Bourne Legacy featurette dehumanizes the subjects

Universal Pictures has posted a new featurette for its upcoming fantasy spy thriller, The Bourne Legacy.

The film picks up the story after the end of the Bourne trilogy which starred Matt Damon as a secret agent being hunted down by his own agency in a display of engimatic supernatural skills.

This new featurette compliments the previous one, which was mostly about the protagonist, Aaron (Jeremy Renner), by explaining a bit about the female lead, Marta (Rachel Weisz).

The new clip also provides some background on the science fiction elements of the story, hinting that the audience will perhaps finally get some answers about what the program is and why it exists (and how it created super-soldiers like Bourne).

If this is indeed the start of a new trilogy, as I’m sure Universal hopes it is, then it’s likely to be a more revelatory one. Unfortunately, there is no official plot synopsis available yet, but we can see it will clearly involve lots of shooting guns and running from things, in addition to some inside look at The Program, or at least the recruiting process. Overall, it seems like it might be a film with more depth than any one of the first three.

Here’s the theatrical trailer for reference:

Renner picks up the franchise lead from Damon, but unlike the Bond series, he’s not playing the same character. Rather, Renner’s character is part of the same program that created Jason Borne, and his adventure is precipitated by the events of the first three films. Renner gave a good action performance in this year’s top blockbuster film The Avengers in the role of Hawkeye, and this character seems somewhat similar, so we can probably expect a similar level of acting here.

The Bourne Legacy, co-written and directed by Tony Gilroy, who helped pen the first trilogy, hits theaters August 10th, 2012. The film was delayed from its original August 3rd date to give The Dark Knight Rises more breathing room.