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Matt Damon – Hollywood’s ultimate chameleon. The man has survived the harsh conditions of being stranded on Mars and has lived out all our spy fantasies as Jason Bourne. One of the best in the game, Matt Damon has proven time and again that the mark he’s made in the entertainment industry won’t be forgotten anytime soon. With a charm that could convince the harshest critics, he knows how to steal hearts, one movie and one meme-worthy moment at a time.
Matt Damon in The Martian (2015) | Credits: 20th Century FoxThe actor can certainly pull off anything thrown his way, even if it means he will have to play a character that is more action than words. We don’t see Matt Damon talking much in the Bourne films and while lead actors usually need to be pretty expressive with their words, keeping talking to a minimum actually worked out for the best for him. What’s more intriguing is that he had no problem working with fewer dialogues.
Jason Bourne isn’t a man of many words
A still from The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) | Credits: Universal PicturesMatt Damon’s journey as one of our favorite fictional spies began in 2002 with The Bourne Identity. He went on to play the character 2 more times in The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum before bidding it a temporary farewell in The Bourne Legacy (he was replaced by Jeremy Renner’s Aaron Cross). His absence was quite noticeable and the man eventually returned to the scene in Jason Bourne.
Coming to the character himself, Jason Bourne was not a man of many words and we love that about him. If you are tired of spies having cheeky one-liners, the Bourne franchise is for you. The guy kept it raw and real.
Like other spies, Jason is intense and possesses a skillset that speaks volumes. He doesn’t need pages on pages of dialogues and Damon understands this. In an interview with Rotten Tomatoes, he said of The Bourne Ultimatum,
If I start saying too much, then it’s generally not working. We went through the whole second act of the movie last time and Bourne didn’t really talk at all for probably 45 minutes to an hour of that movie.
While you might believe that a smaller number of dialogues may make it easier on the cast and crew of a film, Damon admitted that it was a bit of a challenge, especially for director Paul Greengrass who had to “contextualize what the actor’s doing” in order for a silent-ish character to make sense.
Matt Damon was okay with Bourne’s minimal dialogue
Matt Damon and Franka Potente in The Bourne Supremacy (2004) | Credits: Universal PicturesWhile talking to The Guardian once, Damon admitted that Jason was quite a bit “chatty” when his girlfriend, Marie Kreutz (Franka Potente), was alive. After her death, though, he ends up lonely.
Owing to this plot twist, writer Tony Gilroy wrote Damon a letter informing him about the decrease in the speaking role. Luckily, the actor was quite on board!
Well, I’ve done it three times. In the first movie, the Marie Kreutz character is still alive, so Bourne has a sounding board and he’s more confused about who he is and a lot more chatty. Once she dies in the first act of the second movie, it’s really a very lonely character. And we talked about that mostly on the second one. I remember Tony writing me an email saying, ‘You do realise what this means? You do realise you’re not going to talk in this movie.’ I said, ‘No, I love that.’
Damon believes that movies like Bourne don’t need to be too verbal – it’s the violence and set pieces that make it what it is. In his words, “I think what makes a Bourne movie is the violence and the set pieces.” However, he did acknowledge the fact that Jason is a character with a “tremendous amount of emotionality.” Well, clearly, the role wasn’t easy to pull off, no matter how effortless Damon made it seem!
The Bourne films are available to watch on Hulu. You can stream Jason Bourne on Max.
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