Bourne Legacy: Does The Avengers' Jeremy Renner Deliver—and Why Is Matt Damon in the Trailer?!

New installment of action series features a new lead, so how is it?

By Erik Pedersen May 31, 2012 8:08 PMTags
THE BOURNE LEGACY Universal Pictures

Jeremy Renner is already in the top-grossing movie of the year, The Avengers, starred in the 2008 Best Picture Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker, and held his own as part of Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol globetrotting crew.

But now with The Bourne Legacy he's jumping into one of our favorite movie franchises ever: So how does he hold up against the legacy of Matt Damon as Jason Bourne? Check it out now!

And we have to say he does pretty darn good, based on this trailer.

Here, Renner plays a fellow Treadstone assassin who goes on the run from bad guy Ed Norton after Bourne blows the cover off the program, and he shows remarkable skill at punching, jumping, driving, killing, shooting and delivering grim one-liners to Rachel Weisz.

While this film reportedly came about because Damon and Paul Greengrass, director of the last two films in the trilogy, didn't feel they had a script ready to go and opted out, the trailer for this extension suggests that Legacy will feature all the essentials of a Bourne film: a conflicted killer hero, a global reach, some very grungy hotel rooms and a whole bunch of incredible stunts and chases.

And Matt Damon.

Wait, what? In a strange twist, the trailer includes scenes with Joan Allen and David Straithairn that seem spun from the conclusion of the last film—as well as a photo of Damon as Bourne on a news report. While we figure it's a clever way of intertwining Renner's tale with Damon's, we also have to wonder whether it's an homage—or something else—to the absent Bourne star.

Either way, this all looks pretty intriguing...and just the thing to tide us over until Damon and Greengrass return for another go.

The Bourne Legacy hits screens August 3.

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