Trailer Analysis - The Bourne Ultimatum

The Bourne Ultimatum

2007

Director - Paul Greengrass

Institution – Universal Pictures

The Bourne Ultimatum is an American-German action, spy, and thriller film and is the third in the Bourne film series. Matt Damon returns to his role as Ludlum's signature character, former CIA assassin and psychogenic amnesiac Jason Bourne. In this particular film, he continues on his search for information about his past before he was part of Operation Treadstone and becomes a target of a similar assassin program. The target audience I think The Bourne Ultimatum appeals to is both males and females from the age of twelve upwards who are predominately from America or England as this is an American film. However this film could appeal to anyone from any ethnicity or occupation. As this film is the third film in the Bourne film series, this film could appeal to both the primary and secondary target audience.

The medium close up shot of the protagonist character Jason Bourne played by Matt Damon is an iconic scene as he is the main focus in the shot even though he is walking in public the rest of the public have been blurred out. Straight away this appeals to the target audience in numerous of ways; both the primary and secondary target audience, as he is the globally known actor to play Jason Bourne. Dialogue from a conversation he is having with a women is put on top of this particular moment as later on in the trailer it then goes on to show a two shot scene of Jason Bourne talking to this women about all his identities he has been given before in the past.  The trailer then goes on to show an over the shoulder shot of Jason and the lady having a conversation, where it is made clear to the audience Jason Bourne was one of the original people on the Operation Treadstone programme.

Aerial shots of locations in which Jason Bourne has visited are then shown which appeals to the target audience as if they are from those particular countries or had connections with those countries it encourages them to see the film more. The lighting in these scenes are natural daylight and whilst the images of these locations are being shown there is dialogue over them stating what each country is (London and Italy) by the assassin programme that are after him. The trailer then goes on to show the audience different scenes from the film which leaves the audience an enigma. The sound used in the trailer I feel really emphasises the fact the film is an action film as through the use of non diegetic, diegetic, soundtracks, dialogue and sound FX included in these scenes it creates a more fast paced trailer, creating more suspense for the audience. Therefore, the use of sound helps to make the trailer more effective and appeal to the audience.

The scenes from the trailer denote Jason Bourne wearing black clothes throughout which connotes the fact that he is trying to hide from everyone. The colour black relates to the hidden, the secretive and the unknown, and as a result it creates an air of mystery. Black keeps things bottled up inside, hidden from the world which relates to the protagonist character Jason Bourne in many ways. This appeals to the audience as Jason Bourne is trying to protect himself from the external emotional stress, which is currently occurring to him by the assassins.

Overall, the character of Jason Bourne represents the fact that he is a strong male with power and authority trying to protect himself and the people around him. This conforms the ideologies of males and how they are strong and stern always trying to protect themselves and the people they care about. However, this also conforms the conventions of a protagonist character in an action film as they are always males the majority of the time. I believe this trailer follows the narrative theory of Claude Levi Strauss as he states that all narratives are driven by binary oppositions and that it is found that one side of the binary pair are always seen by a particular society or culture to be more valued over the other. Therefore, Jason Bourne can be seen as a protagonist and antagonist character by different groups of film and as this film is about an assassin team trying to capture him this film moves forward in the storyline. This trailer would appeal to the target audience as I believe the people who enjoy action films or admire the characters who are featured in the film would watch this film.