To clarify in advance, I loved the movies The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy. I also greatly enjoyed the novels by the same name, even though the movie Bourne was so much cooler, and the movie Marie was so much less annoying. I just finished reading The Bourne Ultimatum, and I feel I must ask, most emphatically, “What in the name of Zeus’ butt happened between books two and three that caused so much suckiness to invade the pen of Robert Ludlum?” Allow me to illustrate:
Cast of Characters
David Webb: In what is referred to as the “prologue,” but the events of which actually occur after the beginning of the story, I employ wire cutters while realizing that I am now 50 years old, and really feeling it.
Jason Bourne: David, you’re 50. What a pathetic loser wimp you are!
Marie Webb: David, I’m a woman, and therefore genetically predisposed to extreme fits of irrational and irritating behavior, but I will be carrying it to the extreme and beyond during the next 1700 pages of your life. After all, you’re 50 years old now, and really feeling it.
Carlos the Jackal: Despite being a complete stupid character, I will hunt you down, Jason Bourne, you 50-year-old second-rate assassin. It only took me 13 years to figure out you are really David Webb, despite my supposed possession of a great network of spies, who will turn on me and drive me crazier than I already am. Muwahahahahaha!
Italian Mafia: Though we are completely unnecessary to the actual plot, we will devote numerous pages to talking like retarded goons and providing not-so-clever subplots that will make Jason Bourne think Carlos is after him, despite our never having heard of Carlos. After all, Jason Bourne is 50, and we owe it to him.
Alex Conklin: I only have one foot, but at least I’m not 50. Oh wait, I’m even older? Crap. Also, it will be conveniently revealed that I’m actually Russian.
Morris Panov: I’m a psychiatrist. David Webb is 50, which makes Jason Bourne 50, too, I guess, but if Jason Bourne shows up, it is your responsibility, Marie, to make him go away by using awkward seduction techniques.
Dimitri Krupkin: I’m Russian, and so I’m in with the KGB and call everyone “comrade.” Did you know that David Webb is 50?
Various other characters: We’re unnecessary and David Webb is 50. Like the rest of the cast, we will speak in a fashion alien to that of any normal human speech–punctuated with much unnecessary and silly, um, punctuation, and… stuff.
The Story
David Webb: I’m 50 years old? Oh yeah, I am. Despite having already noted that fact, I will surely do it again and again, as will every other character with a minor role, including my infant daughter.
Allison Webb: Goo goo ga ga daddy 50.
David Webb: Oh no, people have been shot, so Carlos the Jackal, my archnemesis must be after Jason Bourne, my alter ego, after all these years!
Jason Bourne: I must send your family to an island in the Caribbean where it would never occur to me that Carlos may have agents! Also, you make me sick, David Webb, you pathetic 50-year-old weakling.
THE FAMILY goes to the CARIBBEAN.
Jason Bourne: Okay, they’re on the island. Time to make a series of stupid decisions and mistakes that should rightfully cost me and everyone I know our lives, but inexplicably won’t.
Marie Webb: I will also make an insufferable amount of stupid decisions–as aforementioned more even than my being a woman genetically predisposed to irrational behavior can account for.
Others: We’ll play some parts, too, rather stupidly.
THEY go to the ISLAND, then FRANCE, then back to THE UNITED STATES again, I think, then probably ICELAND or AUSTRALIA in the 7000 pages I skipped because this novel is so freakin’ convolutedly–and may I add pointlessly?–long, then BOURNE ends up in RUSSIA and someone else kills CARLOS, because after all, he’s 50 now. You didn’t really expect him to do it, did you?
And so, in the final three words of the book, “it’s really over.”
Until The Bourne Legacy. Admittedly, I find it to be better written and more engaging than Ultimatum; the characters at least talk like normal people and Marie hasn’t shown up at all except by way of text message. But all is not well: the plot seems to be set up by absurd circumstance and idiotic decision making on the part of the author.
By chapter two I already wanted to slap Bourne. Someone shoots at him, so he goes to talk to his friend Conklin to talk about it. Upon arrival at Conklin’s place, he finds Conklin and Panov dead. Then he hears sirens. “Oh no, I’ve been set up,” he thinks. “I must inexplicably run because it would be silly to actually tell the police that I was shot at and then found my friends shot, too. Never mind that I’m leaving my car in the driveway and left fingerprints everywhere.” Now I’m about a quarter of the way through the book and I think I’ve already guessed the ending. It’s kind of sad, really, but I can put up with it because I haven’t been reminded even once that Bourne is over 50.
I just went to Amazon.com and read the reviews of The Bourne Ultimatum. It astonishes me that the majority of the people gave it four or five stars. Did they read the same book that I did? Go read Ender’s Game or something by Terry Pratchett. Those are good books, people.