Matt Damon Once Wanted Jason Bourne to Be Passed Down From Actor to Actor Like James Bond
Some might see Matt Damon as the one and only Jason Bourne in his titular franchise. But at one point in time, Damon toyed with the idea of the Bourne character being transferred between actors. Not too much unlike what’s been done with the James Bond character.
Matt Damon once shared that he fully expects his Jason Bourne role to be re-cast someday
Damon has portrayed Bourne in all of the Bourne movies except one. Jeremy Renner would temporarily become the face of the Bourne franchise with the 2012 movie Bourne Legacy. But instead of being Jason Bourne, Renner found himself playing a new character within Bourne’s universe. This meant that the super spy still belonged to Damon.
Still, Damon didn’t expect to play the character forever. He felt that there will always be a possibility of Bourne being rebooted. And if that happens, he has no problem stepping aside to let a younger actor inherit his mantle.
“[I’m] 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,” he once told The Hollywood Reporter.
But until that day comes, Damon asserted he could only focus on his own run as the character.
“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,” he added.
Matt Damon once thought Jason Bourne could be passed down from actor to actor like James Bond
Back before Jason Bourne and even Bourne Legacy, Damon was just toying around with the idea of making another Bourne movie. At the time, he even felt the character lent itself to a prequel film.
“Well, I think that they have a good way to do a prequel with someone else, and basically make it about the Bourne identity, the actual identity. What any studio is interested in is making it like an evergreen, so it can just go on, and on, and on, and it never will with our character because he’s going to resolve himself and he’s resolved his issues now,” he once told Collider.
Damon also theorized that perhaps not one actor could be Jason Bourne. The Oscar-winner felt that the Jason Bourne character could work as a moniker or a title inherited from actor to actor.
“But I think what we could do, is like, you know, so you can do some movies with another actor, anyway, whether it’s Ryan Gosling or Russell Crowe or Denzel Washington, and he’s Jason Bourne,” he said. “And then at the end of his one movie, or two movies, or three movies, you see them getting ready to pass the identity on to me, so it just becomes like a 007, it becomes a name that they give this certain person who’s uniquely positioned.”
Damon felt this might have helped continue the story of Bourne down the line.
Matt Damon once felt James Bond was repulsive
Jason Bourne and James Bond are often compared and contrasted between each other. But Damon once felt, in terms of characterization, there was no comparison between the two. Damon didn’t have a high opinion of James Bond’s attitude or behavior, feeling that Bourne had marginally better morals. This was partially why Damon didn’t feel a Bond film modeled after a Bourne movie wouldn’t work.
“They could never make a James Bond movie like any of the Bourne films because Bond is an imperialist, misogynist sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people,” he once told The Miami Herald (via The Guardian). “He’s repulsive.”
