While series star Matt Damon may not have cared for The Bourne Ultimatum’s script upon the sequel’s release, time has been kind to the spy thriller. Geopolitical thrillers tend to age poorly. The rapid pace of world events means that movies that had their finger on the pulse of current events upon their release can become cringe-worthy and outdated within a few years, while themes that may have once felt perennially relevant and timeless can end up dating a movie horribly when its plot proves less prescient than expected.

However, this is not always the case. While all the Jason Bourne movies set a high standard for spy thrillers, the third installment of the paranoid post-9/11 espionage franchise has aged better than any of its other outings. This is ironic because, while The Bourne Ultimatum was a critical hit upon release, its messy production process was marred by a lot of behind-the-scenes reshuffling. This eventually led to some public drama when the movie’s star itted that he didn’t care for it, a comment that ended up aging surprisingly poorly as The Bourne Ultimatum’s story only proved increasingly timely with each ing year.

The Bourne Ultimatum’s Story Was Prescient

When The Bourne Ultimatum was released in 2007, Matt Damon didn’t publicize his issues with its script. However, in a Bourne’s influence on the James Bond movies in the coming years would speak for itself. Not only was The Bourne Ultimatum not considered an embarrassment by critics, but the sequel was also singled out as one of Damon’s strongest movies to date. Ironically, The Bourne Ultimatum ended up proving a more prescient political thriller than many of Damon’s more self-serious dramatic projects.

The Bourne Ultimatum remains the strongest standalone addition to the series, telling the story of a CIA agent who risked his life to uncover a shady secret CIA operation by leaking information to The Guardian. This plot played on cinema screens across the globe years before Edward Snowden became a household name in disarmingly similar circumstances, proving that The Bourne Ultimatum was the character’s most prescient story. ittedly, viewers might have been as invested in Jason Bourne’s martial arts skills as in the illegal governmental surveillance he exposed. However, this doesn’t change the fact that The Bourne Ultimatum’s plot predicted a political reality years before it occurred, something few Hollywood blockbusters can boast.

The Bourne Ultimatum’s Action Aged Perfectly

Speaking of Bourne’s martial arts prowess, Damon’s antihero provided the franchise with some of its best fights, chases, and set pieces in The Bourne Ultimatum. ittedly, The Bourne Ultimatum’s shaky handheld camerawork and parkour displays undeniably date the movie firmly to the mid-'00s. However, even over a decade later, the bone-crunching fights and high-tension chase sequences still hit as hard as ever. It is easy to see how much the James Bond movies copied Bourne when the character tears through Tangiers, leaps through windows and fire escapes, and eventually ends up brutally beating an assassin to death in one standout scene that is thrilling, unsettling, and immersive.

The Bourne Ultimatum Gave Jason The Perfect Ending

In The Bourne Ultimatum, Jason Bourne received the ending that he always deserved from the franchise. He escapes the CIA and exposes their crimes, but has to fake his death and can likely never re society as a result. It’s a darker sort of “happy ending” than the likes of 007 ever received, but it also avoids the overly familiar heroic self-sacrifice that everyone from Luke Skywalker to Iron Man to Bond himself would experience in the decades that followed. It is easy to kill off a hero in a blaze of glory, but Matt Damon’s most hated Bourne movie instead forced its antihero to live with his mistakes and his successes.

Jason Bourne might escape The Bourne Ultimatum with his life, but no one comes away from the sequel’s story clean. He spares the life of a fellow CIA agent and exposes their plot, but he’s haunted by what he’s done to survive and the memories he still can’t fully recover. While spy thrillers that followed would become more uncritically ive of the CIA, The Bourne Ultimatum questioned both its hero and the organization that employed him with its ambitious ending. The finale was tense, morally grey, and perfectly suited to the elusive figure of Jason Bourne, making The Bourne Ultimatum the perfect ending to the series (despite its sequels).

Source: GQ