I will never be able to actually summon disappointment in this movie, given that the Old Guard finally got a sequel... however, that this was the sequel that was finally produced was... not the easy triumph it should have been and I have to pause my season-by-season ranting about Titans to address the way the sequel repeatedly shoots itself in the foot.
First of all, what is up with their hair? Everyone looks pretty ridiculous, which is quite the feat considering how attractive everyone is at baseline.
That's not really a spoiler, it's a genuine content warning... but seriously now, the rest of this review is going to go into gritty detail, so you've now been warned!
Beyond that topical weirdness (a mullet, Andy? Really?), there's the broader issue of pacing and the weight of story. Honestly, not much happens in this movie. And considering that the summary can be reduced down to 'Quynh's back and unhappy, new Immortals appear with agendas of their own, and our heroes struggle to serve the greater good while facing a trap designed to break them' it feels a LOT longer than it actually is.
OG2 is 1.75 hours long. OG1 breaks over 2 hours, but it feels like it's much shorter than the sequel because of just how much story is conveyed, and because of how much weight there is pushing up behind each story beat. OG1 has plenty of room for reactions from all the characters, delving into interactions and their repercussions in a way that OG2 just doesn't.
I have never really felt so much like a movie was 'telling instead of showing'. The closet I can equate it to would be like Thor Dark World or some such where a lot of the humanity is missing for the sake of rushing through the plot, but even the plot here wasn't complex enough to warrant such human-moment-skimming. It just felt really hollow.
We're gonna go through it block by block to explore WHY it's not great and what easily could've made it better...
Phase 1
| Intro / Croatia Mission / Post Mission
Honestly, I thought it started off pretty good. I liked how Quynh's recovery hinted at the involvement of another big player who was obviously important to the overarching story and the mission to Croatia hit all the right kinds of notes. It was a really solid start to a sequel. The use of DITA's Make it Look Easy was perfect, carrying the plot forward with just the right kind of flavoring to color it. And the fight choreography was just as beautiful as it needed to be to have any hope of living up to the expectations set by the first movie.
I even thought Nicky & Joe's little car chase detour was fabulous. It was a little gorier than strictly necessary, and it seemed ineffective to have them in different cars but going along the same route when it was explicitly meant to be a tactic of dividing forces. A staggered departure would've obviously pulled more guards away, but I digress. The only other quibble I had with that mission in Croatia was that Nile was ridiculously exposed, all alone on a boat right in front of the villa. Like if anything, Nicky should've been with her and they should've been a LOT further away, and Nicky's sniper skills should've been in play.
Still, even with that the whole first chunk was good enough to keep me optimisitc.
Especially as it wrapped up with the post-mission game-night. The banter and hints of shared-history and Nile's lesson of the day from Andy... all of it was great.
Until the dreams about Discord swung in from out of nowhere. The fact that we first lean about Nile having dreams about Discord is Nile literally telling us that she's been having them 'for a while' was awkwardly immature story telling. I could've let it go if that were the only issue, but unfortunately it was a harbinger of more to come...
Phase 2
| Paris (Quynh & Booker) / Team Disembarking / Trio in Paris / Seoul Rabbit Hole (Tuah & Library) / Rimini
This is where things start to get... unforgivably awkward and disjointed. First we have Quynh and Booker in Paris, which is a decent expansion on the scene from the end of the 1st movie, but it cuts off before the end. Booker is informed that Quynh is looking for Andy, but we don't get to see him reply. We can infer that he's unhelpful, seeing as Quynh proceeds to kidnap him, but we don't get a taste of HOW he's unhelpful. He could outright refuse on moral grounds or just because he's exiled or even ignore the question in favor of selfishly proclaiming relief that he won't have to dream about her drowning anymore... Or since it's been months, apparently, he could comment flippantly on how he had already stopped dreaming of her drowning. (Speaking of which, Nile never mentions that either, along with the Discord dreams she's never thought to bring up...)
The scene is just incomplete. And I find that annoying, especially as it becomes a trend.
After Booker & Quynh vacate the Paris apartment we jump to the rest of the team as they get off a boat, somewhere, with a strange lack of location-tagging that becomes a theme as we continue on. That scene is lovely, with good interactions between the characters and excellent acting to convey all the little details of internal struggles that don't get explicitly brought to light in the dialogue. The arrival even has a pretty good punch of music but it's not the same kind of story-carrying sound track it should've been.
Then in another somewhere without a location-tag, Booker and Quynh have their little interrogation scene and it's genuinely lovely. It's one of the few scenes that does everything it needs to. I would've liked, perhaps, to learn the name of Quynh's henchman, since he is literally the only secondary/outsider character ANYONE speaks to during the entire movie, but it didn't have to happen in this moment. (But seriously, where's the Keane in this one? Where's the lady at the Paris Pharmacy? Where's the women Nicky greets in Sudan? Not a single moment in ANY part of any of this shows any of our characters interacting with anyone outside of the established circle, which completely undermines their focus on greater good as the purpose for their shenanigans...)
Then we jump back to Paris WITH a geotag and also with Fils de joie by Shromae asserting a Parisian arrival. Nicky and Joe have a great little lovers' quarrel, fabulously fraught if a bit brief, and Nile discovers Booker's been kidnapped. Solidly done, but too squished, in my opinion... and there's no second of wondering why he was kidnapped, or by who, or even regret at leaving him alone, but we're ~25 minutes into the movie now, so I'm okay with the plot picking up to a pretty quick pace. Within reason...
However, what's next is a big location shift, that I almost felt should be a new phase, but it's still following up on the departure comments rather than entering a new phase of story arc. This time we're in Seoul, with Andy and Copley, because Andy dragged Copley along, but ditches him last minute in a food market where he sits down on a random something and doesn't even buy food from the 3 different vendor literally within arm's reach of him. We don't see Andy waver for more than a half-second before she decides that dragging Copley on a 10~15 hour flight and 2~3 hours of ground travel means nothing. But Copley is a great sport and it really highlights his still-apologizing-for-London mindset, so that's good.
Tuah is interesting and well portrayed. He adds lots of questions to the Lore, though, like why haven't Nicky & Joe dreamt of him? Do Booker or Nile dream of him? Since we can infer that yes, Nile does because he's the guy in her Discord dream, does that mean Booker's dreamt of Discord? None of these are even brought up as possible questions, let alone do they get any hint of answers, which I find irksome. The Library is cool, but it makes Andy's lack of faith in OG1 kind of awkward even as it makes Copley's research skills seems extra cool. Also Tuah's story about the Witch Trials is neat, but it's positioned like it's supposed to be proof that Discord is actually the eldest immortal and it really doesn't do that in any way. And like yeah, the Witch Trials were a horrific moment of human cruelty, but like if this lady's supposed to be the eldest... I can name plenty of far worse moments in history for her to have witnessed. Like the Crusades, for one really big obvious point, or like any number of interesting moments in Roman history, or you know, Spartan Exposure rituals where literal babies get left to the elements? Or like Egypt and slavery, or China and slavery and Ghost Brides, or any number of older and far worse moments... I liked seeing her witness that Witch Trials moment and connecting it to her drive to rescue Quynh, but like it doesn't prove Tuah's point at all...
And again, there isn't even a question raised about why Discord doesn't come up in the others' dreams.
Phase 3
Rimini pt II / Booker pick-up / Rimini pt III / Drive to Rome
I'm starting Phase 3 here because we have a big location shift, and with the new information from Phase 2, there's a definite narrative transition from learning to reacting.
We jump to Rimini, Italy, with a geotag but without any good musical indicator or any hint of actual travel occurring. Nicky & Joe have another few lines of lovers' spat that's well played, and Andy/Coply/Tuah arrive and the reaction Nicky displays at being lied to, again, by someone he loves and trusts is excellent.
Then Joe gets a phone call, and the subtitles that had translated the Italian from GameNight don't translate the French... which isn't a big deal, but it's just an inconsistency that bothers me when stacked with all the other inconsistencies.
No one has any questions about why Booker is just sitting in this field within driving distance of the Echo Base at Rimini. No one pushes back against Booker's declaration of 'I need to see Andy'. Nicky doesn't punch anyone, and we don't see any awkward car silence.
We can infer that there wasn't complete silence, because Booker apparently knows who Tuah is via osmosis when they get to the safe house, but like that car ride should've been a profoundly uncomfortable moment and the audience should have been subjected to feeling it in all its painful glory.
There should've been a scene with Quynh releasing Booker to the wild before the transition to Rimini, with Booker debating that he call the team while they arrive at Rimini, and then calling them with Nile left alone to greet Copley/Andy/Tuah and maybe get some questions out, or even just ignore him for sake of telling Andy about Booker. The lack of questioning from everyone else when they arrive could be excused by surprise at Booker's presence / news of Quynh's return and the need to keep Andy from walking into a trap.
It was all just jumbled and out of order in a way that felt clumsy and left a LOT of narrative holes that I think would've been easy to fill or excuse with a slightly different order-of-events.
Which feels even more awkward because ALL of that happens in about 8 minutes. Yeah, from Andy's arrival in Seoul to Booker's arrival at the Rimini safehouse, 8 minutes of movie happen. That is a LOT of plot in 8 minutes. And all of it felt it wasn't given half an inch of breathing space to let anything about what's happened really sink in...
The drive to Rome is great, with flashbacks showing Andy's tension and a few good bonding moments between her and Nile, but it really highlights the lack of a foil of such anti-bonding moments for Nicky, Joe, & Booker.
Phase 3.5
Rome (Qyunh/Andy & Nile+Discord) / Somewhere (Seoul) / Somewhere (airport)
Rome is honestly a great arc. Andy's little history walk is awesome, even if the 'place she could always find Quynh' is a boring bit of nowhere without even like a tree as a placemaker landmark... Nile running backup for Andy & Quynh's conversation in the cafe is great, the conversation itself is great, the fight scene that follows it is one of my favorite fights of all time... It's all just great. I think Quynh could've noticed that Andy wasn't healing, but it wasn't critical to make happen, so over all I thought Rome was great.
Discord's involvement, Nile chasing her, how that observation changes the fight between Quynh and Andy, and Nile's conversation in the church with Discord... all of it is extremely well done. It's well paced, illuminating, and deeply engaging.
And it has room to breathe.
This little Phase 3.5 bit last 20 minutes of real-time as the movie runs. Yeah. That's twice as long as the rest of Phase 3.
That's 3 good conversations, 1 fight scene, and a timelapse sequence... in 20 minutes, as opposed to ~5 half-conversations, 3 location changes, and at least 4 inferred transitions happening in 8 minutes...
We're now slightly under an hour into the movie.
And there's another bit of jumble as we somehow get whisked back to Seoul (though no geotag alerts us to that, we have to figure it out by recognizing Tuah's house) and somehow also make it there with all the people we left at Rimini getting there too...
Unbearably brief comments are made on the current situation, and then Booker finds Tuah and together they uncover the Immortality Transfer legend stuff in the course of about 3 minutes. Then there's a really good conversation between Andy and Booker while Book's planning to use the info he just got from Tuah to fix what he broke in London.
Then we jump back to somewhere outside Rome, for a good conversation between Discord and Quynh (that I think should've come before we left Rome).
Phase 4
| Jakarta / Seoul / Jakarta (super SUPER long fight scene)...
We're now in another bit of jumbled mess as we transition from reacting to directly addressing / finding solutions, but it's still awkwardly tied in with previous arcs...
First we have a jump to Jakarta, with decent scene setting and a good kick into the next story arc, but it wastes an awful lot of time on gratuitous violence and before we can really investigate what's happening (or really get any genuine explantion on it), we first have to go back to Seoul to finish up that little story arc.
So we jump back to Seoul, and have a decent fight scene between Tuah, Nile, and Booker wherein Booker arranges to get wounded by Nile, and Tuah, knowing what he's doing, just lets him with no real pushback of any kind. And then when Tuah eventually confronts Booker on what he's doing, Booker tries to get him to promise his silence, and Tuah just doesn't say anything... Despite how critical it is for Andy & the whole team to know about it because it's almost certainly related to Discord's plan, just no pushback at all.
Nicky and Joe have a half-decent moment, but there are no apologies and its only Joe that Nicky gets any iota of reconciliation with... I did like that Nicky gets to make the super sweet eternal love speech in this movie, since Joe got the last one, but still, everyone except Nile owes Nicky an apology here...
And then we go back to Jakarta... And we just jump there. We don't get a travel sequence with mission prep to show the whole team getting past their individual hang-ups and deciding on little groups to work with as they enter the facility, or joking with each other to relieve mission-jitters, or even a cool song for the infiltration montage... (At this point it has been 45min since the last story-carrying song played and I'm genuinely upset by that because of how tragic it is in comparison to how the first movie used music with such glorious perfection.)
And now we enter the 30min fight scene of blah. Like it's okay. There's good choreography and decent banter / plot-significant exchanges, and Nicky and Joe have a couple of good moments with their special kind of teamwork... but they're trying to hack a Nuclear Facility, and they don't bring a flashdrive with a program to help Copley from the inside?
There's a REALLY good moment for Booker's self-sacrificing play to run, but the music for it is lack luster at best and I think the moment could've been just as good if Andy had managed to get through the door. Hell, with the right music and the right injury, and an order to retreat to Copley, Booker could've even survived and had his moment still be the dramatic transition it should've been, with Booker having made his apologies for London, AND ALSO been pushed into being better, having learned from his previous failure to grow. He'd still be mortal, still have his end date, but he'd also have like actually gotten real character development....
Quynh and Nile have a great fight, Quynh going mortal after Andy gets her immortality back is a lovely salt-to-wound moment, Andy's statement to Quynh about choosing who to be is perfect, and all of it is perfectly lovely, but none of it is half as breathtaking or heartbreaking as it easily could've been.
And then Andy recognizing that her team has been captured, again, is okay. Discord's idiotic move to ram her with a helicopter and then their whole pointless fight scene is just weird and it's obviously contrived to make the reveal of Discord not-healing, which really just should've been worked in earlier on somehow, like from Tuah and Nile chatting about repercussions of his discovery in context of her conversation with Discord? Or even just Tuah and Andy? Or Tuah and literally anyone he should've told about his discovery and how he and Booker have discovered that at least the 1st part is real?
It was pointless and stupid and took way too long. So much time is wasted in this useless final fight scene that all the bits I fee like should've gotten more time obviously could have without any issues coming up about making the movie too long. Cut out most of this last scene, and most of the Quynh's initial foray into the power plant, and that's easily 10more min able to be given to the important parts. Add to the ~15min of run-time that OG2 is shorter than OG1 and you've got nearly half an hour of spare seconds to give to proper character development and reasonable emotional reaction sequences.
It's maddening.
Phase 5-ish
| Epilogue in Seoul (Library)
Effectively, the movie ends with Discord's escape and the last 5 min with the Andy/Quynh reconciliation / research binge is just an epilogue. I think it's well done and adds a lot to their story in a way that I can really appreciate.
I do still have hope for a 3rd movie capitalizing on what this movie did well in a way that lets it escape what this movie did poorly, but this sequel really fails to live up to the original.
Big Overall Cons -
The movie's poorly lit so many scenes are too dark to see clearly enough to appreciate all the work the acting is doing to overcome the script's limitations.
The Uneven Pacing, makes it feel both rushed and like it drags, simultaneously, and the inconsistency of place-labeling makes it feel like a complete mess regardless of its pacing.
It just feels really messy and rather inexpertly crafted.
And the fact that NO ONE has ANY convos with Locals makes it feel awkwardly insular and claustrophobic. Literally, the ONLY instant of acknowledging the existence of other humans is Booker, in Andy's Flashback Sequence, asking to use a phone that a girl's standing in front of for no discernable reason. The whole point of this story is that all of this is bigger than they are, even Discord's selfish plot to get her immortality back is part of a comment about the role immortals play in the wider run of History... and there's just no one outside of their established circle that gets so much as a centered shot on the screen.
Overall Pros -
It's a sequel to the Old Guard. That alone is enough to be a Pro.
There are a few really good moments of banter and some really poignant conversations that can be built on by a 3rd movie in the future. And there are a few good moments of growth and self-reflection sprinkled throughout that give a viewer just enough to cling to so they can make it all the way through.
It's a mess but it's an okay film for the genre. And if you liked OG1, you'll only sort of hate OG2.
If you didn't watch OG1, GO DO SO RIGHT NOW.
The 1st movie is an absolute masterwork. The sequel is meh.
Am I now feeing compelled to rewrite the movie in the way it SHOULD have been done?
Quite possibly.
We'll have to see how things work out.
