First look at Edward Norton as ‘The Bourne Legacy’ villain

Let me state this upfront – the only reason I will go and watch a Matt Damon-less ‘Bourne’ sequel titled ‘The Bourne Legacy’ is because Edward Norton plays the villain in it. The man is an excellent actor that is sorely underrated in the industry, and especially shines when he plays a negative character. Watch ‘Primal Fear’ for an example. And though we saw a glimpse of him in the teaser trailer, here’s an official image of him staring down Jeremy Renner from the film.

Thanks to MTV for the image, and even though Jeremy Renner looks badass here as well, Matt Damon is the star of the show and is sorely missed at this point. Director Tony Gilroy speaks to MTV and tells them how this movie is connected to the excellent three films that came before it:

“Everything that happened before was not a dream. Everything that happened was completely real, but you thought you knew what was going on. You thought you were seeing the world, and this movie is telling you that there’s a much larger world, a much larger conspiracy beyond this. The events of the other three films are incredibly present, but they’re not really in this very much. What happens in “Ultimatum” is really the spark that’s blowing open the door to this movie because the Jason Bourne story is exploding out into the public. Being impossible to conceal any further is causing problems for this much larger conspiracy. “Ultimatum” plays in the background of the very beginning of this film.”

The visual style of the last two Bourne movies was a very visceral shaky cam style that redefined the action movie genre as a whole. The new James Bond movies liberally ripped them off and so did many other action movies who wanted to be as gritty as realistic as the Bourne films. Thanks to that, Gilroy suggests that this film will not have that look once again:

“Everybody in the world ripped us off. It’s been done to death at this point. It’s on TV three nights a week, much less Bond and everything else. The worst thing that could have been done would be to just slavishly follow some cookie-cutter pattern of visual style and storytelling style. It’s a bigger movie in the terms of the journey of it and the scale of it and the amount of stories in it and where it’s going. The great thing about Jason Bourne was that he was claustrophobically stuck down and trying to figure out this moral question. The whole second film is about an apology. It’s really about this guy trying to morally come to grips with the conflict between who he thinks he is and what he’s done. This character in this film has no moral conflict whatsoever. Jeremy Renner’s character has the reverse of amnesia. He knows exactly where he’s come from. He knows exactly what the stakes are if he doesn’t achieve his journey. It’s a very different tone, yet it will be very rewarding to people. You should be able to see the movie and not see any of them before. It’s been kind of ironic. The people that were having the most trouble getting their heads around the fact that we were doing this are actually the people who I think will ultimately be the most happy about what we’re doing. It has a lot of payback for the true fans.”

Are you excited for a Bourne without – well – Jason Bourne?