At the end, Abbott kills Conklin for damage limitation but he lets Bourne, who's the source of all the damage, live? Isn't Bourne still a loose cannon with unknown intentions?
shareThe simple answer is if he had killed Bourne there couldn't be any sequels.
shareThe deleted alternative ending explains it better.
Bourne is looking for Marie in Greece, gets drugged and faints.... wakes up later in a hotel bedroom with just Abbott there.
Basically offers him his old job back, which he rejects, but tells him that they will need him again one day.
This ending was axed, but clearly they had one eye on a future movie with probably closer ties to the books than the movies turned out.
So he just suddenly decides Bourne is trustworthy? The whole movie was built on the idea that Bourne and the CIA are afraid of eachother, that's the pivotal conflict. Suddenly the CIA decides Bourne is an ok guy?
shareI do not think that it is they suddenly think he is trustworthy (Abbot proves just how trustworthy he is to the CIA in Supremacy after all) just that he is still one of their assets who they have trained and know will have his uses.
shareI just saw that ending for the first time ever, after nearly a decade of watching these movies!
The impression I seemed to get from that scene is that Abbott didn't have any reason to NOT consider Bourne trustworthy. He seemed on the whole a far more reasonable and benevolent guy (as compared to how he was revealed to be in Supremacy) who understood that Conklin was the one out of control and needed to be eliminated and that Bourne was just reacting to Conklin's actions. It does seem like they were aiming for a direction close to the ones the books had...with Bourne having a decent (if somewhat vitriolic) working relationship with the CIA (with Abbott playing the role Conklin played in the books).
Funnily enough, it seems that history will be repeating itself in Jason Bourne with all the indications that the CIA Director (played by Tommy Lee Jones) seeks Bourne's help to deal with a threat.
Formerly sn939