Mary's Pad

Today I finally got to see the Bourne Ultimatum, a movie that I have been dying to see since it was released. Mary decided to treat me to a last-weekend-before-school-starts fun night.

We saw two movies, This is England, which was fantastic and moving, but not the subject of this post, and The Bourne Ultimatum.

I had seen both The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy movies in the theaters when they came out, and there was no way I was going to miss the last part of this trilogy.

The Bourne Identity	The Bourne Supremacy

Matt Damon plays (brilliantly) the role of Jason Bourne, a former contract assassin for the CIA who has a penchant for having hit men sent out to get him, and who always manages to get the upper hand, even when you’re sure he’s going down. The story is so complex that to appreciate it in its fullness you really should read the novels AND see the movies.

As always, I was not disappointed! The Bourne Ultimatum was as captivating and thrilling as the Identity and the Supremacy, and at the end I had the same sense I did at the end of the Supremacy, that the plot had just thickened!

But I was perplexed, because as far as I know, Robert Ludlum, the author of the Bourne trilogy, ended the story with the Bourne Ultimatum. He wrote: The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum, of course among many other books.

So I came home and looked up Jason Bourne, and learned an interesting fact. After Robert Ludlum ended the trilogy, another author, Eric Van Lutsbader picked it up and added two novels to the series – The Bourne Legacy in 2004, and Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Betrayal in 2007.

The Bourne Legacy by Eric Van Lustbader	Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Betrayal by Eric Van Lustbader

I have read the trilogy by Robert Ludlum, which is what made the movies that much more interesting for me, and I believe that Robert Ludlum is unparalleled in his particular style and genre, so I am curious to see how Lustbader carries the tale and where he takes Jason Bourne after the Ultimatum. More importantly, I am curious to see if he stays true to Ludlums plots and characterizations of the history and the worlds in which Jason Bourne exists.