What’s Jason Bourne been up to since 2004, the year “The Bourne Ultimatum” was set (the movie was released in 2007)? Well, he’s been in hiding off the grid, but the world has radically changed. “There’s been the financial collapse, the great recession, all these issues of cyberwarfare and civil liberties,” star, producer and co-writer Matt Damon told EW this week about the new upcoming Untitled Jason Bourne movie. We don’t know why Jason Bourne resurfaces 12 years later for ‘Bourne 5,’ but considering everything that’s been said so far by Damon and director Paul Greengrass, it’s likely that some post-Edward Snowden cyberspying technology has ferreted out the former CIA super agent.
READ MORE: Matt Damon Talks “Post-Snowden World” Of ‘Bourne 5’
“[Damon] persuaded me,” Greengrass told the New York Times recently about his return to the franchise. “I was a little bit anxious about how it was going to go, and I remember he said to me, ‘It’s not a bad thing to do it just because people would really love to see us do another one.’ That really landed with me. ‘It’s a noble thing to serve your audience,’ he told me, ‘if you’re lucky enough to have one.’”
EW says that while Bourne did discover his identity at the end of ‘Bourne,’ he’s still looking for deeper clues about his past. “We find him in a dark and tortured place,” Damon said, which is maybe why the first official photo above is all dark and brooding.
Plot details on the new ‘Bourne’ movie are under wraps so far, but there are further clue revealed with the casting of Alicia Vikander; she’s playing a cyberspecialist. The new cast includes Tommy Lee Jones, who plays a hardened CIA agent, Riz Ahmed as a tech specialist, Scott Shepherd as the deputy director of the CIA, and Vincent Cassel is said to be the villain, but what shape he takes —another agent sent to take out Bourne? — is unknown. Returning from the original cast is Julia Stiles and Joan Allen. Presumably characters like Blackbriar’s director Noah Vosen (David Strathairn) and CIA director Ezra Kramer (Scott Glenn) were indicted once the clandestine Blackbriar and Treadstone programs went public at the end of ‘Ultimatum,’ but it wouldn’t surprise us to at least see a cameo from both.
‘Bourne 5’ is due in theaters July 29, 2016.