Watch/Discuss: The Bourne Legacy depressingly casts Rachel Weisz as neither hero or villain, but 'the girl'.

The most annoying thing about noticing gender issues in films and television is that you can't *not* notice them when its inconvenient.  So while this second trailer for The Bourne Redundancy, err The Bourne Legacy, has a crap-load of great actors, some solid stunt-work, and a time-twisty narrative that seemingly takes place at the same time as The Bourne Ultimatum.  But couldn't the screenwriters think of something more original than "Jeremy Renner rescues his hot doctor from bad guys and takes her on the run with him"?  Rachel Weisz is an Oscar winner and one of the better actresses of her generation, but whenever she treads into big-studio productions she almost always finds herself as the 'tag-along girl'.  Whether in Chain Reaction (one of her first films back in 1996), Constantine (ironically both with Keanu Reeves), and now in this production, she's the pretty face who gets caught up in the hero's peril and gets dragged along and periodically rescued from scary bad guys.  Yes the first film had a 'drag-along girl' (Franka Potente), but the film went out of its way to emphasize just how much danger Jason Bourne was putting her and her family in by virtue of his intrusion.  It's a big difference: potential menace versus lily-white savior.