Matt Damon, 45, has said for years that he’s getting too old to play Bourne. He said that around the time the third movie, The Bourne Ultimatum, came out in 2007. It sounded like he was over playing the character back then. Damon said that he “definitely felt my age” during the fight scenes and at that point he practically ruled out playing Bourne again. “We’ve ridden that horse as far as we can. The character lives on in the books and if someone else wanted to play it, I guess they could.” There was news that Damon was working on the fourth Bourne movie back in 2009, but then director Paul Greengrass pulled out and so did Damon. The result was The Bourne Legacy with Jeremy Renner playing another agent, which came out in 2012. Eventually Greengrass signed on again, Damon as you know agreed to come back and we have Jason Bourne, which is out in two weeks yay! Only it sounds like Damon is not jazzed at the thought of making even more Bourne movies. He brought it up in an interview with Australian TV recently, joking that Angelina Jolie was younger than him but was replaced as Tomb Raider by Alicia Vikander (his new costar), and he mentioned it again in an interview with The Hollywood reporter, saying that it would be fine if he was replaced.
Matt Damon says he’s “totally fine” with a younger actor taking over the role of Jason Bourne after he’s done with the action franchise.
Speaking on a promotional tour in Seoul, South Korea, Damon, who returns for the fifth installment titled Jason Bourne that’s released this summer, said he was “definitely going to be replaced some day by some new young Jason Bourne. That happens to everybody and they reboot these things, and that’s totally fine.”
Damon added: “The only control I can exercise is over the ones that I’m part of. I’m the curator of them as long as I’m involved and that’s why I battled so hard to make sure that we got the same creative people [including director Paul Greengrass] to get involved in this one.”
Fourteen years since the first film in the franchise, Damon said he was “very excited” to be playing Bourne again, a character that “had a huge impact on my life and career.”
He said, however, it wasn’t easy to keep up with action sequences at his age. “It’s difficult when you’re 45 compared to when you’re 29, but you still have to run as fast as you can. That part was a challenge but to get to revisit the people was wonderful. But I said, let’s smell the roses as we say and appreciate that we get to be here together and make sure we have fun [especially because it was so tense on the set for the other films].”
Given how often Damon has talked about this, I doubt he’s up for another sequel after this one. I also doubt this is some sort of negotiation tactic. He’s grateful to the Bourne franchise for helping his career so tremendously but he no longer wants to play this character. He’s also got to know on some level that if he wanted to continue as Bourne he could do it up until his late 50s/early 60s. This isn’t like Angelina Jolie being “too old” to play Tomb Raider at 41, the rules are different for men. As Kaiser brought up, Bruce Willis was 58 when the last Die Hard movie came out in 2013. Liam Neeson has been doing Taken sequels into his early 60s. Matt Damon is Jason Bourne, but sounds like he wants to pass that torch soon.
photos credit: WENN.com and Universal Pictures
Cue the rumours how Tom Hiddleston was passed over for the part of James Bond, and is now in the running to portray Jason Bourne
Kristen Stewart will take the job..Jane Bourne
Seriously, his payday is huge for this franchise and I don’t see him giving it up unless the plot lines get too ridiculous. .
I didnt really read that as he was ready to move on or * wants * to be replaced, just that if it happened, he was accepting that that is the reality of what happens or will happen someday.
That is weird/interesting about Angelina/Alicia; I hadnt followed that too much. Matt Damon is really good as Jason Bourne so I am excited for the new one too (which I had no idea was coming out soon – so thanks!)!
‘He’s grateful to the Bourne franchise for helping his career so tremendously but he no longer wants to play this character.”
I don’t think that’s what he’s saying at all. I watched the Australian interview where he talked about “Tomb Raider” being rebooted with a younger actress and Angelina Jolie was younger than him. I believe the question/conversation was reboots and whether or not he thought that would happen to Jason Bourne. And he said it would absolutely happen, that he would definitely be replaced by a younger actor one day and that it happens to everybody. Then he pointed at Alicia Vikander (who is replacing Angelina Jolie in the “Tomb Raider” reboot) sitting next to him and said something like “I mean, it’s right here. Angelina Jolie is younger than I am and they’re already rebooting Tomb Raider. So yeah, someday they’ll reboot Jason Bourne with a younger actor, but I’m at peace with it.”
Agreed. Matt’s OK with eventually being replaced as it will be inevitably re-booted. He keeps being asked the question so has to find new ways to make it sound OK, and now says it would be fine for a woman to take the role. He doesn’t want to give it up yet.
Why reboot the character? Why not just take the premise and apply it to a new character within that universe? I hate to think we will have to see Jason Bourne lose his memory as many times as we have seen Uncle Ben die. The last film showed us a range of agents, loads of diversity, many of whom were pushing to break free of the program, It also showed us people who weren’t agents but were caught up in the system. Matt Damon is Jason Bourne, but ‘Bourne films’ do not have to be about Jason Bourne, just the world that he inhabits. Christopher McQuarrie, who does a great interview, said that when they are putting a Mission Impossible film together they would often come up with an idea that was great but ‘not mission’. Each franchise has a style and a certain set of rules, beyond that it is all about story and character .
Full disclosure: I liked the Jeremy Renner Bourne movie, but you had to go into it not expecting it to be the same as the others.
As for older men in action flix, it works best when the acknowledgement that they are getting older. Think Die Hard, Expendables – part of the plot/joke is that these 50 year old guys are trying to do crap they did in their 20s, but now their knees hurt, they need glasses…
Renner’s film was supposed to have a sequel before Damon agree to do this. So if he had not wanted to do things he did not need to, I would say maybe he did not feel like doing Bourne again but his box office was not the greatest so he felt it was a good move.
@Chinoiserie, who wrote: “Renner’s film was supposed to have a sequel before Damon agree to do this. So if he had not wanted to do things he did not need to, I would say maybe he did not feel like doing Bourne again but his box office was not the greatest so he felt it was a good move.”
I’m not quite following what you’re saying (which ‘he’ are you talking about, Damon or Renner?), but Renner’s ‘Aaron Cross’ film is still getting a sequel. Universal just back-burnered it when Damon and Paul Greengrass decided to do a 4th Bourne film.