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 The Bourne Supremacy Production NotesThey should have left him alone.
In 2002, an unexpected hero was born with the release of The Bourne Identity-the big screen version of Robert Ludlum's best-selling novel that had at its center a trained assassin attempting to recover his memory while evading shadowy figures from his past. The edgy and sophisticated espionage thriller featured a towering, against-type performance from Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, and the film went on to become Universal's highest grossing domestic release of the year and the number one DVD / video rental of 2003.
Now, following the smash worldwide success of The Bourne Identity, Universal Pictures brings the second installment of Ludlum's series to the screen with Matt Damon returning as trained assassin Jason Bourne in The Bourne Supremacy.
Two years ago, Jason Bourne thought he had walked away from his past. But now, his past is about to return. Bourne and Marie (Franka Potente) have maintained their anonymous, underground existence at the cost of permanence. Fueled by splintered nightmares and haunted by a past he cannot remember, Bourne moves Marie from city to city, trying to remain one step ahead of the threat implicit in every unexplained stranger's glance, every “wrong number” phone call…that at any second, without any warning, he might get pulled back into the world he hopes he left behind.
When an operative appears in the sleepy village that has been their latest home, Bourne and Marie collapse their lives and head out. His past at the door, their only choice is now to run.
But once a line is crossed and the stakes in a new global game of cat-and-mouse are raised, the Jason Bourne created by Treadstone-the covert, now dismantled operation that spawned cold-blooded, professional assassins-returns.
Two years ago, Bourne walked away from the deadly world that created him with a promise of retaliation should anyone attempt contact. Now that that world has indeed come calling, Bourne intends to keep his word.
They should have left him alone.
Matt Damon returns as Jason Bourne in The Bourne Supremacy, which re-enters the shadowy world of the expert assassin who continues to find himself plagued by painful flashes of memory from his former life.The Bourne Supremacy continues the story of the reformed killer and picks up the thread of unanswered questions posed in the international hit The Bourne Identity.
Returning to the memorable roles they created in The Bourne Identity are Franka Potente as Marie; Brian Cox, once again as agency operative Ward Abbott; Julia Stiles, portraying Nicky; and Gabriel Mann as Danny Zorn. Joining the cast of The Bourne Supremacy are Tom Gallop (A.I. Artificial Intelligence) as Tom Cronin, Karl Urban (The Lord of the Rings trilogy) as rival assassin Kirill and triple Academy Award nominee Joan Allen (The Contender, Nixon) as Agent Pamela Landy.
About the Production
With the runaway, international success of 2002's The Bourne Identity, the world had been re-introduced to not only the character of trained assassin Jason Bourne (memorialized in Robert Ludlum's best-selling books), but to an anomaly that summer moviegoers crave-a blockbuster with both style and substance. By transplanting Bourne from the Cold War setting of the novels to the Europe of the post-Wall collapse, an intriguing anti-hero was dusted off and brought into the new millennium.
“We made an intellectual spy film, a paranoid thriller, but we did it in an unconventional way,” remembers producer Frank Marshall. “Putting Matt in the lead was casting against type, and he turned out to be the perfect choice-a non-traditional action hero was born in that film. He's proved so compelling that we wanted to continue his story.”
Matt Damon remembers, “I was not the first person to come to mind for a project such as The Bourne Identity. I had to overcome that I look young, that I don't necessarily look like a stone cold killer. But by playing against expectation, I felt like it was a real chance to do something different than I'd seen in other action movies. We worked very hard to tie me into as many of the situations and stunts as possible, to give my performance believability.”
Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Supremacy, the second in his successful series of spy thrillers featuring trained assassin Jason Bourne, was published in 1986. It spent 25 weeks on The New York Times Best-Seller List with eight weeks at #1.
Veteran film producers Marshall and Patrick Crowley were committed to the innovative storytelling and unconventional approach which led their first film to global box office success and on to become the number one home video/DVD rental of 2003. The taut suspense and character-driven action of The Bourne Identity were achieved through a variety of elements that they were determined to bring back-to pump new life into the time honored espionage thriller.
They needed to keep fresh the take on Robert Ludlum's classic story about an amnesiac trained assassin who is slowly waking to the reality of his past. So Marshall and Crowley worked with screenwriter Tony Gilroy (co-screenwriter of The Bourne Identity) to come up with a story worthy of the journey Jason Bourne embarked on in the first film.
Frank Marshall comments, “We did not set out to make a sequel. What worked so well in the first film was that so much of it was unexpected-casting against type, going for something beyond a chase and action movie. So if your goal is to make a sequel to that, you've just defeated yourself because it'll be expected.”
“One of the things that always impressed us in all the early screenings of Bourne Identity,” says producer Patrick Crowley, “is people would say `Wow, I really appreciate that you made us think, that you didn't tell us what was going on.' And you kind of have to deliver the same goods again, but it has to be better this time.”
Damon observes, “We held to the idea that the action is always developing the character, that it grows right out of the story. We really wanted to build a story where the action was integrated into the characters and their situations-so that you might be able to believe that these are kind of ordinary people pushed into extraordinary circumstances. It sort of defies the customary action formula, and I feel it's one of the compelling things about Bourne's continuing story.”
Marshall agrees, “The action is driven by character, and the characters' motivations are driven by realistic events-there's not just action for the sake of action.”
Having left Jason and Marie finally safe and in a sunny seaside village on the coast of Greece, the filmmakers needed to find a way of starting up the story again. “Quite simply, we needed to find a way to get Jason Bourne back in the fray,” says producer Marshall, “but we weren't interested in the standard revenge tale. While that does play a part in it, we were looking for something more.”
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Matt Damon as Jason Bourne and Julia Stiles as Nicky in The Bourne Supremacy.