Commenting on the critics with Simon Columb…
Russ Fischer on Film on the new trailer for The Bourne Legacy:
“So this trailer does a lot more to set up the links between the film’s new story and the plotlines of the other three Bourne films without really giving too much away. It’s a nicely-cut trailer that suggests a lot more than it really shows. And that early shot that seems to blend Renner’s face with Damon’s is pretty effective and weird.”
Read the full article here.
With the success of Marvel’s Avengers Assemble (C’mon guys, can’t we just say The Avengers?), I’m beginning to see a trend in how filmmakers are creating films that ‘connect’ to the ‘big picture’.
Personally, whenever I watch a sequel or franchise continuation, the one thing I expect is a clear – ideally, direct – connection to the previous films. This is why Men in Black II is so weak and, personally, I gain very little satisfaction from the Die Hard sequels (except in Die Hard with a Vengeance, where Jeremy Irons is *spoilers* Alan Rickman’s brother! Unnecessary, but slightly satisfying). If a film simply hires the lead actor to squeeze them around a story that is exactly the same as the first, you can guarantee I won’t be impressed.
A film series which, I believe, has played its cards exceptionally well is Saw, where (potentially because of the cheap casting) you never knew who would come back. Will Donnie Wahlberg come back? Did one of the characters from Saw II feature in Saw VI? Because of the flashbacks and chronology of the series, anything was possible – and the producers knew that the fans loved this. The Paranormal Activity series is the same – the first and second film providing an impressive connection between the events of each film.
Only recently, writers have extrapolated further about the Tarantino-verse – how all of Quentin Tarantino’s films ‘connect’ within a specific world. Russ Fischer dug-up an article originally placed on The Playlist about the relationship between characters in True Romance and Inglourious Basterds (Lee Donowitz and Sgt Donny ‘The Bear Jew’ Donowitz), but it goes further as QT apparently sees Kill Bill, Natural Born Killers and From Dusk Till Dawn as films-within-the-world of the characters in Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. You can imagine Mia Wallace watching Kill Bill (Indeed, Fox Force Five could be Kill Bill under another name). The plot thickens – in this ‘world’, *spoilers* America won the war by slaughtering Hitler and co. in a cinema… hence the hyper violent films the characters watch in Natural Born Killers and Kill Bill. All of his films connect and everyone had better hunt down Django Unchained to see what happens next …
Maybe it wasn’t The Avengers, maybe it was Saw. But sequel-making and franchise-continuing is a fine art. You desperately want the film to be ‘canon’ – as a film which is a necessary part of the ‘big story’. Which brings us back to The Bourne Legacy…
It is clear from the new trailer that the producers are placing a huge amount of emphasis on the film being a direct part of the ‘Bourne‘ franchise. Just because Matt Damon isn’t in the film (though they can use footage from the previous films…), doesn’t mean it is an irrelevant continuation. We see Renner almost ‘morph’ from a Matt Damon picture and, crucially, the outstanding sequence at Waterloo station featuring Paddy Considine, is a huge part of the story – that one sequence alone must be an important facet to both The Bourne Ultimatum and The Bourne Legacy. When I finished watching the trailer I was sold. Not only did I want to watch the original three films again, but I am also exceptionally keen to see the new film.
Be scared – sequel-makers know what we want and will publicise it accordingly. Sequels will all have direct narrative connections to previous installments – not just the lead actor reprising their role – and new timelines and ‘stories’ will be pulled out of every possible scenario. It’s an exciting time – or will filmmakers screw up the franchises forever?
Originally published June 3, 2012. Updated December 6, 2019.
