Damon’s co-star Alicia is a big fan of Bourne

SEOUL — “Oh my God, it’s Jason Bourne!”

As a fan, anybody would feel the way Alicia Vikander did when she saw Matt Damon walk into the set of Jason Bourne, the fourth movie in the franchise loosely based on Robert Ludlum’s novels (after Bourne Identity, Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum) again with Paul Greengrass as director.

“Yes, I am a big fan of Bourne,” Vikander admitted to the Asian press during the movie’s junket in this city two weeks ago. “I was a teenager when I saw my first Bourne movie. When I first met Paul, I told him a story that he probably thought I was making up. But it’s true!” added Vikander who grew up in Gothenburg, Sweden. “When I first went to London, I shared a flat with three girls not far from where we wound up shooting in Paddington. We were so broke that we shared a wardrobe, we shared beds. On Sundays, when we didn’t have enough money to go to the pub, we would just ask, ‘Should we just go watch Bourne?’ Yes, that was what we did. We watched it over and over again.”  

The face may look familiar (you’ve seen her somewhere, haven’t you?) but maybe to some people, the name hardly rings a bell. Vikander won Best Supporting Actress in this year’s Oscars (she shared the stage with first-time Best Actor winner Leonardo DiCaprio who won for The Revenant) for The Danish Girl, opposite Eddie Redmayne (who lost the race to DiCaprio), in which she plays Gerda Wegener, the wife of Lili Elbe, the first transgender in medical history.

Vikander also starred in the award-winning film Ex-Machina which is about a young programmer selected to participate in a ground-breaking experiment in synthetic intelligence by evaluating the human qualities of a breath-taking humanoid A.I. named Ava (played by Vikander). She’s now shooting Tomb Raider as Lara Croft in the new-generation reboot of the 2013 videogame popularized on the big screen by Angelina Jolie. Among her future projects is The Light Between Oceans, with her boyfriend Michael Fassbender as a post-World War I couple mourning a number of stillbirths who find a baby washed up on their lighthouse island in a boat.

Being a techie, Vikander definitely identifies with her role in Jason Bourne as Heather Lee, a prodigy hacker who has the ability to analyze and predict through social media possible conflicts in the different parts of the world and then to exert influence or even control them.

After disappearing into New York’s East River at the end of Bourne Ultimatum (2007), in this fourth movie Bourne surfaces on the Greek-Macedonia border. “He’s conflicted and restless, and we don’t know why,” said Greengrass. “So, what has happened to Bourne in the last 10 years? Why has he not found any peace? Our story will follow what he needs to do in order to try and find it.”

Said Damon, “What we come to find out is that he did gain his freedom. He did liberate himself from this Jason Bourne identity, but that hasn’t brought him any peace. He’s an incredibly tortured soul, and you find him in a very dark place at the beginning of the movie.”

Vikander described her inclusion in the movie as her “pinch me” moment. She recalled smiling how starstruck she was on her first meeting with Damon on the set.

“Matt walked in hiding his head under a cap. I went, ‘Oh my God, it’s Jason Bourne!’ But it didn’t take long before I became just one of the guys on the set.” (Confirmed Matt, “Alicia brought this whole element of youth to the story.”)

Added Vikander, “I found out what a hardworking actor Matt is, what a fine man he is, so down-to-earth and so relaxed on the set. I saw him in Good Will Hunting and I started being a fan of his since then. And now, here I am, working with him.”

It helped Vikander play Heather Lee because, she confessed, she watched action films (mostly spy thrillers) growing up, and a lot of indie films back in Sweden, influenced by her actress mom who raised her on all kinds of movies.

“So I have a certain way of (knowing) what the genre is like,” she quoted herself verbatim from the movie’s production notes. “Suddenly, I was faced with something that was completely new and I loved that I found myself thinking, ‘What if Bourne actually exists? What if he is actually running out in the streets?’ I appreciated the integration of the social and political aspects, making it an intelligent movie, while keeping it a popcorn franchise and all of the fun and scale that that means.”

Asked why her character never smiled throughout the movie, explained Vikander (who is an ambassadress of the French fashion house Louis Vuitton), “I think she did smile, not a big smile but a smile just the same. I still think that I was given an opportunity to play a range of emotions. My character is very driven, so engrossed in her work and,” adding with a smile, “she hardly has time to smile.”

Opening nationwide today distributed by United International Pictures (UPI) through Columbia Pictures, Jason Bourne features an international cast that also includes Tommy Lee Jones, Vincent Cassel, Riz Ahmed, Ato Essandoh and Scott Shepherd, with Julia Stiles reprising her pivotal role as in the series as Nicky.

Vikander won a Best Supporting Oscar (left) for The Danish Girl. ‘I am a big fan of action films, mostly spy thrillers. I grew up on all kinds of films,’ she confesses.

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