The Bourne Legacy Teaser: More stars, more action, less point.

The poster is nice though. Digging the
horizontal bar motif from the trailer.

Throughout cinematic history, there is no end to the number of unnecessary sequels. After the wild success of his breakout gangster saga A Better Tomorrow, director John Woo was tasked by hungry studio execs with continuing the story. The problem: At the end of the movie, Chow Yun-Fat's character, the heart of the story -- played by the film's biggest star, dies. Spoilers, by the way.

Solution: He has a twin brother of course! This pathetically contrived narrative loophole is downright admirable in its idiocy. It is so patently absurd that the audience immediately accepts it as humorously ironic and moves on with the story. The film gets away with it because the idiosyncrasies of the storytelling had made it apparent that action, not story, was the film's focus.

Which is why it is so frustrating to see such The Bourne series, renowned for blending storytelling with action, fall into such painful narrative traps in order to prolong a franchise that needs no prolonging.

It turns out Jason Bourne wasn't the best. It turns out there was this other guy who was totally way better than him, but for some reason made it though three movies without being mentioned. It turns out that nothing in the first three movies mattered, because that's how much of the shit this new dude is.

His name is Kenneth. AN' HE JUST WENT ROGUE!!! DOH SHIT!

So we're rehashing the last three movies with a new guy in a crew cut punching people? WHY?

What I do like:

1. The line "Will you submit to this program?" being reused. If you're going to shit on your foundation, at least give it a call-back.
2. Tony Gilroy directing. Dude's 2 for 2 at this point. Maybe he'll pull off a trifecta.

Here's the trailer anyway. Blech. Just watch Hanna again, please.