YMMV / The Bourne Legacy

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Are the Handlers of Outcome Agents 1 and 4 helping assassinate them or being used to murder their charges with chems they didn't know were poisoned?
• He's Just Hiding:
  • Not everyone is convinced that Outcome-3 died in the cabin explosion.
  • Based on Marta's comments to Cross that there were five other active Outcome agents while only five were targeted (counting Cross), Some theorize that Outcome-2 might have survived or been left alive for some reason.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: This wouldn't be the last time that Rachel Weisz plays a government scientist who was involved in creating brainwashed assassins but turns against the program, with Jeremy Renner connected to one of them.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Many Filipinos, especially Manileños, turned out to watch it mostly because the last half takes place in Metro Manila.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Aaron Cross, formerly Kenneth James Kitsom, was a PFC in the military who agreed to join Operation Outcome after injuries and become a biologically engineered assassin—doing so by taking the medications provided to be able to temporarily advance those physical and mental prowesses. During a training exercise after a mission where he accidentally wrought collateral damage, Cross discovers he's being targeted by drone by means of his tracking device; fakes his death by implanting it on a pursuing wolf and then tracks down and takes out operatives sent after virologist Dr. Marta Shearing while faking her death as well so that he can bring her with him to the facility in Manila, The Philippines—where she successfully virals him off and makes the effects of the medications permanent. Upon both being targeted by police and LARX #3, Cross beats the cops down in combat; leads LARX through a destructive and harrowing chase to get rid of him and then escapes off the grid with Marta indefinitely.
  • Colonel Eric Byer of the National Research Assay Group personally oversaw the structuring; architecture and workings of Outcome and its specially-enhanced operatives and having known Cross from his PFC days, selected him to join as one of their test subjects. Upon Blackbriar's exposure and the heavy investigating and scrutiny the CIA is facing, Byer comes in and makes the arrangements to erase everything related to Outcome as a means of damage control—such as sending poisoned medications to all their assassins; taking out another with a drone strike—and nearly Cross himself in the process—and having a scientist at the lab drugged so that he'll shoot all his colleagues dead before taking himself out—with Marta miraculously surviving and Byer nearly having her killed in a staged suicide shortly after. He also has Dr. Albert Hirsch killed when his own role is too badly compromised and upon discovering Cross is alive and saved Marta—who is now going to viral him off in Manila, Byer sends LARX #3–specially trained with no emotions to robotically follow responses without question—to track them down there before it's too late.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Despite that the latter half of the movie showed the bad side of Manila (slum areas, heavy traffic etc.), a lot of Filipinos like it because this is one of the few Hollywood movies to feature the Philippines AS the Philippines.
• One-Scene Wonder: Outcome Agents 1, 4 and 6, All Red Shirt, Hero of Another Story characters who have a certain impression of strength and competence.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Several critics felt that Aaron Cross's dependence on constant medication to maintain his high intelligence and fear of losing it were one of his most interesting characteristics, and that the film did itself a disservice when the enhancement is made permanent.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The movie is the most cynical of the Bourne series, undoing the victory of the heroes at the end of the previous trilogy as the bad guys go into damage control mode and manage to prevent the details from their nefarious activities being released to the public after all, while simultaneously dragging Pamela's name through the mud so nobody will take her seriously. The conspiracy is shown to go far deeper than expected with a whole other branch of villains that the good guys didn't know about existed, which murders as many of it's own assassins (who are all controlled with drugs) and scientists as it can to cover their tracks, and the story is merely about two of their not especially sympathetic ex-operatives trying to evade and survive rather than fight back, and the film ends with them getting away but the conspiracy once again getting away with things.

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