Immortals don’t die. It’s part of, y’know, being immortal. But they are, apparently, born.
For the longest time, Andromache—better known as Andy these days—thought she was the first immortal to make an appearance on Earth. Born on the Scythian steppes around 4,300 B.C., she’d spent 3,000 years wandering the world alone until she found another immortal woman, Quynh, to hang out with.
And hang out they did, right up until they wound up in Colonial America and were hung as witches. And when the hanging didn’t take, those colonials decided to take care of them in … other ways. They locked Quynh into an impressively elaborate iron coffin and dumped her into the ocean, where she could live and die and live and die ‘til the sun itself went out.
As for Andy, well, she escaped. And nice thing she did—at least for us. In the centuries since, Andy’s built a team of fellow immortals and done a lot of do-gooding—stopping wars, killing bad guys, saving world-changing scientists, that sort of thing.
Alas, immortality isn’t what it used to be. Even immortals stop healing eventually. And in the events chronicled in the original The Old Guard, Father Time caught up with the ever-elusive Andromache. Shortly after tracking down another immortal, the young-and-enthusiastic Nile, Andy discovered her hyperactive healing powers had vanished. If she got a paper cut, Andy would need to put a tiny bandage on it, just like everyone else. And that meant that she could no longer be chopped or boiled or beheaded (or perhaps all three) and be just fine in time for dinner.
Even though she’s awfully mortal these days, Andy’s still the leader of her little band of immortals. Sure, she takes a few more precautions. But the lady’s still a fearsome combatant: A good 6,000-or-so years of combat training will do that for you.
But in The Old Guard 2, Andy suffers another couple of blows to the mental solar plexus.
Blow one: Turns out, Andy’s not the oldest immortal on the block. Another woman predates even her—and she’s up to some seriously shady shenanigans. That woman goes by the name Discord these days. Because even after a few thousand years, she still hasn’t quite learned the art of subtlety.
Blow two: Quynh’s back! And she’s not at all pleased that Andy left her on the ocean floor for the last 500 years.
Your mother always told you to try to make the world a better place. Andy’s mom must’ve told Andy the same thing on those Scythian steppes, and so Andy’s done her dead-level best to follow through. And while she and her team have probably killed thousands of people over the past few hundred years or so, they’ve also saved millions. (Indeed, in The Old Guard 2, they’re tasked with saving 10 million people in one mission.) So at least from a math perspective, that’s a pretty good ratio.
The members of Andy’s team also care a lot for one another. We see that care in big ways and small—particularly when it comes to Andy herself. Someone might risk a few bullets in the chest to protect her suddenly mortal body. Someone else might cover her with a blanket when she’s sleeping. And one person willingly risks his own immortality to help her.
Speaking of sacrifices, we hear a reference to Jesus’ real work on the cross. It happens when Nile follows Discord into a Catholic church in Rome. Discord stands near the altar (topped with a Mary-centric altarpiece) and stares at a large statue of Jesus’ crucifixion.
“I was there, you know,” Discord says. “I can still remember it. The acrid stench of hate in the air.” She then turns to Nile and accuses her of siding with the wrong team. “How does a good Christian girl like you stomach what Andromache’s doing? Playing God with mankind?” In Discord’s theology, apparently, immortal “help” undercuts the will of God. (“We’re not playing God,” Nile insists. “We’re helping. We’re doing what’s right.”)
Characters, both major and minor, ruminate on the divine purpose of the immortals. An immortal named Nicky speculates to his male lover, Joe, that some cosmic purpose is behind their immortality and their relationship. “I can’t look at us and believe it is arbitrary,” he says.
On the flip side, we see a flashback to Quynh’s exile/execution. A cross-carrying priest is quite conspicuous throughout the ritual, and it’s pretty obvious that most everyone in town thinks that Quynh and Andy are diabolical abominations.
We hear about myths and prophecies surrounding immortals. Immortal beings apparently have psychic dreams, and we hear about a couple of those, too. Statues—some human, some apparently human-beast hybrids—may represent gods and goddesses. The concept of hell is mentioned.
As mentioned, Nicky and Joe are lovers, and we hear them joke and banter about their relationship. (At one point, Joe jokes that he’s in communication with a new boyfriend.) In one scene, they press their foreheads together while holding each other’s hands and arms.
The exact nature of Andy and Quynh’s multi-century relationship is open to interpretation. But given the obvious strength of their attachment and the tender, sometimes pleading looks they give one another, one could certainly interpret their relationship as a romantic one. Quynh gave Andy a necklace that she’s worn for, literally, centuries. Andy says that she spent an unfathomably long time looking for Quynh, too—but Quynh is none-too-happy that Andy eventually gave up the search.
We see some garishly colored nude statues and bare-breasted ancient frescoes. After walking into a house filled with terrible art, Andy quips, “What, no sex swing?” Women wear tops that can expose a bit of cleavage.
Just how much damage can an immortal absorb? A lot—and the film takes literal pains to show us.
In the opening action sequence, Andy and her team invade the compound of an arms dealer. Joe quickly gets his thumb cut off. He finds the digit in the dirt, sticks it back on his bloody stump and voila! Instant, if slightly gruesome, healing. Slightly later, Nicky suffers a grotesque ankle break while hanging outside a car; his bloodied foot flops and thumps along the street, still connected to the leg by skin. But it’s not long before the ankle reassembles itself, and Nicky can once again kick with abandon.
Immortals are stabbed, sliced, shot, frozen and, in one case, shish-kabobbed through the chest. (We see some nasty wounds.) Andy and her team laugh about how a former member once had his head shot off by a cannon: He survived, but it took forever for them to track down his noggin. Another immortal survives what should’ve been a very lethal shootout and car crash.
Mortals, of course, suffer much more. Dozens and dozens of combatants get killed via bullet and blade and other ooky means. One man falls to his death after tumbling over a railing: We see his dead body on the floor below, blood pooling around the newly minted corpse. Some people, when they’re shot or stabbed, are accompanied by sprays of blood.
Viewers are exposed to plenty of nonlethal battles, too. People throw fists, kick their opponents and practice against each other with very sharp, blood-drawing blades. Characters nurse seeping wounds. Blood sometimes coats walls and floors and balcony railings.
[Spoiler Warning] Bad guys invade a nuclear powerplant—killing scores of guards and scientists in the process—and plant bombs around the facility, hoping to cause a meltdown that would kill (we’re told) 10 million people.
Two f-words, three s-words and two uses of the word “a–.”
Andy and her cohorts engage in an evening of drinking, and we see what appears to be the culmination of a drinking contest. After losing a round and quaffing her shot, Andy says, “You know the worst part of being mortal? The f—ing hangovers.”
Quynh tracks down a guy named Booker, who was exiled from the group in the last movie. When Booker asks how Quynh found him, she says that he had been “staggering around Paris, drunk for months.”
We hear a reference to marijuana in a backing song.
We learn that someone has stolen a series of books from an ancient library. Joe lies to his lover.
Netflix’s The Old Guard, starring Charlize Theron and released in 2020 during the heart of the COVID lockdown, was a flat-out home run for the streaming service. Critics enjoyed it (it boasts an 80% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes). And movie fans—who’d been cooped up in their homes for a good three months by then—were thrilled for a bit of new content. Oscar-winner Theron once again proved her mettle as a surefire action star.
Even Plugged In offered a hint of praise, calling it “one of the more intense, intriguing, throwaway action movies you’ll see during this COVID-interrupted movie season.” But the R-rated actioner came with scads of problems, too.
The Old Guard 2 amps up those issues while being a far less satisfying movie.
The blood still flows with abandon. All of the romantic entanglements we see here appear to be of the same-sex variety. And while the film does offer some nods to Christianity and may even echo some Christian themes, its comic-book supernatural underpinnings will leave many believers feeling a little woozy.
The Old Guard 2 is clearly intended to be a bridge film, leading to a third entry in the series. We’re set up for a climactic showdown between Andy and Discord, where the fate of the world and the souls at least a few immortals hang in the balance. But this movie hardly makes a compelling case to stay tuned.
Despite being about a bunch of immortal fighters, The Old Guard 2 feels pretty disposable.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
