Some curious news has popped up as Variety reports Ed Norton (Fight Club) is in negotiations to play the villain in Universal’s The Bourne Legacy opposite Jeremy Renner. What we don’t know is just what kind of villain we’re talking about.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the previous Bourne films didn’t necessarily have a villain as much as they had someone pulling the strings on the other end — Chris Cooper in The Bourne Identity, Brian Cox in The Bourne Supremacy and David Strathairn in The Bourne Ultimatum. I wonder how all of this plays into the plot. Will Norton play an “other-side-of-the-fence” assassin opposite Renner or simply be another CIA official?
If we’re talking about another CIA official, are we running a severe risk of simply treading the exact same territory? To be honest, that’s exactly what it sounds like based on the limited plot details Variety has to offer.
Variety tells us what is known about the plot is that Jason Bourne will not be featured in this film and that Renner will play another assassin trained in the same program that Bourne was trained who goes out to find his true identity. Uh, yeah, we’ve seen that story.
This information, however, clashes a bit with earlier reports that Renner’s character was an operative from a covert government program that is even more dangerous than the Treadstone brainwashing program that hatched Bourne. That description sounded at least a bit more interesting. At least a different program could involve different techniques, but if Renner is just going to be another super-spy hindered by amnesia I can’t say I am all that interested.
The Variety story also confirms Rachel Weisz has joined the cast in what I can now only assume will be a new Pamela Landy role, a la the one played by Joan Allen in The Bourne Supremacy and Ultimatum.
Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton) is set to direct The Bourne Legacy, which is currently slated for an August 3, 2012 release.
