| Fuck you, Eric Van Lustbader! |
[Mar. 4th, 2008|05:21 pm] |
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| | "Atonement" - John Powell (The Bourne Supremacy OST) | ] |
Oh, boy. I need to vent.
If you've spoken to me in the past week, you'd note that my Jason Bourne obsession has flared back up again. Which is rad, because the movies are ace, and the books are, somehow, even better, and completely different to boot. I've eaten, slept, and breathed Jason Bourne (not literally, you pervboxes). I finally managed to get my mitts on the library's copy of The Bourne Ultimatum in book form, and re-read the third I'd finished, oh, I don't know, four months ago. Late fines suck.
Okay. During the course of the book I was frightened. Not for Jason's/David's life, not for Marie's life, and not for their children's lives. I knew they would all live. No, I was most scared of losing the less central characters, like Brendan Patrick Pierre Prefontaine, Johnny St. Jacques, Dimitri Krupkin, Alexander Conklin, and Mo Panov. They're my five faves in Ultimatum, especially since Conklin and Panov were there since Identity. Philippe D'Anjou was another favorite of mine - I say was because -- SPOILER ALERT! -- he's dead ever since Supremacy. Awesome, but dead. And I know Robert Ludlum has no consideration for my feelings, because if he did, Philippe would still be alive, god dammit. When Mo got kidnapped by the Mafia and pumped full of sodium pentathol, when Alex got shot and 'sploded, I wasn't sure they would ever get to make it back to Langley alive.
Thank God that they all made it to the close of the book in one piece (or close to it). Battered and bruised and a little more paralyzed than others, but alive.
So I picked up the next one, The Bourne Legacy. It was not written by Ludlum, but by Eric Van Lustbader. I told myself I'd give it a chance. After all, I prefer some of the newer 007 novels to Ian Fleming's originals (blasphemy!). Maybe this updated Bourne wouldn't be that bad. It might be, dare I say, better.
SPOILER ALERT! It ain't.
I had a few problems with the book almost immediately. One, David Webb -- alias Jason Bourne -- is now teaching at Georgetown. Seriously? Fucking Georgetown? Last time I checked, he, Marie, and the kids were living happily in Maine. Why the move, Dave? Why the move?
Two, and it pains me to even say this...Alex and Mo get killed. In the first twenty pages. It's not even a hello-goodbye sort of thing. It's a "let's talk briefly about these characters in internal narration"-goodbye sort of thing. Bourne goes to Conklin's house and Conklin and Mo are DEAD ON THE MOTHERFUCKING CARPET WITH BULLETS IN THEIR HEADS. Considering that they were such a huge fuckin' part of the first three novels, that's just a slap in the face. Bourne doesn't even mourn them. Webb doesn't even mourn them, he doesn't go "Oh my God", he doesn't do anything. Which, if the previous thing was a slap in the face, this is a fourteenth-century spiked mace to the face. Webb is supposed to be in control now. Not Bourne.
Three...and this is almost somehow even worse...their killer is actually, in the biggest plot twist since Star Wars and Mattimeo, BOURNE'S SON FROM HIS FIRST MARRIAGE WHO HATES HIS DAD BECAUSE HE THINKS BOURNE ABANDONED HIM.
Take a few deep breaths and read that sentence over until it sinks in. I'm a patient girl. I'll wait.
You done? Good. It gets worse.
See, aside from what is Very Wrong with that statement to begin with, Bourne's first wife, son, and daughter are dead. D-E-A-D dead. Deader than...well, deader than a dead Boromir playing poker with a dead Alec and a dead Sean in the Halls of the Dead while Davy Jones pilots the Flying Dutchman around them. In fact, their death is the catalyst that transformed softspoken scholar Webb into superfantastic killing machine Delta One, and then superfantastic killing machine Jason Bourne (with Conklin's help).
So all of the Eric Van Lustbader books are now, officially, fanfic. Worse. I've actually read better Bourne fanfic. Because this just offends my eyes and my senses so much more than I could ever possibly explain.
On top of that, he a) makes Bourne still a superfantastic killing machine, when in book-canon he was 50 in 1990 and already having trouble being a superfantastic killing machine, b) apparently completely excludes Marie the Arse-Kicking Canadian Ranch Girl Who Doesn't Die Unlike In The Movies, and c) misrepresents the relationship between Webb and Conklin, who are pretty much BFF fo' LIFE. And I do mean that. No exaggeration. In the short paragraph describing Conklin, he's called "half friend, half foe", which is so not right it's not even right.
The really shit part is that in the past two or three days, since I've started re-reading Ultimatum, I have become a Conklin fangirl. Yes, I fangirl a sixty-year-old semiretired alcoholic CIA spook with a prosthetic foot and sekrit Russian roots.
No, actually, never mind, that isn't surprising. He sounds just like the kind of person I'd fangirl. (In my head he looks a liiiiittle like Anthony Bourdain. No idea why.)
I mean, I've been fangirling Conklin so much I've decided to pretty much chuck my plans to app Jason Bourne (although him in Special Counseling would be a riot and a half) and considering apping Saint Alex of Langley in his stead. He'd be so much more interesting to play. I can see his reactions perfectly, and I can tell how he'd adapt and react. Because Saint Alex would adapt and react. A lot. You don't fuck wit' no cripple, foo'!
Especially not when that cripple's Saint Alex, mastermind of Treadstone. He can kill you with his brain. Fact.
...WHY YOU KILL OFF MY PANOV AND MY CONKERS, FOO'?! >:( |
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