The summer movie season is getting ready to kick off with The Avengers early next month, but a new image from one of the hotly anticipated films that will close the summer movie season has now gone online. This new image from The Bourne Legacy gives us our first look at Edward Norton in the villain role, and writer-director Tony Gilroy recently sat down to talk about how Legacy is connected to the other films in the series, and how he’s setting the movie up as a stand-alone entry in the franchise with a wholly different lead character.
Hit the jump to check out the image and to see what awaits us come this August.
Speaking with MTV, Gilroy talked about how the events portrayed in the first three Bourne movies are addressed in Legacy:
“Everything that happened before was not a dream. Everything that happened was completely real, but you thought you knew what was going on. You thought you were seeing the world, and this movie is telling you that there’s a much larger world, a much larger conspiracy beyond this. The events of the other three films are incredibly present, but they’re not really in this very much. What happens in Ultimatum is really the spark that’s blowing open the door to this movie because the Jason Bourne story is exploding out into the public. Being impossible to conceal any further is causing problems for this much larger conspiracy. Ultimatum plays in the background of the very beginning of this film.”
Gilroy went on to talk about how Jeremy Renner’s character differs greatly from Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne:
“The whole second film is about an apology. It’s really about this guy trying to morally come to grips with the conflict between who he thinks he is and what he’s done. This character in [Legacy] has no moral conflict whatsoever. Jeremy Renner’s character has the reverse of amnesia. He knows exactly where he’s come from. He knows exactly what the stakes are if he doesn’t achieve his journey. It’s a very different tone, yet it will be very rewarding to people.”
Though I feel that the Damon/Paul Greengrass creative team-up was what made the last two Bourne movies so great, I think Gilroy has come up with a smart approach for this “separate-but-connected” fourth film. It’ll be interesting to see how relatable Renner’s character is, given that he apparently has no moral conflict with murdering persons unknown. I was a fan of Gilroy’s previous two directorial efforts (Michael Clayton and Duplicity), so I’m hoping we’re in for a fun spin on the Bourne series we’ve come to love. It’s also nice to see Norton in a baddie role sans evil facial hair. You can read the full interview with Gilroy over at MTV.
Collider Goes to the Set of Walter Hill’s BULLET TO THE HEAD Starring Sylvester Stallone and Jason Momoa
Sundance 2013: LOVELACE Review
First Trailer for the Coen Brothers’ INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS Starring Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan
Ryan Murphy Talks AMERICAN HORROR STORY: ASYLUM Season Finale, Season 3, and His Horror Movie THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN
January Jones Says She Doesn’t Think She’s in X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST
Why is Edward Norton not in more movies? The guy is such a great actor, does he turn down a lot of roles or does he just not get many offers? Anyone know?
He is supposedly not so pleasant to work with. Look up the set feuds on American History X, The Italian Job, and Incredible Hulk, and why he wasn’t hired for The Avengers.
Actually, it’s because Norton does other things than act. He wasn’t in Avengers because Marvel is cheap and doesn’t believe in paying more for A-List actors. Kevin Feige admitted it himself.
Huh? I admire Norton’s talent, but let’s not mince words: the guy screwed Marvel during the marketing of ‘The Incredible Hulk’. Norton was upset that the film was cut down on the insistence of Marvel, so he did next to no promotion for the film.
Instead, Marvel had to rely upon supporting actor Tim Roth, leading lady Liv Tyler (who had another film out at the same time) and the director to promote the film. (In contrast, ‘Iron Man’ – in the same year – had Robert Downey Jr. to promote the film, and he did a terrific job in marshalling support for his film.)
‘The Incredible Hulk’ could have made much more money if its star Norton had backed the film and made talk show appearances (the only major show he appeared on was Jimmy Kimmel’s program). I don’t think it was all that unfair of Marvel to expect its actors to be team players, and – on a film this size with many moving parts – they probably couldn’t afford to gamble on a loose canon like Norton.
First thought: “hawkeye, please dont make him angry, you won’t like him when … oh wait, Ed Norton is no longer the Hulk.”
Isn’t the reverse of amnesia being aware?
I’m kind of pulling and hoping for (highly unlikely) that the movie ends up being a role reversal and Norton is actually the good guy or the series might end up being about him, he’s obviously more of a star, has a bigger fanbase and is the better actor then Renner, no offense to Renner but I think most people would be willing to cheer for Norton, he’s actually the one reason that made me come to ease with this new Bourne.
I thought the direction of the second and third movies in the series was terrible! Paul Greengrass has no clue of how to shoot coherent action scenes.
This is kind of like “Robocop Sequel-itis.”
In the original Robocop, Murphy renounces his robotism and reasserts his Murphy-ness. Then, in the sequels, they make him back into a robot and totally miss the point of what happened.
In Ultimatum, Jason Bourne says to a fellow Treadstone/Blackbriar asset, “Look what they make you give up.” Jason Bourne understood what all the assassination was about, and he rejected it. That was the referendum on the super-assassin projects.
Now, we have Renner, who is “anti-amnesiac” about the whole thing? Wouldn’t that mean he has a problem? The whole point of the Bourne movies was to find the humanity that had been lost in all the warfare. If the point of the new movies is to embrace it again, how can we go back? Didn’t we already take the Red Pill?
The trailer for Legacy looks interesting. The road it goes down seems very watchable. I’m just wondering if, beneath all the action and kinetic energy, there is really a point worthy of the franchise.
Or if we’re just going to get Robocop 2′d.