

Think of a black-ops nesting doll, which starts with Treadstone, the program that made super spies like Bourne. Then, in Supremacy and Ultimatum, he’s pulled back into action, and goes even further down the rabbit hole to trace the origins of operations Treadstone and, later, Blackbriar. In Identity, he outwits those agents (sorry, Clive Owen), and disappears into the wind. (Remember these if you want to see a continuity nod in Jason Bourne.) Bourne, as we learned, is a highly effective assassin, and his existence is proof of a top-secret program called Treadstone, which is why the CIA sends assets to eliminate him. He had no memory, but there are bullets in his back. Or, if you haven’t seen any of the earlier Bourne movies, tons of spoilers.Īt the very beginning of Identity, Bourne’s body was fished out of the Mediterranean Sea. Since the mythology of the Bourne universe isn’t an oft-discussed subject, we figured a quick guide to the essential details from the original trilogy (plus a bit of Legacy) could be beneficial for anyone planning to take in the shaky-cam spectacle of Jason Bourne this weekend. Now, nine years and a brief tangent into the world of Jeremy Renner later, Bourne is back, and his history is as convoluted as ever. Or at least, he thought he had it all figured out. As the blackest of black-ops agents, Bourne had traversed three movies’ worth of twists, turns, and thrills to figure out who turned him from a (fairly) ordinary guy named David Webb into a human killing machine know as Jason Bourne. Paul Greengrass, the director of The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, once again joins Damon for the next chapter of Universal Pictures’ Bourne franchise, which finds the CIA’s most lethal former operative drawn out of the shadows.īack in 2007, when we last saw Jason Bourne, he was giving the CIA an Ultimatum.

ALICIA VIKANDER as Heather Lee in “Jason Bourne,” the action-thriller in which Matt Damon returns to his most iconic role.
