Aversion to Violence Behind Damon’s Absence in Bourne Game

Matt Damon disassociated himself from the upcoming Bourne Conspiracy videogame specifically because of his aversion to its level of violence.

MTV’s Multiplayer blog reported today that Meelad Sadat of the development team High Moon Studios told the blog that negotiations with Damon were underway but that the actor “took issue with the game’s level of violence and pulled out.”

This story places a different spin on the development than that offered by Sadat himself, who said Damon had only generally expressed fatigue with the Bourne series and was merely disinterested with videogames on the whole.

The blog further noted that Damon’s mother, in an online chat with the Boston Globe newspaper, said she and her son disagree on film violence but “do see eye-to-eye on the importance of protecting children,” and that she is “very wary of violent video games” because research “shows they desensitize kids to violence, even more because they engage kids in committing violence.”

While the Bourne series of films portrays violence in unflinching terms, the storyline is heavily concerned with the protagonist’s rising sense of revulsion at the level of violence he has been trained to inflict unflinchingly, and at the government which provided that training.

Source: MTV.com