Some weeks ago, I got a cheap video on special offer: The Bourne Supremacy. Anyways, as it was a thriller I got quite hooked after seeing it this week. The DVD of the first in series: The Bourne Identity, was on special offer, so I got it, too. But as it was published as a book by Robert Ludlum before, I went into the library and borrowed as many of the series I could find.
But the book and the films have hardly any resemblance to each other! Whilst the books are set sometime in the 70ies or even 80ies, in the cold war and have the hero rooting in the Vietnam war and fighting Chinese and Russian super terrorists and assassins, the films offer no explanations whatsoever and the plot is totally different.
The next in series the Bourne Ultimatum, is set to be filmed start of 2007 in Berlin, and I wonder what the plot and action will be like. It is so different from the book, that it would not make sense, and if the knowledge of the series would be based on the film, there are too many gaps and too many variations to make sense at all. The film series has been propelled forward in the future, as otherwise the hero would need to be at least about 60, 70 years old, and has added technology, such as computers, mobile phones and similar and the wife or relationship is very different as well. Actually the book paints its character a bit too simplistic and the film series is a bit too superficial to make sense, but it is both quite good entertainment as thrilling, but actually, I am not convinced it is worth the time.
Somehow, it is interesting though to read these old thrillers and relive the crazy nonsense ideological fear of East and West and the weird manipulations. As some of the incidents and persons in the book seem to be researched at least a little bit, the plot constantly plays with the imagination and history.