In case you haven’t noticed, The Bourne Ultimatum – quite possibly the best movie of the summer, and a film that would drive lesser critics to dust off the old ‘rollercoaster ride’ cliché – opens in cinemas today. It’s utterly brilliant. Go see it. We have – but we didn’t stop there. We also sat down a few months ago on set with the movie’s director, British director (and all-round smartest guy in movies) Paul Greengrass and Jason Bourne himself, Matt Damon, to talk about answers, ultimatums and going home.

RT-UK: How’s the shoot going so far? You’ve been to Tangier, so you’ve got the suntan out of the way.

Matt Damon: For these? Yeah, but there’s always a kind of taste of a warmer location. We had India last time when it was starting out and this time we have Tangiers set in the middle. So the first one we ended in Greece in that little scooter shack. We get to see the world! They treat us with one warm location per movie and then it’s off to Moscow in the winter! (laughs)

Yeah, that’s one of the major conceits of the movie. The scene – I’m sure they told you this, I hope they told you this and I’m not divulging a huge secret – but the scene at the end of Supremacy, on the phone to Joan Allen, is actually kind of starting our third act. So the first two acts take place directly after the Moscow scene in the Bourne Supremacy and then it kind of takes off from there into that scene with Joan, which will have new meaning this time around. And then we go into the…

RT-UK: That’s pretty bold. Do you think people will realise what’s going on?

MD: Well, people are going to have to know that anyway when they see the movie otherwise they’ll be like ‘what the fuck? I thought this scene was in the last movie!’

RT-UK: You weren’t signed on to do a third Bourne. So why come back?

MD: Well, it’s very different from any character. I usually play characters that are a lot different than me. I mean, I’m never in a fight in a movie and if I’m in them, I’m usually losing. So that’s different and I like the guy. He’s an outsider and he’s against this system that he feels is corrupt and I don’t know, there’s a lot to relate to about him.



RT-UK: And now you know the character intimately, does that help when it comes to working out the story?

MD: Yeah, but I think most actors are like that, particularly if you’ve played a role before. We’ve put him in all these situations and we know if it’s not working. If I start saying too much, then it’s generally not working. We went through the whole second act of the movie last time and Bourne didn’t really talk at all for probably 45 minutes to an hour of that movie. So contriving people for him to talk to is a mistake, it just doesn’t feel right, it feels like he should be on his own. The difficulty lies in trying to tell a story. The way you’d normally tell a story is through the characters talking to one another!

RT-UK: Is that a problem, though, having a hero who barely speaks?

MD: Yeah, it’s definitely challenging to try to relate plot that way. And that’s why the B side of our story, normally, has a lot of Johnny Explainer scenes and on the B side because there are computers all around them and they’re going ‘what’s he doing?’ and it’s ‘I think he’s doing this!’ or ‘Well, I think he’s doing that!’ to kinda help because on this side of the story we don’t tend to fill in the blanks very well.



It’s a bigger challenge for Paul because I can walk around and think about whatever I want to think about but it’s not going to make any sense unless he puts me in some kind of context that explains what I’m doing. An actor can sit there and think about his dog dying but if you cut to a shot of a roast turkey, people are going to think he’s hungry so it’s really up to the director to contextualise what the actor’s doing or else I’m just the guy who’s walking around, brooding.

RT-UK: What special skills have you developed thanks to Bourne?

MD: I kept up with the boxing all the way from the first one. That’s the main thing that I do. I don’t think there’s a new skill or anything that I had to pick up for this. This is much more about trying to get the details right, and that kinda takes up all of our time. We’re really invested in this series of movies, we really love ‘em. Our main goal is to try and make sure that all those little details are right.