Couldn't they leave well enough alone?

The Bourne Ultimatum

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There is no problem that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives - US Army Demolitions School

I just saw Hayley's comet, she waved, Said "why you always running in place? Even the man in the moon disappeared, Somewhere in the stratosphere" - Shinedown

http://worldsofothersuns.home.comcast.net/

Not as long as they can still suck money out of the franchise.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

You mean the author of the novels the movies are based on couldn't leave well enough alone...

You didn't get the memo? Every movie has to have a sequel or two, or three...

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If we don't play god, who will?-James Watson
I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.-Albert Einstein
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.-Tom Waits
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.-Enoch Root, The Confusion
When I was a kid, if someone brandished a shrink gun he'd get a little bit of respect!-Myron Reducto, Harvey Birdman

Yep Robert Ludlum wrote all three novels (Bourne Identity, Bourne Supremacy, Bourne Ultimatum) before he died in 2001. The estate has chosen a writer to continue the series, and he has written The Bourne Betrayal.

Heh... in the recent TV trailer, Bourne says "I remember everything". At the end of "The Bourne Supremacy", it's revealed that he was born in Nixa, Missouri (don't remember his quoted birth name, however). That's a Small Town, and would've been especially small during his supposed youth. It'd be, well, neat and smart if the writers included some eclectic references to Nixa.
I haven't read the books. Does any of the fora populace know whether Ludlum put any Nixa references in those novels? My guess is "No."
Eventually this movie series will end with him tracking down J.E. Hoover's relatives. "I remember everything"...

The only reason I'm going to see this is because David Straithairn (one of my fave actors) is in it; otherwise, I wouldn't bother. I didn't see the first two, nor have I read the books.

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The dose makes the poison--Paracelsus (1493-1541) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus

I don't know. That's why I'm asking--Noclevername

Intelligence may not be clearly defined, but you know stupid when you see it--Noclevername

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge--Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

Moved from "Small Media" to "Off-Topic Babbling" since it's got nothing to do with science or science fiction.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Yup, as stated the original series had three books. Though Identity and Ultimatum more or less had a similar storyline.

The movies basically take the titles and the lead character and weave a different tale. It took me awhile to warm to the first movie, due to the differences. The second gave me a headache while watching in the theatre, the spinning camerawork has less effect when watched on a smaller screen. IIRC, the rights to all three novels were bought with the plan of bringing all three movies, to the screen. I'll probably go see Ultimatum when it is released.

I read Eric Van Lustbader's first Bourne novel, "The Bourne Legacy" and thought he did a fine job in capturing the spirit of Ludlum's style. I'll probably give "Bourne Betrayal" a read. One just has to ignore the fact that by the timeline of the novel series, Bourne is in his early-mid 60's, at this point.

LOL! Yesterday, I watched my copy of the made for tv version of "The Bourne Identity", starring Richard Chamberlain and Jaclyn Smith. It does stick more to the original storyline. Quite amusing was letting some of the commercial breaks play and watch some of the ads from early 1988 (cell phones could be bought for $1399 back then ). I was kind of hoping Ludlum's American Express card ad, would come on during one of breaks.

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" The universe is running away
I heard it on the news just the other day
There's this new stuff called dark energy
We can't measure and we can't see..." - from Jimmy Buffett's What if the hokey pokey is all it really is about?

Why is it that, whenever there's a sequel made, it's always "they" who did it? No matter when the sequel was written, I see Hollywood blamed. It's not as though sequels are a creation of Hollywood as a concept; ask Lewis Carroll. (Or, for a rather more interesting argument, Shakespeare!)

These books were written some time ago. I know; my mom read them when I lived at home, and I moved out in '95. (Incidentally, looking them up on Amazon shows how easy it is to parody Ludlum's titles.) Likewise the Jack Ryan books. Heck, there were four Harry Potter books out when I heard they were going to be making 'em into movies!

Are there sequels which are exclusively powered by the need for a Hollywood sequel? Heck yeah. There are two kinds of it. There's the "there wasn't a sequel to the book!" kind--and, shamefully to the authors, I think, there's the "well, I didn't want to do a sequel, but the movie was awfully popular" kind. See, for that latter, The Lost World, almost the only book where I liked the movie better. The movie, alas, was merely mediocre.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Hmm, my memory may be suspect (I'm going to create a new acronym: MMMBS -- take that, IIRC!) but didn't A. C. Clarke extend the 2001: A Space Odyssey series due to fan reaction?

The Bard started this... William Shakespeare made King ... part one two and three.

Before that was Pantagruel, and its sequel Gargantua. And, of course, the New Testament was trading on the popularity of the Old Testament, but different authors, sorta

Except, apparently, those that really deserve one... like Serenity.

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Relight the Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

I've liked the 1st 2 movies, and will almost certainly see any additional episodes - but not until they are available as rentals or discounted DVD's.

I refuse to pay more to see it once than what it would cost me to own it the rest of my life.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

You know, the "New Testament" is pretty old.

Shouldn't we call it something like "The Testament: Part II", "The Next Testament", or "Son of the Old Testament" or something?

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OT II - This time, it's Biblical!

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

He's back, and about to go biblical on your donkey

You forgot "Testament 3: The Book of Mormon"

Trailers for the movie can be viewed at:

http://www.bourne-ultimatum.net/

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" The universe is running away
I heard it on the news just the other day
There's this new stuff called dark energy
We can't measure and we can't see..." - from Jimmy Buffett's What if the hokey pokey is all it really is about?

I've seen a trailer for this movie already; I thought 'Dumbest movie ever!'.

__________________
The dose makes the poison--Paracelsus (1493-1541) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus

I don't know. That's why I'm asking--Noclevername

Intelligence may not be clearly defined, but you know stupid when you see it--Noclevername

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge--Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

Testament IV - The Second Coming

He's back, He's really ticked off, and He's not gonna take it anymore.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

I saw The Bourne Ultimatum last night. We had to go to the 5:10 pm showing, as the 4:10 pm showing was sold out when we got to the theater. The theater was packed--so much so, that hubby and I couldn't find two seats together--and hot as hell (AC wasn't working).

As for the movie itself, well, hubby liked it; he likes all of those spy-vs-spy-type novels. I thought the movie was a tedious exercise in shaky-cam and very derivative. Heck, even soap-operas have had similar plots. It doesn't help that the protagonist of the story appears to be well-nigh invincible, if not superhuman.

The only reason I went to see it was because I like David Strathairn, but his role as Noah Vosen was a one-note disappointment and not worth having to sit through all of the camera jiggling.

My recommendation: save your money. Rent it on DVD if you must.

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The dose makes the poison--Paracelsus (1493-1541) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus

I don't know. That's why I'm asking--Noclevername

Intelligence may not be clearly defined, but you know stupid when you see it--Noclevername

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge--Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

Apparently, so did a lot of other people. It set an all-time high for opening night at the box office in the month of August, about $20 Million more than the last Bourne.

I agree. I didn't expect any better, because the second movie was about the same as this and dug a hole that any later sequel would have a hard time climbing out of (giving him nothing to fight for but only stuff to fight against), but it was good for no more than a way to stay away from a broken air conditioner at home for the afternoon & early evening. And not only was it nearly all standard hustle & action scenes like fights & car chases (shaken and stirred to try to prevent the audience from actually seeing any of the spectacle anyway) with no room for the story or characters to go anywhere between them, and a sharp increase in unrealism from before (like all phone calls being monitored for key words and a human swimming away from a 10-storey fall into water), but it even set up some opportunities for a peek back at what had made the first one great (the personal story), and passed them up. For example, when he was fighting Desh, the Casablanca "Asset", it was far from the first time he's fought someone else who was supposed to have had the same training he'd had. So why are they all inferior? Against people like himself, his odds should be closer to 50-50, and in this case his just happening to be better than yet another one wasn't even necessary to the plot; there was a loose gun on the floor and he had a friend there, who was found just staring at them at the end of the fight. If she'd picked up the gun and shot the bad guy, especially with Bourne losing at that point, then the fight would have been won (same outcome story-wise) not by another improbable coincidence of strength or combat skill or speed, but by the true difference between the fighting characters, which is moral and psychological: one of them makes friends who help him just because they want to.

I saw the movie Fri afternoon. I enjoyed it. Shaky/spinny cam didn't seem as annoying this time around, as the backs of my eyeballs weren't aching at the end. The sheer number of cuts early made things seem jerky. Story more the same, as Bourne remembers/uncovers his past, this time though it's mostly done one action sequence to the next.

Nitpicks, spinning/shaky cam during the fight sequences, caused too much blur to actually enjoy the sequence. Bourne sends Nicky Parsons on the run, by having her change her appearance, yet he himself travels about with no changes, except for having passports in differing names. The differences from the books, while updating the stories for film, is fine, what I enjoyed about the series of novels: Bourne did find out his real name, by the end of the first novel. The Supremacy and Ultimatum novels, were written with the need for him to step back into the Bourne persona, for particular reasons.

Next film I'm wating for, after catching a trailer on tv, opens next month. Cronenberg's Eastern Promises, starring Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel and Armin Mueller-Stahl.

__________________
" The universe is running away
I heard it on the news just the other day
There's this new stuff called dark energy
We can't measure and we can't see..." - from Jimmy Buffett's What if the hokey pokey is all it really is about?

What's with the trend of shaking the camera? I don't care for it at all. Does it save time and money because the cinematography and/or editing doesn't have to be nearly as well done?

OK, maybe a little for effect to give the feeling of jarring or anxiety; but films seem to have too much of it nowadays.

Watched a film titled "Irreversible" recently. (Caution - not for the faint of heart). I picked it up based on a review. The review mentioned a brutal murder - which turned out to be a HUUUUUGE understatement, not to mention another scene that was even worse. In an artsy sort of way, it was very well done - incredibly realistic (the murder scene - in my opinion - made Saw look like a Disney film.

But I digress. That movie had more jerky, spinning, out-of-focus camera work than I have seen in all other movies put together - several minutes at a time it seemed - especially at the beginning. Even if just for the camera work, i would not watch it again. It gets a double not-to-be-seen-again because of the violence.

For those OK with nasty violence, I'd recommend viewing it once - you probably wouldn't want to see it again though. Kinda like a nasty home improvement project. Remodeling a bathroom or kitchen once is enough for anyone's lifetime.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Me either. It's just annoying. I'm hoping the trend toward high definition media puts a stop to this. You can't really appreciate the increased resolution when the camera's jerking all over the place.

Yeah, but ain't that the pickle - some guys just wind up not losing. Luck of the draw, and all that, but in the end, they call them "natural born winners."

BOURNE

Do you remember when they mentioned Echelon as the program that they're getting the live monitoring info from? It does exist in reality. And there is a lot of speculation that it is capable of much of what was depicted in the movie. So that part doesn't seem that unrealistic to me. Not in a spy-thriller, anyway

As for the 10-story dive, yeah, I don't know about that either...