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.

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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.