It’s been just over ten years since the last Jason Bourne film came out, an action franchise synonymous with comparisons to James Bond, or perhaps even my beloved Mission: Impossible. Nowadays, in 2026, there’s a surprisingly small amount of talk about the franchise amongst film fans, which got me thinking – what is its actual legacy?
The inspiration came to me originally when I was fortunate enough to head to Universal Studios Orlando, where I caught ‘The Bourne Stuntacular’, a stunt show focusing on the franchise as part of their daily entertainment offerings. As a self-proclaimed fan of the films, I found myself in the queue trying to recall the plots to minimal success. I could remember vague points, but not the detail that I expected given the stature of the franchise and my own proclamations. Although it’s regularly regarded as one of the definitive action franchises, the lack of definitive plot points or set pieces that sprang to mind immediately made me question whether the reputation still made sense. If it was as influential on the genre as I recalled, shouldn’t I be able to remember why?
From a famous moments perspective, I could think of two or three occasions in similar franchises that have had a lasting impression on audiences. When it came to Bourne, all I could recall was other characters’ repeated shock that he was about to cause some serious damage. This led me to think if perhaps the franchise’s legacy is actually everything it made possible, rather than the quality of the films themselves, and if true, it could explain why the films are somehow both well respected and forgotten at the same time.
After all, as a franchise, it’s grossed over $1.6 billion, with a large amount of plaudits over the years going towards its establishment of gritty realism and shaky cam cinematography within the genre. One of the films, Bourne Ultimatum, even won three Academy Awards for its styling (Best Film Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing). The story of the franchise is an interesting one: 5 films and a cancelled TV spinoff that follow Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) as the character tries to remember his life after being part of a programme called Treadstone. Being part of that programme led to him having an extraordinary skill set that makes him a huge threat to the people he goes after, and it’s solving why he was in that programme that forms the overarching storyline. The first film came out in 2002, with the rest of the original trilogy being released in 2004 and 2007 respectively. After that, there was a slight pivot to the more unpopular Jeremy Renner-led film in 2012 before Damon, and more crucially, Paul Greengrass (who directed the original trilogy) returned to the franchise with Jason Bourne in 2016. More on that later.
The films themselves are harder to fault than you might expect and are generally pretty decent action films. They aren’t game-changing cinema, but they still all make for an entertaining watch. They do heavily rely on audiences rooting for Bourne, with minimal other recurring characters outside of Pam Landy (Joan Allen) and Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles), but that’s not necessarily a problem. By leaning into the lone wolf nature of Bourne’s work and cleverly using that to portray why he’s so lethal, it even feels like a precursor to the arguably more successful John Wick franchise. He also doesn’t roll with the same bravado as other action leads, but still flaunts an impressive killer aura that not many other characters have on screen. It is Damon’s performance throughout the franchise that really helps to elevate this side of the character. There are occasional moments in the first two films where it feels clunky, but no more so than any other films from that time period.
There’s also a lot of films inspired by the franchise that followed, and that’s undoubtedly going to have swayed my opinion. Watching Bourne in 2026 means I was watching it through the lens of every spy thriller and every shaky-cam action sequence it inspired. It reminded me of watching The Shawshank Redemption later than most and feeling surprised at its cultural impact. In reality, that feeling wasn’t because it wasn’t deserving of it, but because so many films had absorbed its DNA since. After rewatching them all, I believe the same is true of Bourne. Its innovations to the genre now feel invisible purely because of how well they worked. If anything, the final film, Jason Bourne, feels like an attempt by the franchise to show that it is worthy of its reputation, with the film feeling a lot more familiar to other newer films. By giving the foundations of the Bourne franchise an uplift, the whole product felt slicker and more tense. The problem was, so many films had replicated it since that it no longer stood out, releasing to mixed reviews and a $416 million worldwide gross (which is fairly small in action terms).
Ironically, it feels weirdly appropriate to write about a character who spends large portions of his franchise not remembering who he is, given everything I’m writing about. It’s clearly a franchise that doesn’t aim to reward people for rewatching as a more modern one may; instead, it’s designed for its impact on a first watch. Other franchises, like Bond or Mission Impossible, give you a team to root for. Bourne asks you instead to root for one man. One conclusion might be that The Bourne Stuntacular is actually the perfect tribute to what the franchise is: no plot required and all the iconography of a man who is dangerous and doesn’t know why. Another might be that Bourne’s real legacy isn’t its films but everything it made possible, and that both are its greatest achievement and the reason rewatching it now feels like opening a time capsule.
