Don’t expect Matt Damon to be particularly chatty in Jason Bourne

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

There's a great history of movie characters who say very little and prefer to let their actions speak for them, recent examples include Tom Hardy in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, Henry Cavill in BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE, and apparently, Matt Damon in JASON BOURNE. Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon both sat down with The Guardian recently for a revealing interview about the BOURNE franchise which included the upcoming sequel. Matt Damon says that Greengrass contacted him shortly after viewing the finished movie and told him that he only had 25 lines of dialogue in the whole thing. This wasn't due to Damon not wanting to talk a lot in the film, but because it seemed like a natural progression for the character given everything he's gone through.

Well, I’ve done it three times. In the first movie, the Marie Kreutz character [Bourne’s girlfriend, played by Franka Potente) is still alive, so Bourne has a sounding board and he’s more confused about who he is and a lot more chatty. Once she dies in the first act of the second movie, it’s really a very lonely character. And we talked about that mostly on the second one. I remember Tony writing me an email saying, ‘You do realise what this means? You do realise you’re not going to talk in this movie.’ I said, ‘No, I love that.’

Now a line of dialogue can be anything from a single word to a sprawling exposition dump, but I have a feeling that Jason Bourne's method of communication will fall close to the former. Greengrass believes that Damon is able to pack a lot of feeling into his non-verbal performances, saying "I think what makes a Bourne movie is the violence and the set pieces, but there’s a tremendous amount of emotionality in the character.” Both Greengrass and Damon had said that they were done with Bourne following THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, but they've since learned never to say never. Will this mean that we'll be seeing more of Jason Bourne in the future? Although Matt Damon says that it may be a while before they get to another one, Paul Greengrass says that "it’s got to continue.” If JASON BOURNE winds up being as good as the trailers are making it look, I definitely agree.

JASON BOURNE will hit theaters on July 29, 2016.