The James Bond franchise borrowed a lot from Jason Bourne throughout the Daniel Craig era, but there are a few things that the earlier spy series could not replicate from Bourne’s story. Jason Bourne may be one of the most influential characters in post-9/11 blockbuster cinema. As one of the first action movie antiheroes to fuse angst-ridden trauma with lethal fist-fighting skills, Jason Bourne was a new breed of antihero when he arrived in cinemas for the first time. Understandably paranoid, troubled, and slow to offer a witty quip, Bourne was a more grounded sort of hero who was perfect for the darker sort of blockbuster that dominated the ‘00s cinematic landscape.

In the years that followed, Jason Bourne changed spy movies and the blockbuster landscape more broadly. When Pierce Brosnan’s 007 was replaced by Daniel Craig, his goofy one-liners and invisible cars were replaced by brutal beat downs and tear-streaked monologues. When Christian Bale played Batman, Bruce Wayne’s campy side was erased in a string of gritty, dark crime dramas that owed more to bleak ‘70s cop thrillers than Tim Burton’s superhero saga. However, while Jason Bourne had an outsized impact on the blockbusters that followed in the wake of his influential trilogy, fortunately for him, many of these movies weren’t able to copy everything that made Bourne such a unique success.

5 James Bond Wasn’t A One-Man Army (Unlike Jason Bourne)

Jason Bourne was always a one-man operation, since he was trying to take down the very organization that trained him to become an assassin. He had a handful of confidantes, much like his cinematic competitor James Bond’s CIA ally Felix Leiter, but none of them could be trusted, and generally made a few minor cameo appearances before being neutralized permanently by the CIA. In contrast, Daniel Craig’s James Bond was never a one-man army. Bond relied on the assistance of Lashana Lynch’s 007, Leiter, M, Q, and Miss Moneypenny alike in No Time To Die, while Skyfall saw him working with two versions of M as well as Q and Moneypenny.

To be fair to 007, Casino Royale did effectively depict him as a one-man operation attempting to take down Le Chiffre and Mr. White. However, the young James Bond proved that he was tragically incapable of pulling off this feat in that downbeat origin story and the next movie in the series, Quantum of Solace, is still seen as Craig’s dullest outing. Not coincidentally, while Q didn’t return in Casino Royale, he, M, and Miss Moneypenny all played bigger roles in Skyfall, the first of Craig’s 007 movies to arrive after Quantum of Solace’s disastrous reception proved that the spy needed a squad.

4 James Bond Couldn’t Take Jason Bourne’s Best Twist

Bourne’s biggest twist was the fact that the spy was working against his own employer. As much as Craig’s 007 wanted to reinvent the franchise, the movies couldn’t go that far. Viewers were too invested in characters like M, Q, and Miss Moneypenny to see Bond go against MI6, and the series would never have been able to return to the campier tone of its earlier installments if James Bond discovered that his own employers were the real enemy all along. Since Bourne never started as a heroic CIA agent, his trilogy was able to use the organization as its villain without any such complications.

3 James Bond Couldn’t Copy Bourne’s Consistency

If there is one that Jason Bourne can boast about, it is consistency. The Bourne Supremacy’s story is followed so closely by The Bourne Ultimatum that The Bourne Supremacy actually teases a key scene from its sequel during its runtime. The Bourne trilogy flows seamlessly from movie to movie and arrives at a satisfying conclusion wherein the evil machinations of the CIA are revealed to the world, Jason Bourne’s name is (largely) cleared, and the character survives to hide another day. While this was undone slightly by 2016’s Jason Bourne, the plot was still atypically airtight for a blockbuster series.

In contrast, Craig’s Bond couldn’t keep his story consistent from movie to movie. In Skyfall, viewers learned a few tidbits about Bond’s childhood, but these were soon contradicted by Spectre’s absurd revelation that Blofeld was his long-lost secret brother. The revelation that Blofeld secretly engineered the events of Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall (somehow) was a blatant last-ditch attempt to tie together unrelated movies, and even this was completely dropped when No Time To Die largely forgot about the imprisoned Blofeld in favor of Safin. Where Jason Bourne’s origin story linked up perfectly with his eventual ending, Craig’s 007 was all over the place.

2 Bourne’s Love Story Was Sadder (If Shorter)

To be fair to 007, Jason Bourne did copy at least one of Bond’s tragic twists. Vesper Lynd was killed off in 2006’s Casino Royale, whereas Julia Stiles’ Bourne love interest Nicky made it to 2016’s reboot Jason Bourne before she was killed off. However, the Bourne franchise gets away with this one because of how consistently low-key its love story was. While it was vaguely implied that Nicky and Bourne might once have been romantically involved, the pair’s chemistry is never consummated onscreen in the series because their lives are always at risk. In contrast, Bond had time for an entire soap opera’s worth of romantic subplots.

1 Jason Bourne Was Able To Live On

Since Jason Bourne escaped the CIA, the character could make it out of his screen story alive. After the original Bourne trilogy’s ending, Bourne becomes a bare-knuckle street fighter so that he can eke out a low-key existence and, while he is eventually pulled back into international espionage, the character’s story still reaches a satisfying conclusion by the movie’s ending. In contrast, Craig’s James Bond movies always needed to end with 007’s first canonical onscreen death. Since the suave super-spy’s actor was always going to be recast, and he couldn’t leave MI6 - or turn on them like Jason Bourne - Craig’s James Bond was always doomed to die.