SEOUL, South Korea – Jason Bourne is back!

For the first time in almost a decade Matt Damon is playing Jason Bourne again, teaming up with Bourne Supremacy and Ultimatum director Paul Greengrass for this 5th installment of the movie franchise.

In 2007, Matt and Paul wrapped up the original trilogy based on Robert Ludlum’s novels, and many thought that was where Jason’s adventure ended: in hiding, after learning about the truth about his past.

But after the 4th Bourne movie starring Jeremy Renner and a different storyline, Bourne is back out of hiding and dealing with espionage in a post-Snowden world.

Jason Bourne is set to be in theaters on July 27, but before that, here’s a look at what this new movie is bringing to the table and a few fun facts in between.

Jason Bourne is playing in a new arena.

Jason’s past was a result of a government blackops project to make the ulitmate soldier. Now, the CIA has a new agenda up their sleeve: gaining access to the computer records of everyone in the world.

Julia Stiles, a.k.a. Nicky Parsons in the first 3 Bourne movies, is in this movie, too.

“It’s like a family reunion,” said Paul in the video below. 

Oscar-winning actress Alicia Vikander co-stars with Matt Damon.

Alicia, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in The Danish Girl, plays the calculating CIA agent Heather Lee.

Also along for the ride are actors Tommy Lee Jones as CIA Director Robert Dewey and Riz Ahmed as tech specialist Aaron Kalloor.

Alicia and Riz didn’t get to do a lot of stunts in Jason Bourne.

They’ll get their chance in their upcoming films, though. Alicia is set to be Lara Croft in the upcoming Tomb Raider and Riz stars in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Alicia is a big fan of the Bourne movies.

In a press release, Alicia shared that she and her 3 flatmates would watch the Bourne movies regularly when she first moved to London because they had no money to spend at pubs. Her flatmates are the first people she called after landing the role.

On why she loved the series so much, Alicia said: “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 loved that you wanted it to be true.”

Again, Matt does his own stunts for the fight scenes in this movie.

At a press conference in Korea for the movie, Matt quipped, “It’s definitely more difficult to play Jason Bourne when you’re 45 years old than when you’re 29 years old.”

He told Rappler in a separate interview that the hardest part about getting back into the role was was getting back in shape. “Mostly it was physically training, that was the hard part, just at 45 to get back into shape, so that took a lot of time. But the character, I always feel like I have a pretty good handle on the character.”

The hand-to-hand combat scenes are great, but they pulled off a lot of cool stunts in various locations too.

Matt told Rappler that his favorite scene was the Greek austerity riot sequence, which they shot over a month in Tenerife, Spain.

Another standout scene is the epic car chase along the Vegas Strip. It involved around 200 vehicles and they totalled 170 cars.

“I actually had the pleasure of watching from on the top of one of the hotels in Vegas. I actually went all the way up to the hotel room because I wanted to get like a good view of when they did that scene, and I think Matt and I were completely blown away when we were told – they blew up 170 vehicles for that scene,” Alicia recounted.

Catch bits and pieces of it in the trailer above.

The car chase ends with Bourne crashing into an actual casino – the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas.

The Riviera is scheduled for demolition later in the year, making it the perfect location for the stunt.

Jason Bourne is a special role for Matt Damon, as it’s the one that put him on the map as an action star.

He told Rappler, “To me, personally, the role really was a huge shift in my career and I’d never done an action movie before the Bourne Identity and nobody knew me as an actor who would be in an action movie.

“I was known for a different kind of work and so it really opened up a whole new avenue for me of roles that I can get, and it put me on a shortlist of actors that got me access to a lot of directors that I really wanted to work with.”

Alicia agreed in a separate interview that the films changed Matt’s career. The world knew him for Talented Mr Ripley and Good Will Hunting, but Bourne had him stepping into different shoes.

“I look up to actors like him that can be chameleons,” she said, “and then he’s also one of the most funny and open-hearted guys, so it was a lot of fun.”

Some people are saying that the Bourne series might turn into a James Bond type of franchise, with different actors playing Bourne over different storylines.

On someone else playing Bourne, Matt said at a conference in Korea, “I’m definitely gonna be replaced someday by some new, young Jason Bourne, that happens to everybody and they reboot these things, and that’s totally fine.

“The only control I can exercise is over the ones that I’m a part of, and I’m the curator of them as long as I’m involved.”

He said that this is why he wanted the same team working on Jason Bourne and also why they wanted fresh faces like Alicia in the movie, too.

Are you a Jason Bourne fan? Will you be catching the new movie in theaters? Let us know in the comments! – Rappler.com