Lynch on "Ultimatum"

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"I saw The Bourne Ultimatum. I liked the first one the best but the third one is second-best. I like entertainment. Cinema can say many things. There's nothing wrong with a great Hollywood blockbuster. But sometimes you're [into] it like crazy while it's going and when you leave it sort of pops and evaporates." -- David Lynch speaking to MTV.com's Josh Horowitz. Yeah, we know that tune except Bourne didn't pop and evaporate because I didn't want it to. So I went back and saw it twice more.

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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on August 24, 2007 at 1:15 PM

comment #1

Larry says ...

So Lynch says something fairly innocuous and Wells gets defensive? I'm confused, and it's not Lynch's fault.

(If you want to attack Lynch for saying something stupid, get on his case for believing in 9/11 conspiracies.)

Posted by Larry at August 24, 2007 1:47 PM

comment #2

OddDuck says ...

I don't see defensiveness. I see a reference to an unexpected and kinda cool comment by David Lynch, and Wells disagreeing with one aspect of it. How's that an "attack"?

Posted by OddDuck at August 24, 2007 2:03 PM

comment #3

BurmaShave says ...

David Lynch would be an excellent candidate for BOURNE 4. It'll be called something like THE BOURNE RECKONING, and take place entirely inside his head.

Posted by BurmaShave at August 24, 2007 2:11 PM

comment #4

jeffmcm says ...

Lynch isn't even necessarily saying that he thought Bourne 3 evaporated - and Wells saying 'I didn't want it to' is more revealing.

Posted by jeffmcm at August 24, 2007 2:14 PM

comment #5

Brian says ...

...and Wells saying 'I didn't want it to' is more revealing.

And what exactly does it reveal? That he liked the movie?

Posted by Brian at August 24, 2007 2:22 PM

comment #6

jeffmcm says ...

That he _wanted_ to like the movie. (I liked it too, but I liked Supremacy better).

Posted by jeffmcm at August 24, 2007 2:26 PM

comment #7

storymark says ...

He went in wanting to like the movie, just like he goes into others wanting to not like them

Posted by storymark at August 24, 2007 2:34 PM

comment #8

Brian says ...

That he _wanted_ to like the movie.

Of course ... who didn't? And it's not like he didn't make that clear enough before he saw it, so I don't know why you think this is "revealing" anyway.

Posted by Brian at August 24, 2007 2:39 PM

comment #9

T. Holly says ...

If Lynch made #4, The Reckoning, maybe I'd find out if Jason has a mother or if he's an orphan, like James Bond. (I think it's Joan Allen.)

Posted by T. Holly at August 24, 2007 2:56 PM

comment #10

jeffmcm says ...

Ha ha.

Posted by jeffmcm at August 24, 2007 2:58 PM

comment #11

T. Holly says ...

Ha ha? Lust Mountain.

Posted by T. Holly at August 24, 2007 3:02 PM

comment #12

jeffmcm says ...

More like Lust in Translation. You're German, right?

Posted by jeffmcm at August 24, 2007 3:08 PM

comment #13

drbob says ...

Speaking of Lynch, I just bought my INLAND EMPIRE DVD last night and finished watching it about an hour ago. I found it completely absorbing the entire way through. What's it about? Beats the shit out of me.

Posted by drbob at August 24, 2007 7:07 PM

comment #14

Jack Price says ...

I love Lynch, but really found Inland Empire derivative, tedious, and fascinating on the basis that it's ultimately a Lynch home video scrapbook. There was not a single scene in that film which came close to ANYTHING in Mulholland Drive. Lynch's consciousness has reached levels deeper than the Colca Canyon from what I understand, but I really feel like he needs to get out of L.A. once in a while if he truly wants to rejuvenate his creative soul.

Posted by Jack Price at August 24, 2007 9:50 PM

comment #15

alan says ...

Lynch thinks Identity is best and Ultimatum is second best? Disappointing since Supremacy is most certainly the best.

Posted by alan at August 24, 2007 10:21 PM

comment #16

christian says ...

jeff loves his man movies.

Posted by christian at August 25, 2007 12:27 AM

comment #17

Spacelamb says ...

I wish some studio like Dreamworks would lose their minds and give Lynch $100 mil & final cut to make whatever he wanted. I'm drooling here...if only he'd directed Return of the Jedi, I'll bet the Ewoks would have had tentacles.

Posted by Spacelamb at August 25, 2007 12:33 AM

comment #18

adaml says ...

At least Lynch has the good sense to recognise that the first was the best. It is the only one that bears any resemblence to the novel it is supposedly based on and the only one that doesn't feature nausea inducing shakey cam and hyperactive editing. I also thought 3rd was better than 2nd but only Greengrass worshippers actualy prefer either of his efforts to Liman's vastly superior original.

Posted by adaml at August 25, 2007 3:13 AM

comment #19

Bocephus says ...

Four words: David Lynch's Ewok Adventure.

Posted by Bocephus at August 25, 2007 7:10 AM

comment #20

DavidF says ...

The Ewok Adventure came pretty close to happening, didn't it?
I wonder if Lynch regrets doing Dune instead of Jedi...

Posted by DavidF at August 25, 2007 10:04 AM

comment #21

Aunt Sassy says ...

Jeff,

Seeing BOURNE ULTIMATUM over and over again, isn't going to make it any better. It is, at best, a solid programmer...NOTHING MORE.

Lynch's comments about it are the most reasonable things to come out of his piehole in the last couple of years. It does pop and evaporate, because it has absolutely no resonance. The film is one long chase sequence from beginning to end with very little in the way of character development. This wouldn't annoy me so much if you hadn't been relentlessly whoring it out as the greatest piece of action cinema in a decade. As Kevin Spacey says in SUPERMAN RETURNS, "WRONG!!!!!!!"

The visual style of this film, while somewhat improved from SUPREMACY, is still very distracting (probably to prevent the audience from realizing that there aren't any characters in the film, just targets). Greengrass' style isn't some daring new cinema experiment. Any director can shoot an action sequence with 3 or 4 handheld cameras and then rapidly cut between them. It takes much more time, money and precision to stage master shots and use close-ups and inserts as needed. If you want to see the one of the best action sequences of the summer, watch the first shootout in LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD where Bruce Willis and Justin Long are fighting off gunmen inside a tiny bachelor apartment. It is a model of composition, economy and editing.

For a film that stays somewhat realistic for most of it's running time, ULTIMATUM has some truly egregious plot holes in the last fifteen minutes. We're asked to believe that Bourne could somehow make his way into a CIA director's office without anyone noticing. He're what so aggravating about this.

A. He would have to breach numerous security doors that David Strathairn had to swipe in order to open.

B. He would have to walk through the middle of a situation room swarming with intelligence anylists that have been doing nothing but looking at his face for the last week.

C. The office is located in a high-profile skyscraper in Manhattan instead of a secure facility.

We're also asked to believe that the CIA would run a black ops brainwashing program out of a public hospital (instead of a secure facility), and that in the highest security area of said hospital, there would be no bars or reinfornced glass on the windows to prevent oh, I don't know, someone attempting to escape by smashing through them. Lastly, and most fancifully, we're asked to believe that someone could actually survive swimming in the East River. As a friend of mine says, "it's not just ridiculous, it's re-cock-u-lous."

Lastly, as a sequel, ULTIMATUM is wildly overpraised. It does nothing to expand upon the mythology of the first two films, except to let us know that Jason Bourne was the subject of a CIA program to create assassins. Well duh...we knew that in IDENTITY. The only new revelation is that Bourne willingly joined this program and his initiation involved the killing of some anonymous abductee. Unfortunately, this elminates any sympathy the audience may have had for his situation and renders the entire series somewhat meaningless. Jason Bourne knew what he was getting into and chose to shake hands with the devil anyways. God knows how many people he tortured or killed before he was dumted into the Mediterranean. He's the kind of flunky that was willing to commit the most amoral acts as long as the word "patriotism" was used to justify them. Fuck Jason Bourne.

Posted by Aunt Sassy at August 26, 2007 6:38 PM

comment #22