rare cinematographers got it right, like in "District 9", for the most part it was just chaotic incomprehensible mess.

Agree and the second film was most egregious.

That is kind of Paul Greengrass’ thing. He carried it over directly from “Bloody Sunday” (which is pretty good!) which is why the second Bourne film is so visually distinct from the first.

He keeps things more legible than most who try, but yea… I’m glad that style has mostly died out.

As someone who likes Identity and didn't really care for the rest I think Doug Liman is just a really good director that occasionally has issues with bad scripts (jumper.)

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