Jason Bourne in a "Dark and Tortured Place" for New Movie, Damon Says

Last night’s surprise debut trailer for Jason Bourne showcased a totally badass, globe-trotting Jason Bourne and gave fans of the action series a lot to think about. Now, Bourne actor Matt Damon has shed some more light on the movie, talking about why he returned to the role (it’s the first time since 2007 that he played the character) and what fans can expect from the story.

As for why he came back, Damon told Entertainment Weekly he was waiting for the right script because “none of us wanted to force it.” Additionally, he didn’t want to do it unless Paul Greengrass, the director of the latest two Damon-starring Bourne movies, would also come back, which he has.

“Mainly, we just didn’t want to mess it up,” he said. “We were really happy with the three films and if we were going to do another one, we wanted it to fit in with the three films in terms of quality.”

Damon played Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum. The fourth movie, The Bourne Legacy, featured Jeremy Renner in the lead role, but as the character Aaron Cross, not Bourne.

Also in the interview, Damon said while the first three movies “are the product of the Bush presidency” in terms of the stories they tell, things will change for Jason Bourne.

“This one feels like a movie about today,” he teased.

Pressed for further specifics about where Bourne is when the new movie picks up, Damon said he didn’t want to give too much away, but said the character is in a “dark and tortured place.”

“We talked a lot about what state he should be in, and where we came to was that if you found him fat and happy and content, you don’t really have a movie,” he said. “So we talked about how at the end of Bourne Ultimatum, he gets his memory back and it kind of completed that identity journey for him. But does that complete things for the character or not? And the conclusion we came to is no–we find him in a very dark and tortured place. He’s living with the same things as he was before, and then he goes to find Julia Stiles’ character, who basically says, ‘Just because you remember everything, doesn’t mean you know everything.’ So you find him in a place that’s dark and unresolved.”

Damon went on to say that Jason Bourne represents the completion of the story journey for Bourne that began with The Bourne Identity. “It feels like the conclusion, even though we’re not saying it’s the conclusion, it feels like the conclusion of my identity journey. It goes deeper than Ultimatum, basically,” he said.

The actor also teased that, while the first three Bourne movies focused on the air, land, and sea elements of warfare, a fourth–cyber–is being added for the new movie. Alicia Vikander is playing a new character who represents that fourth element, Damon teased. Additionally, Tommy Lee Jones plays the role of the CIA analog to the past films, representing “the way the old guard thinks.” As you might have guessed, the new and the old will clash in Jason Bourne.

“Introducing those two new characters, I think, is probably one of the biggest trailblazing things we’ve done in this movie,” he said.

Head to EW to read the full interview.

Jason Bourne hits cinemas on July 29, 2016. To see all the movie trailers that debuted during last night’s Super Bowl 50, check out this roundup.

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