It should not be so surprising that the action franchises built around an unstoppable hero have difficulty to extend their cinematographic worlds beyond this central figure. Lionsgate is the last studio to fight in this regard, John Wick turns out to be the biggest problem with the construction of this particular cinematographic universe. Try as they could, the studio and its booming world on the screen cannot escape the shadow of the Baba Yaga, as evidenced by the disappointment which was the spin-off of television “The Continental”. With the latest spin-off of the film, “Ballerina”, in difficulty at the box office, it seems that the John Wick saga could be dead in the water-at least until Keanu Reeves agrees to come back for one more lap.
But the saga “John Wick” is far from the first action franchise to encounter this problem. Just watch Jason Bourne’s movies. In 2002, director Doug Liman and Star Matt Damon essentially reinvented the kind of action with “The Bourne Identity”. Adaptation of Robert Ludlum’s novel in 1980 of the same name, the film served as a deconstruction of the action hero while simultaneously invigorating this archetype. Jason Bourne de Damon is a highly qualified assassin without any memory of whom he is or the way he has become such an unstoppable force. While he questions who he is and who he is supposed to be, the film industry has also reassessed what an action hero and an action film should be.
This, alongside an anchored and grainy tone and some of the most intense combat scenes ever taken, made “The Bourne Identity” a fundamental entry into the history of action film, and a superabundance of similar films followed, even Batman and James Bond after a similar section with “Batman Begins” (2005) and “Casino Royale” (2006), respectively. Bourne’s consequences were notable to maintain the quality of the saga, but after the third film, Universal decided to try to extend the Bourne cinematographic universe with dull results. “The Bourne Legacy” of 2012 exchanged Damon for Jeremy Renner as an Aaron Cross, and the public was not so impressed. But even “Legacy” pale compared to “Treatstone”, a dramatic series of action taking place in the Bourne universe which lasted only one season.
Treatstone was a short -term Jason Bourne series without Jason Bourne
At the end of 2007, “The Bourne Ultimatum”, Jason Bourne de Matt Damon had discovered the truth of his origins as a very trained agent of the dark Treadstone operation. This black CIA-op arm was created to form elite murderers, and Bourne becomes its greatest product. After “The Bourne Legacy”, Universal tried to put things back on the right track with “Jason Bourne” of 2016, who saw the return of the Damon hero but was so bad that he made that some fans reconsidered their love of the franchise. It was not a good sign. If the man himself was not going to repair things, what was it? In the minds of leaders, a Bourne Bourne TV show was apparently the answer.
“Treatstone” was this show. The Action Drama series made its debut on USA Network on October 15, 2019 and took the public on an exploration of the history of the Treatstone operation while telling several modern tales based on black agents produced by the program. He featured Jeremy Irvine in the role of John Randolph Bentley, a former agent of the Marte in Carré who, at the start of the series, was shown in captivity by Soviet agents in 1973. He then escapes before the series jumps in time to see several sleeping agents of the “awake” stone to carry out their missions. These agents include Tara Coleman (played by the actor of “The Pitt” Tracy Ifeachor), Soyun Park (Han Hyo-Joo) and Doug McKenna (Brian J. Smith).
Throughout the series, we go and come in time while we follow the main casting in an adequately international odyssey which imitated the adventures of Globe-Hopping undertaken by Jason Bourne himself. The program also referred to several films events and was presented as coming from “The World of Jason Bourne”, but was quite his own thing. The character of Matt Damon does not present himself in the series, which could have something to do with the reason why he was canceled after a single season. In May 2020, USA Network eliminated the catch, which led to another unsuccessful attempt to extend the Bourne cinematographic universe.
The cardboard step was condemned from the start
After USA Network canceled “Treatstone”, Deadline reported that the show had simply been too “expensive while not drawing enough eyelashes”. But there was also the question of what is not so great. “Treatstone” is not included in the classification by the film of the films of Jason Bourne, but if we placed it there just to include each project of this franchise, it would not be very high. The program has a 50% criticism score on Rotten Tomatoes, which is not the worst that the Tomatometer has ever distributed, but some criticisms certainly did not retain.
The writer Rogerebert.com, Brian Talerico, advised the public to “wipe” treastone “from USA [their] Memory, “call it” gray porridge of things you have seen in better spy shows, and much better spy films. “Tim Goodman of the Hollywood Reporter was not impressed either, writing that” many action films require that the public suspended and removes the “treastone”. “Convincing” and praised the way it took “the mythology of the Bourne trilogy of Robert Ludlum in the places where it has never been.”
Although “Jason Bourne” has apparently proven that Bourne himself was not the most important element of this cinematographic universe, “Treadstone” was always going to have trouble appealing without man himself. It was like Sony who had trouble making tubes from his Spider-Man universe without Spider-Man. Whatever the performance of “Jason Bourne”, Matt Damon has always been a key element in the initial success of the franchise, and if a Jason Bourne project did not work with him, that was certainly not going to work without him.
