Been a minute since Viggo Mortensen played a straight-up villain. Sure, he’s done the morally-complex anti-hero thing in stuff like THE ROAD, EASTERN PROMISES, and A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, but he’s come a long way since being known for his nasty characters in stuff like LEATHERFACE: TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III, YOUNG GUNS II, and BOILING POINT.
But it looks like there’s a chance that he’ll be following in the footsteps of Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, and Edward Norton as the latest villain in the BOURNE franchise.
We know that talks are further along with Alicia Vikander and newly-announced BOURNE vet Julia Stiles, but it seems that Viggo’s the studio and director Paul Greengrass’ first choice. An offer’s reportedly been made, and they’re waiting to see if the former LORD OF THE RINGS/HIDALGO star will bite or not.
I thought THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM felt like an exposition-heavy retread of the previous film, giving us escalated versions of the old set-pieces while feeding us information we pretty much had already figured out or simply didn’t care to know. If they’re going to justify bringing Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne back into the fray, they’ll need to create new stakes beyond “Who is Jason Bourne?” or “Who is framing Jason Bourne?” and that means a good villain. Like I said, Viggo hasn’t played the heavy in a long time (though he was great as a sleazy con-man in last year’s TWO FACES OF JANUARY), and I’d love to see him exploit that crooked smile and malevolent stare in a big-budget spy pic. Who kno
Of course, there’s no indication that Viggo wants anything to do with this series, and the role could just as easily go to his FELLOWSHIP comrade Sean Bean, or anyone else for that matter. But he’s who they want, and I’m kinda hoping they get him.
BOURNE 5 will make you look at what they made them give on July 29th, 2016. Time to get crackin’, people.
