https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1389405692885352448
Putting aside that Jason Bourne is fictional, this false display of manliness reminds me of how my dad always said he couldn't take the Bourne movies seriously because Matt Damon looks like an honour roll student.
Also, the CIA was never scary because the individual agents are badasses, the individual agents have always been Ivy league educated preppy rich kids, who weren't the ones that would inherit their parents' companies. Like the CIA is scary for its institutional power, not because all the guys played rugby at Princeton for one semester. As dumb as that ad was, that Latina woman could probably take on most CIA employees from the 1970s in a fight. Like guaranteed most CIA employees have never physically overpowered a person they didn't drug.
Yes, also I love the Bourne movies but they make me sad because they're maybe the end of an era where it was okay to show open disdain for the CIA in movies and TV. I'm pretty sure they get portrayed as neutral or a force for good when they appear in media nowadays. I mean I know that skepticism of the CIA and other US government agencies in the 90s and early 2000s was more the internalization of neoliberalism, and belief that inherently government doing stuff is bad, but openly worshipping the military feels so much worse.
Hardly the end of an era. Subversive cinema pops up all the time in B-movie releases. It only becomes a problem in the big A-list features that start tapping CIA cut-outs for money.