Some properties are much better off left alone, but Hollywood just can’t help itself from trying to wring even more profits out of franchises that had already reached a note-perfect conclusion. As a case in point, The Bourne Legacy signaled the downfall of what was perfectly fine on its own as an all-time great trilogy.
Recruiting Jeremy Renner and Tony Gilroy after Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass had resisted any and all attempts to lure then back into the fold, the end result was the worst-reviewed installment in the saga by quite some distance, which really shouldn’t have come as a shock to anybody given the sum of its parts.
It might have followed the template set by its illustrious predecessors, and a decent enough box office haul of $276 million helped propel Bourne past the billion-dollar mark in total, but at no point did it state a compelling enough case for why it needed to exist in the first place. Ironically, it even lit the fuse on the entire espionage IP’s creative downfall.
Loosely-connected spin-off series Treadstone is barely remembered by anyone after being canned one season into its existence, while even the Damon/Greengrass comeback in Jason Bourne overtook Legacy as the most widely-panned entry yet, even if it did make the most money based on the power of the brand.
Folks are still willing to witness Renner running around for two hours screaming about his chems, to be fair, after FlixPatrol declared The Bourne Legacy as one of both Prime Video and iTunes’ biggest hits so far this week.