You know the name, you know what he does, and you know he doesn't need an introduction. All you need to know is that Matt Damon kicked ass, reinvented the spy thriller and was so good at it, he made James Bond think twice about how exactly he should get to work.
The three movies that started it all — The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum — have officially come together on Netflix in the United States as of October 1. Better still, Netflix actually added the entire five-film franchise on the same day, with The Bourne Legacy and Jason Bourne also joining the service.
Based on the novels by Robert Ludlum, the original trilogy begins with Bourne being pulled from the Mediterranean Sea suffering from severe amnesia. Found with two bullets in his back, Jason Bourne discovers he has the skills of a very dangerous man with no memory of his violent past. Racing to unlock the secret of his own identity, he discovers the deadly truth: He's a 30-million-dollar weapon, lethally trained and built to disappear, the government's top operative who has become its #1 target.
In Supremacy, the haunting past that Bourne tried to escape from catches up with him once again as the CIA threatens to ruin his new, anonymous life, forcing him to resume his former life as a trained assassin to survive. And in Ultimatum, Bourne is on the hunt for the agents who stole his memory and true identity. With a new generation of skilled CIA operatives tracking his every move, Bourne is in a non-stop race around the globe as he finally learns the truth behind his mysterious past.
Damon (The Martian) leads the trilogy as Jason Bourne, alongside Franka Potente (Run Lola Run) as Marie Kreutz, Julia Stiles (10 Things I Hate About You) as Nicky Parsons, Brian Cox (Succession) as Ward Abbott, Joan Allen (Room) as Pamela Landy, Chris Cooper (American Beauty) as Alexander Conklin, Clive Owen (Children of Men) as the Professor, and David Strathairn (Good Night, and Good Luck) as Noah Vosen. Doug Liman directed the first installment before Paul Greengrass took over for the two sequels.
How Good Is the Bourne Trilogy?
The original trilogy has aged remarkably well, particularly considering just how aggressively its style was copied afterward. The Bourne Identity currently holds an 84% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes, paired with a 93% audience score. The trilogy peaked with The Bourne Ultimatum, which also became its biggest theatrical hit and won three Academy Awards, including Best Film Editing (and perhaps, most aggressive use of shaky cam). And the movies were enormous commercially. Depending on the box-office dataset used, the three original films earned around $970 million worldwide combined.
The entire Bourne franchise began streaming on Netflix in the United States on October 1.
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