Take My Advice: Read The Bourne Identity

One of my favorite books AND movies

     The Bourne Ultimatum was on TV last night (New Year's Eve), right around midnight. I know this because I was at a totally awesome party with lots of fun, beautiful people all night long and we were having a great time. That's how I know. The Bourne Ultimatum is one of my favorite movies, so much so that I've already mentioned it twice before in other posts. I'd like to discuss the person of Jason Bourne now, if you don't mind.
     Jason Bourne is one of my favorite characters in fiction. Batman, Sherlock and Bourne round out my top three. All three of them are independent, brilliant and have skills honed specifically for their respective fields. All three of them use disguises, can tell if someone is lying, are physically imposing, and are masters of manipulating those around them. I essentially view them as fictionalized versions of myself, really.

     One of the most pretentious sentences uttered in the English language is "I liked it but the book was better." (It's right up there with having a British accent.) Of course the book was better. The book didn't have to be 90 minutes long, the book was able to leave characters and images up to your imagination, the book has some sort of narration explaining what's going on, and the book has tons of other advantages as well. The book is always better.

Matt Damon actually fits the
description of Jason Boure very well

     In The Bourne Identity, Jason Bourne wakes up on a boat and can't remember who he is. He knows that he can fight and that he can speak several languages and that he was shot in the back, but that's it. Both the book and the movie (by the same name) have this in common. And from there, Jason Bourne tries to figure out who he is while running from the police and the CIA and falling in love with a girl.
     The above paragraph contains everything the two mediums (book and movie) have in common. It is essentially the entire movie, but only scratches the surface of the book. The book is the most complex, layered, exhilarating spy thriller I have ever read (and I have read at least five spy books!). Jason Bourne does everything in the above paragraph, but is also running from another assassin that he was originally trained to kill. He's a master of disguises, has several identities that other people know and he can't remember (so he makes them up on the fly and runs with it), can tell when people are lying, and can read the signs of the CIA and Interpol throughout society that we'd never be aware of. Trust me, it is absurdly fun and it should be the next book you read. The book is always better, and I pretty much read it in one night in my hammock one summer.

     Disparities between books and their movie counterparts often frustrate people. If you've read and loved The Lord of the Rings, then the movies probably had omissions and additions that really irritated you. This doesn't really bother me, though. I don't get frustrated when a movie isn't like the book, because I've chosen to treat the movie as a separate story.
     So, The Bourne Identity movie is a fun, smart, quick thriller that has the same basic premise as it's book counterpart, but shares little else in common. The second and third movies (Bourne Supremacy and Ultimatum) have literally nothing in common with the books beyond the character Jason Bourne. I don't find this irritating, in fact I love it. Instead of having three Bourne books and three movies about those books, it's like I have 6 different, wonderful stories that take place in this world. In the same way, I liked the two Sherlock Holmes movies with Robert Downey Jr. because they took parts of some Sherlock stories and played with them. They are new adventures for me to consume and enjoy.

     A word of warning: After you read The Bourne Identity, you will read Supremacy and Ultimatum (both aren't as good, but they're still fun), and then you'll want more. You'll do some research and find that a guy named Eric Van Lustbader wrote two more Bourne books (Legacy and, winning the award for the least inspired title ever, Conspiracy), and be tempted to read them. I read The Bourne Legacy and it is atrocious. It is one of the worst books I have ever read, and certainly the worst book that I have started and finished that wasn't for school. Maybe two cool things happen total, the author pulls out a trope-heavy son that Jason has and is a bad guy spy, and I have to pretend like it didn't happen (sort of like that 4th Indiana Jones movie or the second and third Matrix movies).
     I don't read a lot. Maybe two or three books a year, and most of them in a summer. So don't think that I am well-read or actually know what I am talking about. But The Bourne Identity is worth reading, trust me.