My girlfriend and I sat down last night to watch the Bourne identity and that quickly turned into watching Supremacy and Ultimatum back to back. It had been so long since I watched them and since it’s the hottest day of the year with the dead heat that’s in Limerick City these days being inside with fans going and some kick ass action sounded like a great Sunday to me.When I watched the Bourne Supremacy (the second one) this time I thought I noticed something that I never had thought of before. My theory is that Jason Bourne knew his girlfriend would be targeted instead of him during the chase scene in India in the Bourne Supremacy.
Jason and Marie are on the run in India and they’ve gotten too relaxed in their day to day lives when a hitman played by Karl Urban arrives in town and is hunting Bourne down. Bourne spots the assassin immediately due to his car, clothing and general vibe. Bourne then races to Marie so the pair can escape and start over again somewhere else. The assassin sees Bourne driving the car on several occasions and is close to catching up to him but Bourne evades him. As the chase continues once the assassin is far enough behind him he tells Marie to take the wheel while he gets into the passenger seat with his handgun drawn. Shortly after this exchange Marie gets shot in the head by Bourne’s would be assassin and they go off a bridge crashing into a river. Marie is dead instantly and Bourne is left underwater looking at the lifeless body of the woman he loves.
Bourne knew Maire would be the one to get shot at in the driver seat of the car, allowing him the best chance of survival. The assassin has already seen him so he knows that he will be shooting at the drivers side of the car. Bourne may have done this in his subconscious or his instincts to survive overpowered his love for his girlfriend. His reflexes are demonstrated right from the first film. Bourne has no idea who he is yet he can speak several languages, take down guards and take apart a gun as easy as you or I would brush our teeth. Bourne has been broken down so much from the Treadstone torture and mental breakdown of his mind and being rebuilt into a blunt instrument. Bourne is always taking in his environment and finding the best odds for survival in any situation. Bourne has killed so many people even innocent people and those who he had no idea if they were bad or not. It’s entirely possible his training took over due to the adrenaline and intensity of the situation they were in while being chased. His instincts were too powerful and it was at the detrement of his girlfriend’s life. Jason Bourne’s grief around this tragic incident is what adds fuel to the fire for him even further into uncovering the truth of Treadstone and Blackbriar. Maybe the turning point was seeing that he was capable of sacrificing the only person he loves to survive.
So that’s what I noticed most from those films last night. I love when a film is so well crafted you want to look into it and think about it after it’s over. I thought it was interesting but I also want to believe that Bourne was able to put love over his own survival but those old habits die hard.
I think it's interesting 
Interesting and, also being chased by a killer. Why would he head towards her anyway. It was unexpected to put her life at risk. Why would he do that. I mean film plots are like dreams. They make perfect sense. Until you start to analyse it in the cold light of day
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Jason didn’t tell Marie to drive so he can survive. He was going to get out of the car and go after Kirill, he said so himself. Once Jason is out of the car, Kirill would supposedly see him and go after him rather than the car – Marie could then escape by travelling further and faster by car and then meet him at “the shack” later – there’s no assumption that Kirill will shoot the driver’s window, because he’s quite far behind (100 meters). You have to be very close to be able to shoot and drive at the same time. Unfortunately, Jason didn’t know Kirill had gotten out of the car to focus on shooting so before he had the chance to put his plan into action, Kirill already shot Marie.
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Wouldn’t Bourne have considered that Kirill might have gotten out of the car though to got for a rifle shot? Bourne knows the terrain intimately and can anticipate sniper fire from his pursuer as shown in his escape attempt in Athens in the last film. Also, he barely tries to save Marie, the car entered the water for just over a minute when he gives up and swims away leaving her body in the water. If he believes that feeding her oxygen using mouth-to-mouth might be effective, why doesn’t he try to bring her out of the water and do CPR? Even if she didn’t have oxygen for 60-70 seconds, and her heart stopped, he still had a chance to save her. He didn’t even assess the location and severity of the shot wound. Of course bringing her out of the water would endanger the both of them, and leaving her dead boy in the water would also throw off the pursuer. Interesting hypothesis.
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Bourne being ignorant of the assassin’s potential strategy is not a good explanation of his mistake. In the movies, he’s never shown to be incompetent or strategically inferior to his opponents, just always lacking information and constantly outnumbered. In this case, however, Bourne in fact outnumbered his opponent (which he could have used to this advantage somehow, and now the question is whether in fact he did by sacrificing Marie), and he knew the landscape intimately, since he was living there for a long time and the bridge was the only escape route by car – he would have planned every potential escape scenario in great detail over many months.
Also, Bourne abandoned Marie only just over a minute (under 70 seconds) after the car entered the water. If he believed, despite the gunshot wound which he never even bothered inspecting, that giving her oxygen by mouth was useful, then bringing her to the surface and administering CPR would have been far more effective, and can be done for many minutes after losing oxygen or heart stoppage. He instead abandoned her almost immediately with only the most cursory and superficial effort – almost on the tiny chance that she might recover on her own and then know that he didn’t even try to save her at all. Bringing her to the surface would have meant near certain death for both of them, since the assassin would know to finish the job. Instead, Bourne was able to escape by using Marie’s death as a cover.
As one of the most highly trained, talented, and experienced field operatives in the world, Bourne would have been aware of all of these factors when deciding what course of action to take during both the car chase and the underwater escape.
It’s a very interesting hypothesis.
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You obviously wanted to propose some really smart, out-there theory on why Marie was killed – what you said is actually one of the dumbest things one could think of concerning this…
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