How to watch the Bourne movies in order
Where to start with the Bourne movie spy series
Looking to take a slice of the James Bond pie in the early '00s was Jason Bourne, a man with amnesia chased by people who wanted him dead for reasons unknown.
To help you get through them all, we have our guide on how to watch the Bourne movies and series in order.
There are five movies and one TV series with Matt Damon, Jeremy Renner - of MCU fame - and Jeremy Irvine all taking leading roles across them.
The first film, The Bourne Identity, came out in 2002, and the series Treadstone first appeared on the American Network in 2019.
The show is both a prequel and a sequel and offers some new insight into the world at large and the forces at play in the Bourne Universe.
The jury is out on whether or not another Bourne film will be made, and Treadstone being cancelled doesn't bode well for the series.
With all that said, read on for all things Bourne.
How to watch the Bourne movies in order
Other than the recent TV show, which acts as both a prequel and a sequel, the series has been released in chronological order - and as such, the order to watch them is really simple. Here's how:
- The Bourne Identity (2002)
- The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
- The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
- The Bourne Legacy (2012)
- Jason Bourne (2016)
- Treadstone (2019)
If you don't want to stream the Bourne films and prefer physical media, you can buy the complete Bourne series on Blu-Ray at Amazon.
The Bourne Identity (2002)
The first entry in the Bourne series - by release order anyway - and the first movie starts with our protagonist being dragged from the sea, barely alive, by a fisherman - and that's only the beginning of how bad and chaotic things soon become for him.
With set pieces that blew audiences away, a compelling story and a tense chase across Europe, Bourne, alongside Franka Potente as Marie Kreutz, must work to find out what is happening, who is after him and who he actually is. A really strong start for a franchise that kept improving for its first three outings.
The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
The conspiracy that Bourne is caught up in between the CIA and Operation Treadstone showed no signs of slowing down in the second entry in the Bourne series, and this one built on all that worked with the first and made a sequel that more than lived up to what came before.
The stakes were bigger, Bourne's motivations were amped up after the events of Identity and the supporting cast became more of a focus which helped the film out considerably. It may have still felt a little trapped in the spy genre tropes from time to time, but this was another win for Bourne.
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
Generally regarded as the best movie in the franchise, and for good reason, The Bourne Ultimatum was all about answers - and we finally learned all (well, most) of the secrets that we had been trying to figure out since it all began in 2002.
Bourne once again finds himself targeted by some assassins while trying to learn all he can about Treadstone, but in trying to find out as much information as he can, he learns some truths about himself that he may wish he hadn't. Had this been the end of the Bourne movies, it would have been an epic and thrilling way to say goodbye.
The Bourne Legacy (2012)
An oddity in the Bourne franchise and often overlooked - some may say unfairly - The Bourne Legacy saw Jeremy Renner join the franchise to lead the fourth entry while Matt Damon's titular character sat this one out.
A Bourne movie without Damon did seem like a strange idea, and it was a gamble that never truly paid off. But it should not be outright dismissed, as there is a lot to like here - with Renner doing a good job at filling in for Damon and some stunts that rivalled the best the series had to offer.
We certainly would not be opposed to a Damon and Renner team-up - which has been mooted as a possibility by Damon himself.
Jason Bourne (2016)
What we got in 2016 was a solid movie that, while feeling a tad repetitive in places, took the movies in a new direction - and it would be a shame if we didn't pick up after that interesting ending at some point down the line.
Alicia Vikander's character was the person hunting him down, and the future Tomb Raider star was a fantastic foil who we would love to see again. While the quest for Bourne to learn more about his father does feel like a step down from not knowing who he himself was, it still works and proved that there is life left in the series yet.
Treadstone (2019)
Cancelled after one season, Treadstone featured two timelines, with one set in 1973 that explored the murky origins of Operation Treadstone - where CIA agent John Randolph Bentley, played by Jeremy Irvine, escapes from a Soviet facility in East Berlin.
Throughout the series, the action would flash forward to the present day, with sleeper agents being awoken for operations.
The show didn't add too much to the mystery surrounding the Bourne story, but it's well worth a watch if you want to explore how it all came to be and the new direction it tried to take.
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