The Old Guard was a surprising film for me when it came out back in 2020. Charlize Theron was the leader of this realistic take on superhero film. I would label Immortals as some form of Super hero considering they can’t die. This story was based on the original story from writers Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernandez. Rucka has plenty of experience with this type of story in his writing career. Adapting his own property has to be rewarding for him. He’s written a lot of comic books in his day though, not screenplays, Realistic superhero stories are the way of the future, but is the sequel of the original film as good as the original was? That is the big question that has to be answered.

The team of Immortal mercenaries are doing what they do best. They’re on a mission to prevent weapons from falling into the wrong hands. After another successful mission, though, the team splinters off and goes their separate ways. When one of the old team members shows up and tells Andy (Charlize Theron) that he was kidnapped by an old friend of hers who she thought imprisoned things start to get dangerous for the team.  While this is going on, a couple of the other members of the team run into the ultimate threat, Discord (Uma Thurman), behind everything that is going on around them. 

This story wasn’t as good as the last one was for me. It didn’t have the originality factor the last film had. The cat was out of the bag early on in this movie, and it wasn’t very interesting despite what direction the film went in. There was a plot point about the Immortals losing their immortality and vice versa, but I didn’t care about that. The ending was very anticlimactic as far as I was concerned.  Rucka adapting himself wasn’t a good idea. Maybe if someone else’s adopted his story, they could have done something more creative with a story that wasn’t that good to begin with. Originality is the key word here.

Despite the story being so boring and not that interesting, there were two things that were interesting about the film. Those were a pretty good,not great car chase, at the beginning of the movie.This was an exciting way to start the film. The second but a bigger part of the movie is the fight sequences. There were a handful of hand to hand fights and sword fights between a number of the women. These scenes were a solace for me while watching the movie. I was more interested in these than the overall plot of the film.That’s saying a lot considering the first film had a more interesting story that I was much more invested in.

There is a theory that Netflix movies aren’t as good as films from other studios. They get big-name actors to be in their films, but they lack something else entirely. I can’t always put my finger on exactly what it is about their movies. I think the lack of leadership who has been in the movie business for a lot of years is a key to this theory. I feel that when they purchase a film from a film festival, it’s a better movie more often than the one the producer in house. They give filmmakers carte Blanche to do their own thing, and it’s not always the right thing to do.  The first Old Guard was a good and new original story. This time around, it was an old and tired sequel that didn’t say anything new.

Charlize Theron is a great Academy Award winning actress. She’s done it all in her career thus far.  More often than  not, I have liked the movies she’s done. Last year’s Furiosa was one of my favorites of hers after, of course, Monster, the film she won her best actress trophy for. Like most actors, though, even she can make a mistake in her projects she chooses to appear in. She clearly had loyalty as well as another paycheck when she chose to come back for this sequel. She, along with many other actors, came back for the second movie in this franchise,  but it was alas not a good idea. Because this wasn’t a very good film. She’ll be back, though I’m sure in the future, bigger and better.

The Old Guard 2 was just another run of the mill action movie. It didn’t bring anything new to the table. Rucka created something original with the comic book that was adapted into the first film, but this time around, it was an old hat. I’ve seen many action films with superheroes and / or mercenaries done much better than this one was in the past. There were a couple of things, including a cool char chase and a few action fight sequences that were good. The majority of this story was pretty boring and not that interesting.  The cast, especially Theron, were wasted in a movie they didn’t deserve to be in. Maybe overall, there wasn’t a need to make a sequel to the first film. 

The Old Guard 2 is currently streaming on Netflix 2 stars

Dan Skip Allen