The Old Guard 2 Review: Can the Gays Get a Win, Please?

The Old Guard was a massive hit for Netflix when it released in July 2020, and fans have been impatiently waiting for years for its sequel. After production delays, reshoots, and test audiences, The Old Guard 2 finally dropped on Wednesday, and I could not wait to sit down and watch it. With everything going on right now, I really just wanted to see immortal gays getting a win.

The Old Guard 2 did not feel like a win. It didn’t feel like much of anything. I was hoping that the return of Andy (Charlize Theron), Nile (KiKi Layne), Joe (Marwan Kenzari), and Nicky (Luca Marinelli) would soothe something in my weary soul. But soul is the very thing I feel like this movie was lacking.

Spoiler Warning: If you haven’t yet seen The Old Guard 2 and don’t want to be spoiled, don’t read any further.

As a slick, polished action flick, it kind of hits the spot. The fight sequences are fun, at least, starting with infiltrating an arms dealer’s palatial mansion and ending with a battle inside a black ops nuclear facility. There are definitely moments worth cheering for, albeit not as many as I would have liked.

But something felt like it was missing, and I think it was in the fractured relationships between the group. In The Old Guard, these people felt like a family with history. The first film was peppered with small, sweet moments between Joe and Nicky; in the second film, they spend much of the time angry at each other because Joe has secretly been keeping in touch with the exiled Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts). Even when Booker returns, there are precious few moments that show the bond there was in The Old Guard.

And perhaps that’s by design. The group is fractured; it’s been six months since Booker betrayed them and went off to serve his penance. The wounds are still raw, as evidenced by the argument Joe and Nicky have over it. (Although, to be fair to Nicky, what he’s angry about is the lying.) But because the group seems so disjointed, what should have been the biggest emotional moment of the film – Booker’s sacrifice – felt hollow. He went out like a boss, but it was also stupid and pointless (though in fairness, his wanting to die is the catalyst for everything). And in the end, his death is only witnessed by Andy, and that made me sadder than him dying in the first place.

Truthfully, though, I feel like a lot of the character development was sacrificed for the plot. Because there’s a lot of it. It does sort of follow along with the graphic novel in that newly-rescued Quynh (Veronica Ngô) is one of the antagonists, having turned vicious and unforgiving during her centuries of torment locked away in the ocean. All that is fine.

But then they toss in some new immortals and some immortality lore, and Quynh doesn’t even have agency over her own vengeance, and it just feels like too much for a less than two-hour film. I don’t think they spent enough time on the relationship between Andy and Quynh, which is what I was really hoping for from this movie. It’s a big part of the graphic novel. There was plenty there to fill out a film. You owe me dramatic lesbians, Netflix.

And then they end on a cliffhanger. It took us forever to get a second movie; I don’t have high hopes for a third. And yes, the first movie also ended on a cliffhanger, but at least it was kind of a happy one. This movie ends with basically everyone’s fate in limbo, and if we don’t get to continue the story, that’s a horrible way to end the franchise.

My biggest issues with this film center around our two new-to-us immortals, Discord (Uma Thurman) and Tuah (Henry Golding). Discord is “the first immortal”, when everyone always thought it was Andy, and I feel like this fundamentally rewrites the core of Andy’s character. And this could have been interesting to explore – Andy no longer being The First – had they bothered to give it any weight. Instead, it just seems like the trope where you have to keep introducing bigger and badder bad guys so that your main character keeps leveling up.

After witnessing what happened to Quynh, Discord has grown weary of humanity, and has spent the past several centuries amassing serious wealth and power to… Well, that’s the thing. I’m not really sure. In the graphic novel, it was Quynh with the massive criminal empire, so her motivations made more sense. When Quynh tells her that she wants “everyone” to suffer the way she did, Discord agrees to help. So I thought, OK, she wants to burn the world down. But it appears that her primary motivation is to be the only immortal.

Tuah was actually a pretty nice addition to the group for me. Yeah, his only purpose is exposition dumps, but I like the idea of an immortal who has retreated into self-imposed isolation. It reminds me very much of wuxia and xianxia stories, which often feature a character like that. I can’t help but relate to Tuah; if I were given immortality, I would also probably hole up in a cave with a bunch of books.

Of course, the problem with bringing in “new” immortals who have both apparently been around for millennia, is that it directly contradicts the canon we learned in the first film. The immortals dream of each other until they meet; it’s how they find each other. Yet in all those years, no one ever dreamed of Discord or Tuah? Andy only knew about Tuah because he rescued her from her imprisonment.

When Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) learns about Discord, he mentions that he couldn’t find any references from before Andy, and Tuah says that’s by design. This is never explained further, but it could be why no one ever dreamed of Discord. Does she have the ability to block herself from their dreams? But then how was Nile dreaming about her? And why could she never see Tuah’s face in these dreams?

Then you have to factor in all of the new lore that they dropped. In addition to Discord being The First, we learn that Nile is The Last Immortal. This was not a concept in the graphic novels (although, to be fair, still waiting on the last volume), and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Apparently, Nile wounding any immortal causes them to lose their immortality, which is how Andy lost hers – Nile stabbed her in the desert. Not only that, but an immortal wounded by Nile can then transfer their immortality to someone else. There was a prophecy, you see.

(Let’s not even think about how Andy has been around for more than six thousand years and hadn’t heard this prophecy. Did Tuah never tell her? Rude. Also, prophecy from whom? I have so many questions about Tuah’s library.)

As I said, I’m not sure how I feel about this new information. Now, yes, a film where the main characters all inexplicably become immortal requires some suspension of disbelief. But when you start to introduce a lot of convoluted lore, I feel like you have to start explaining things. I suppose it’s not necessary, but it negates a lot of the emotional core of the immortality in the first place. I loved the idea that one day they would die a final death; it gives a necessary tension to the fight scenes.

Listen, I don’t want to just totally rag on this film, because I was mostly enjoying it up until the moment I realized there were fifteen minutes left and absolutely no way to resolve the story before the end. There were quite a few things that I liked.

I really love how they play around a little bit with the healing factor. When they’re attacking the arms dealer, Joe’s thumb gets cut off, and he just picks it up and holds it in place while it reattaches itself. They also talk about how one time Booker got his head blown off by a cannon. I’d always wondered what an injury like that would be like. I think they emphasized the healing more in this movie, probably because it was such an important component of the lore.

Again, the action scenes were great. I’ve seen some criticisms about the choreography not being as creative, but I thought the opening, where they were going after the arms dealer, was spectacular. Joe and Nicky’s car chase was a fantastic use of location, and I liked how it showed that they may be immortal, but they’re not invulnerable. Copley had joined them for the attack, and I thought he looked appropriately out of his depth, particularly with the way he was holding his gun. And Andy throwing a guy out the window just before Nile swings through it was great.

I also really liked the moment when Andy was walking down the street, about to be reunited with Quynh for the first time in five hundred years. She slowly walked backwards in time, and we saw the other immortals in the background. I thought it was a nice way to highlight just how long some of these characters have lived.

But for the most part, The Old Guard 2 suffers from “second book syndrome”, wherein all of the characters go through personality transplants and a whole bunch of new background information is introduced to set up the spectacular conclusion in the third act. Which we’re probably not going to get, based on fan reaction to this film. 

Honestly, you are better off reading the comics and rewatching the first movie, which is absolutely what I intend to do. (That and wait for the fix-it fics.)

The Old Guard 2 is currently streaming on Netflix.

Author: Jamie Sugah

Jamie has a BA in English with a focus in creative writing from The Ohio State University. She self-published her first novel, The Perils of Long Hair on a Windy Day, which is available through Amazon. She is currently an archivist and lives in New York City with her demon ninja vampire cat. She covers television, books, movies, anime, and conventions in the NYC area.

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