When Jason Bourne saved James Bond (and all action movies)

      My town has a magical, wonderful place that is rare in other towns. It's a big reason I would have a tough time moving. There are several places that tie me to Eugene, but the main one is the $1.50 movie theater. With a little patience (2 weeks for Norbit, 5 months for Shrek) you can watch all the world's movies on the big screen and save a ton of money. The seats are broken, the previews are confusingly belated, the popcorn costs more than the movie, and the theater is getting shabby, but none of that matters when on Wednesday afternoons you can pay 50 cents to see a movie like it's 1960 again (50 cents!!).

      One night in high school I was bored. I grabbed a friend and we went to see a movie I new very little about, but was highly recommended. The Bourne Identity. I hadn't seen a preview, didn't know the characters, and had my life changed. As the credits rolled, I sat and stared. What was that? It was different. It was clean, there weren't a lot of explosions, there weren't any cheesy dialogue or one-liners, it moved fast and I never stopped to catch my breath. Why isn't every movie like this? I watched the credits without really registering that the movie was over.

      In 2002, three of the biggest spy heroes in literary fiction had films: Pierce Brosnan's curtain call as James Bond in Die Another Day, Ben Affleck's only shot at Jack Ryan in The Sum of All Fears, and Matt Damon as mostly unknown Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity. (What is with those "J" names? Throw in Jack Bauer and Jack Sparrow and there's a trend that needs exploring. For another time). Both Bourne and Sum of all Fears weren't huge hits in the US, splitting 58 million on their opening weekends, but Bourne had huge international numbers and did extremely well with rentals and DVD sales (remember rentals?). Bond, for its part earned 47 million its opening weekend and 431 million worldwide.
      But something was different. Throngs of people saw Die Another Day, but came away from it pretty sick of cheesy one-liners, formulaic plots and absurd heroics. In my opinion, the gritty realism, speed, and wit of Bourne exposed the Bond movies for their recent laziness. The pause button was hit on the Bond franchise. Most every Bond film came out roughly two years after the previous one, but after Brosnan there was a four year hiatus, and the new Bond was fundamentally different. Casino Royale was fresh. James Bond was human. There were no bombs with countdown timers, last second gunshots, or villians/henchmen with metal teeth. The movie was downright believable, and wonderful.
     Let me get specific. The Bourne Identity has one explosion in it. Jason steps outside, knows something is wrong, and shoots a conveniently-placed tank of something explosive with a shotgun. Believable? Maybe. But you can't go 15 minutes in a 90's action flick without seeing something explode. Bourne features several car-chases without a single explosion. Not one. Cars get hit and glass breaks, no eruptions. People shoot cars and tires blow, no fireballs. It's realistic. To my recollection, Casino Royale has two explosions in it. One at the very end of an absolutely thrilling opening chase scene (just watch it because you want to), when he shoots a conveniently-placed tank of something explosive. The other is when he blows up that fuel truck headed towards the big jet.
     Die Another Day started like this and ends sort of like this (although it doesn't start in one language and end in another like those clips do, at least I don't think it does). I'm not saying it's not entertaining, I'm saying that a movie formula that grossed $431 million dollars in one film had significant, fundamental changes. I think those changes are due to Jason Bourne, and we are all the better for it. I think Jason Bourne saved James Bond.

     Bourne influenced action films beyond James Bond, of course. There were technical adjustments to how action films were shot. Several tropes of action films were challenged by The Bourne Identity that lead to lasting changes. An example is how fight scenes were shot. It used to be that hand-to-hand fight scenes featured swirling cameras, rapidly changing film angles, bad sound effects and the impression of exciting action. The Matrix was the first movie to fix the camera in one spot and trust the actors, choreography and special effects to really sell the fighting (along with movies like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon), but didn't pretend to take place in reality.
     Bourne took the fixed camera position idea and warped it a bit. The footage speed is increased and bits and pieces are removed to make things look incredibly fast, but the viewer has a very complete idea of what is happening. This was new in Identity. It's not anymore. (Unfortunately, it also introduced the "shaky-camera" view of action, which is everyone's biggest gripe with the series).
    Additionally, the music you hear throughout the background of the entirety of all the Bourne films has become standard fare for "something sneaky is going on" in pretty much every movie and television show since. I believe The Bourne Identity redifined the spy/thriller genre for the better.
      For one blatantly obvious example of this influence, we loot at The Bourne Supremacy (2004). One of the most surprising, breathtaking car crashes I've seen happens at 0:54 into this clip. Another thriller, Vantage Point (2008), had the exact same thing happen at 2:02 in this clip. Vantage Point as a whole was essentially a poor man's attempt at Bourne-like speed, complexity and action, and it failed.

     I my opinion there are three nearly-perfect, genre-defining movies when talking about action flicks. Raiders of the Lost Ark, which set the bar for the action-adventure and included this scene. Die Hard, which was the ideal man-against-all-odds action flick; and The Bourne Identity, the gripping, realistic action/spy thriller (I should probably include Back to the Future, but I'm not sure if there is a "time machine" genre. And I suppose I should also include The Fugitive since I am basically listing movies I love at this point).
      Unfortunately, most directors can't make movies like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, and Raiders spawned three decades of bad imitations. Additionally, as much as I love Die Hard, it features an explosion of C4 on the ground level of a building that results in no structural damage, a tank driving up to a building, stopping and getting shot by a shoulder-launched missile AND the most poorly thought out rage attack imaginable by a guy who was hung to death half-an-hour earlier (sorry, I tried hard to find that scene and can't, I hope this one makes up for it). My point: Die Hard is essentially the perfect bad action movie. Smart, funny, and simple, it has all the cliches of every Schwarzenegger/Stallone/cast-of-The-Expendables but you don't realize it at the time (Did you know they're making an Expendables 2? I'll stop with the parenthetical thoughts eventually).
     In the same way that Raiders and Die Hard defined a genre and were mimicked for their successes, the same thing is happening with The Bourne Identity. Many similar movies have followed, or at least movies trying to be heavier on plot and lighter on 'splosions. Some of these are pretty fun (The Recruit) and some of these disappointments, like Vantage Point. I'll take the good with the bad.

     Hopefully, we have a bit more of the good coming soon.