Bond, Bourne, and Bruce: Matt Damon names his dream movie deathmatch
Have you ever wondered who would win in a knock-down, drag-out fight to the death between James Bond, Jason Bourne, and John McClane? Matt Damon has. However, he believes, if that’s your line of thinking, you’re not even asking the right questions – because there’s a much more interesting movie deathmatch out there to dream about.
Naturally, when it comes to this kind of schoolyard “my dad could beat up your dad” scenario, you’d be forgiven for thinking Damon would immediately choose Bourne as the winner. After all, he has played Robert Ludlum’s iconic character in four incredibly successful – and extremely critically acclaimed – movies. Damon’s Bourne is a tortured man of few words whose former employers simply won’t leave him alone. That persistence leads to all kinds of globe-trotting adventures, not to mention international super assassins being beaten to death with magazines and the like.
Back in 2007, during the build-up to the release of The Bourne Ultimatum, Damon’s third outing as the amnesiac spy, the actor spoke to Moviehole. With tongue planted firmly in cheek, he was asked by the interviewer if Bourne could take fellow superspy Bond in a scrap – but he wouldn’t venture much of an answer. Perhaps, in that case, he felt discretion was the better part of valour.
Instead, the Good Will Hunting star posited what would happen if Bourne took on Bruce Willis’ New York cop McClane, who proved himself to be a dab hand at killing terrorists in five increasingly ludicrous – and decreasingly awesome – Die Hard movies. To Damon, McClane has always exhibited one characteristic which is essential when it comes to imagined bouts of badassery.
He smiled, “John McClane just won’t die. You can’t bet against John McClane.”
It was at this point, though, that Damon began playing 3D chess, all while Moviehole was still playing checkers. Instead of wondering what would happen if Bourne took on Daniel Craig’s burly modern incarnation of Bond, or what would occur if McClane was thrown into the mix, Damon suggested his idea of “a good celebrity deathmatch”. That’s right – all the Bonds vs all the Bournes.
To Damon, the possibility of gathering all the Bonds together at once – Sean Connery, Roger Moore, George Lazenby, Pierce Brosnan, Timothy Dalton, David Niven and Daniel Craig – and putting them opposite his Bourne and the one played by Richard Chamberlain in a 1988 TV miniseries adaptation of The Bourne Identity was the truly fascinating matchup.
Perhaps Damon simply wanted to spotlight Chamberlain’s mostly forgotten version of the character, because he revealed in the same interview that his incarnation of Bourne actually owes a lot to Chamberlain’s performance. In fact, it was so good that it helped the miniseries land an Emmy nomination in 1989. Or maybe he really thought the two Bournes would make a formidable tag team.
Either way, it’s hard to argue with Damon on such a silly hypothetical – but to engage on his level, we’d say it’s unlikely that the two Bournes would fare well against seven Bonds. The numbers game alone would seem to doom them to a bloody demise. We appreciate Damon thinking outside the box on the topic, though – and can’t help wondering if one indestructible McClane could trounce the whole lot of them.
