Yusuf & Nicolò: Immortal Husbands

[nicojoe]

I wrote my own fanscript of THE OLD GUARD 2

The screenshots above are samples...

... I got tired of waiting for Netflix, so:

I tried to incorporate the following:

TOG 2 casting (Uma and Henry) plus some locations where the movie was shot last year (as seen in set photos, etc)

my own personal "wish list" of details, but hopefully in a way that makes sense within the larger story (tried to avoid making it just a self-indulgent, shoe-horned laundry list lol) and in a way that it could conceivably be greenlit by the industry -- ie: I'd have loved to write 2 whole hours of them just hanging out playing board games and reminiscing, but that would never be made into a movie.

a few ideas inspired by some of my favorite meta posts/fan art/etc (some of y'all are SO much more creative than the people actually making these movies, istg) -- try to spot them all!

favorite "action" scenes from the Force Multiplied comic, despite this script not being a true adaptation (it just borrows the broader strokes)

the decision not to make Quynh a villain; she's arguably got a hero arc in this, tbh (the top 1% and their use of institutional/systemic oppression to exploit and control the masses is the real villain, actually!)

no new immortals or explanation of immortality, tyvm; I tried to focus on the Family of Six and their shared history as much as possible.

PDF FILE OF SCRIPT

[lady-arryn]

Oh, greatest of kings, indulge me in this friendly Christmas game. THE GREEN KNIGHT (2021) dir. David Lowery

[sweeetestcurse]

Dev Patel as Sir Gawain in The Green Knight 01/??

[hoechlin]

THE GREEN KNIGHT (2021) dir. David Lowery

[deadringers2023]

THE GREEN KNIGHT (2021) dir. David Lowery

[greengableslover]

THE GREEN KNIGHT (2021) dir. David Lowery

[materassassino]

Ok the JoeNicky TOG2 shit has gotten to the point where you're all just explicitly ignoring stuff from the first movie in favour of the utterly inane characterisation from the second one, which is wild to me. Are we all just memory-holing the fucking Van Scene, which no one has been able to shut up about for five years? "His heart overflows with a kindness of which this world is not worthy" means nothing anymore, I guess! We like having things be shit and underdeveloped, we're fine with it, to the point we're projecting cruelty onto Nicky where there were only boundaries and respecting the rules they themselves set out.

We like these two adult men who act like teenagers in a CW show about serious matters. That's exactly what a 900-year-old relationship is founded on: dishonesty, subterfuge and lack of communication. "Oh, it shows they're human" no it doesn't, it shows the replacement writer didn't give a single flying fuck about them and it was the perfect excuse to have them barely interact for the entire movie.

You all spent 5 whole years dissecting these characters. I'm beginning to think none of you actually cared about them much at all.

[nicojoe]

it's just so frustrating to see defense of an argument based on a (contrived) lack of communication. it actually would have been interesting to see Joe and Nicky articulating their individual philosophies regarding Booker's isolation. Have Nicky bring up the fact that Booker got them kidnapped and experimented on... the fact that he took advantage re: their prioritization of children (the ruse with the Sudanese girls), the fact that they're under NO obligation to stay near someone who hurt them... even if Booker didn't intend/expect Merrick to capture everyone, or for Andy's immortality to wear off.

Have Joe tell Nicky that he absolutely agrees with all those points but at the same time, Booker is still family and he wants to be able to check in on him from time to time, just to make sure he hasn't spiraled deeper into self-destructive depression, etc. There is an ACTUAL conversation to be had there; ffs, fandom has been having it for literal years. Good writing could have put it all on the page in a sympathetic, realistic way. But instead we just got Joe shutting down, sneaking off, and potentially putting himself in danger for no reason.

Disagreement doesn't need to be rooted in DECEPTION & DISHONESTY.

[hy3ma90sqz1h]

one of my main issues with the fandoms reaction to TOG2 is the defense of de-queering in the second film. at a time when production companies like skydance - which produced TOG and TOG2 - are pledging to abandon DEI (at the request of their CEO David Ellison), the issue of de-queering cannot simply be excused as "well TOG2 is a sequel" or "couples are meant to look like friends!" ...obviously? but that's not the prominent issue.

greg rucka had to fight to keep the van scene where joe and nicky kiss in TOG in the movie. the fact that joe and nicky "fight" and then are visibly separated for most of the film except for a singular forehead touch is exactly the issue. TOG producers have wanted to de-queer TOG from the very start, beginning with the van scene. TOG2 gave them the perfect opportunity and the perfect excuse and people just eat it up!!

if TOG3 happens - and skydance remains the lead production company for the film - you can be assured that there will be no "diversity, equity, and inclusion" at the level it was when TOG came out in 2020.

the political climate in which we live - and the fact that de-queering is an issue happening in MANY different forms of media - has most definitely affected the writing and depiction of several characters within TOG2. it's not just joe and nicky, but andy and quynh's subtextual relationship that was addressed mid-fight in the comics, but not mid-fight in the film.

it's also responsible for the de-centering of nile's character. her entire storyline is tethered to a white woman who was introduced for... literally what purpose? she wasn't in the comics? she literally just showed up and they wrote her in and sidelined nile. gave her a bullshit storyline where she's the "last immortal" and thus doomed forever to be an "immortal killer" and completely isolated.

most of us who are being critical of the film are being critical because the depictions are worrisome and indicative of a right-wing shift in media. joe and nicky don't have to kiss... but their relationship shouldn't be subtext or missable... and the characters should remain consistent with their portrayals in the first film... or else it's all a jumbled mess clearly designed with harmful politics in mind.

[dude-watchin-with-the-brontes]

why this poster perfectly encapsulates 2 old 2 guard (disparaging)

at first glance, this poster merely seems incoherent. like someone copied and pasted images of the different characters onto one document.

at second glance, it still looks that way, but worse.

(analysis below the cut)

this poster foreshadows the fact that no one works together, even though that was their greatest strength. that there's no cohesion, no unity of purpose, just a bunch of immortals (or immortal-adjacents) in the same proximity, no interaction, each facing a different direction.

nicky and joe are separated! even andy's labrys looks closer to tuah than to her.

the lack of a coherent background, and the amorphousness of the other figures, say so much too. many of the characters are straight up punching at the air!

the first film didn't just have The Guard and The Baddie. there was Celeste, the Russian-speaking pilot, the ghosts of Copley's and Booker's lost families, hell I bet there are even fanfics about those tourists taking a photo at the hotel in Marrakesh. Nicky greets a woman carrying water. Booker puts all his grief and dramatic irony into two words to a hotel concierge.

i can think of one (1) named *figure* in this second film who isn't on this poster, and i can't rightly call him a character since he never interacts with anyone. i only assume i know which one is Konrad because he was wearing pink.

[inthemidstofbuddie]

maybe they can just redo the second movie altogether and pretend the decisions they made in the original version never happened

[inthemidstofbuddie]

look it’s not about the immortality it’s about what you do with the time you have, and that’s what the second movie fucked up on. the entire thesis of the first movie is summed up by that girl in the French drugstore who helps stitch Andy up. she helps Andy today, Andy helps someone tomorrow. it’s proven in Copley’s whole spiel to Nile: Andy saved a girl who discovered the way to detect diabetes early. her grandson then saved people in Khmer Rouge. it’s the ripple effect of saving people, ensuring that humanity will continue to live on—and not because you’ll gain anything from it, but because saving people if you have the means to do so is the right thing to do.

and the second movie lost the plot on that. it became less doing good with your immortality and more i need to live forever because im selfish and afraid of death. which yknow could have been interesting, if the movie had done anything with it like they did with Merrick in the first movie. he wanted to help others but only for material profit, and only by torturing others he deemed as products rather than people. if Discord had been a metaphor for the rich and powerful hoarding wealth to step on everyone they deem less worthy, that’d have been interesting. instead it’s just…about her immortality, and the characters don’t have to confront any moral quandary. they’re not forced to confront their own immortality in an interesting and compelling way that allows the viewer to thus confront what they do with the time they have on earth.

it’s not about the people anymore. it’s just using immortality as a set piece and providing moments to make the characters do badass stunts and spout “funny” quips while doing so

they just marveled my gay immortals

[baqlawaa]

as a movie-only enjoyer, tuah’s lore dump library didn’t really work for me. i rewatched the first movie last week and ykw i like it best when “truths” about the immortality are gathered from the team’s observations and notes on their experiences, or when they debate the whys, hows, and whats of said experiences.

—we dream of each other. they stop when we meet.

—why?

—i believe it’s because...

—why us?

—that way madness lies.

i like it when it leans towards vagueness in the first movie, the way that the older ones are so old that sometimes some things are lost to the mists of time or memory. i like that we don’t have a pinned era of birth for andy, quynh, and lykon. even a definite answer on who’s older, lykon who lost his immortality earlier or andy, is left open.

—how old?

—too old.

—andy was alone for a long time before she found someone like her, a very long time.

i’m also more interested in the snippets of old experiences they drip-feed to curious baby member nile and by extension, the audience, like the abandoned mine in val d’argent. andy says that they’ve been using it as a safehouse since the 1150s which, if we put that tidbit together with earlier notes on the timeline by nicky and joe (eg. they died in the crusades + andy and quynh had been companions before the crusades) then it means that quynh also lived in that mine, that it’s likely that the stuff piled in there is not only andy’s but also quynh’s.

more of that and less of the exact mechanics, the stripping of the mystery, of the immortality kplsthnx.

[imapirahana]

Was anyone else increasingly annoyed by the camera's unsteadiness? The camera being shaky makes a bit more sense when there's action happening, but why is the camera moving and zooming in randomly when they're just standing there??? Or walking into a place? We don't need first person POV of someone walking to understand that they are moving to meet someone. It's so weird and it kept distracting me

PLUS! The super long establishing shots. We don't need to see someone fully drive up, get out of the car, and then walk over to the item of interest to understand where they are, especially if the location itself doesn't matter to the plot. It adds nothing and it gets boring

The best example of both in a scene is when Nile is approaching Discord in the church and for some unknown reason it switches from a 3rd person POV:

To 1st person shaky cam:

There's no reason to do this except to pad the run time. It took 25 seconds for Nile to walk from the door of the church to Discord, and they could have kept it to 5 seconds without it hurting our understanding of what was happening.

It's just frustrating that we were all super excited that the movie came out after waiting 5 years, and then while we're watching we're just sitting their in confusion and creeping boredom as we wait agonizingly for the next scene to start

[hephs-thighs]

I was really surprised to learn that one of the two TOG1 cinematographers also did TOG2. The second film just looked so bad in so many ways. Unfortunately I think the director did a very poor job.

[from-a-farther-room]

Yeah honestly I don't have enough of an eye for camera work to have really noticed that aspect, but there are so many long lingering shots and extended sequences of things that don't matter or didn't need to be anywhere near that long, while in other ways it feels rushed because they blow right past character stuff that would have been a much better use of that time. (We spend all this time watching Nile walk through the church instead of seeing something that would give some insight into her thoughts or feelings or relationships; we spend all that time watching Joe & Nicky's car drive up to Booker instead of giving them some dialogue to follow up on their fight or react to Quỳnh's return; that sequence of Quỳnh taking over the facility in Jakarta is like 5 minutes long and conveys nothing that wasn't covered by Copley's recap later on, instead of using some of that time to give her some more meaningful personal development or interaction with the others, etc. etc.)

[hephs-thighs]

All of this! 👆👆👆👆👆

[from-a-farther-room]

I feel like most of the discussion I'm seeing about the JoeNicky fight in tog2 is largely about Booker and to a lesser extent Joe's feelings about Booker, which is kind of strange to me because that is very much not the important thing as far as I'm concerned.

I don't have an issue with Joe forgiving Booker more quickly than Nicky. That makes sense to me; when I saw that thing about Nicky allegedly arguing for only 20 years of exile while Joe wanted more, I figured it was a matter of Nicky knowing that Joe would get over his anger faster (and that Andy would probably also like to have Booker back within her presumed mortal lifespan), and Nicky arguing for accepting him back earlier for their sake because he was willing to cope with unforgiven-by-him Booker being around to spare them from forgiven-by-them Booker remaining exiled.

I'm not convinced Joe would be over the betrayal to the point of wanting to talk to Booker again so quickly, but honestly all of the timing in the sequel is kind of a mess (Andy's hair is not just six months' worth of growth from her haircut in the first film; conversely there's no way Nile never so much as nicked either Joe or Nicky in six whole months; they make it seem like getting from Rimini to Rome takes longer than getting from Trieste to Paris, between Italy and Seoul, or between Seoul and Jakarta; etc.) so I'm not too worked up about the exact timeframe either.

My issue with Joe's characterization in the JoeNicky fight is, well, the Joe & Nicky part, and to a lesser extent the Joe & Andy & Nile part. Regardless of how you feel about the exile decision, the four of them made that decision together. They all agreed that Booker was out of the group for 100 years. And then Joe changed his mind. Which is fine! He's allowed to change his mind! I'm all for soft-hearted Joe for whom forgiveness and the well-being of his loved ones takes priority over punishment once his initial anger has passed. That is not the problem!

But instead of talking to Nicky about it, instead of talking to any of them about it, he just went and secretly broke the agreement they had all made by getting in touch with Booker again. And then he blatantly lied to Nicky in order to break the agreement even harder by going to see him in person. That's the problem, for me. It's not about Joe forgiving Booker, it's about Joe betraying Nicky (and Andy & Nile).

I don't believe that Joe is a dumbass sitcom dude who'd rather lie to his partner than have a difficult conversation about something important. I don't believe he's selfish enough to avoid the discussion just for his own convenience, or stupid and/or arrogant enough to actually think he'd get away with such a weak and obvious lie to the person who knows him better than anyone else in existence, or oblivious enough to not realize that lying about that would hurt Nicky deeply, or callous enough to do it knowing he wouldn't get away with it and Nicky would be hurt as a result.

The only explanation I can come up with that I can sort of accept is that Joe knew Nicky wasn't ready to forgive Booker and respected his right not to, and therefore convinced himself it was kinder to conceal the whole thing from Nicky than to make Nicky have the argument. I think perhaps I'd have been okay with that if it had just been the lie-of-omission about the secret texting, and then he'd come clean in Trieste because he was worried that Booker had stopped texting back and needed to go check on him.

But it wasn't just the lie-of-omission. And based on what Joe says and does in the Paris scene, I think the implication is that he went because he thought Booker was sad and scurvy-ridden, not because he thought he was in danger.

So I just keep circling back to this: I don't see how lying to Nicky about sneaking off to see Booker could be anything other than stupid, careless, or cruel, and I don't believe that Joe is stupid, careless, or cruel.

[hy3ma90sqz1h]

joe al-kaysani is over 900 years old. if he cannot effectively communicate, then what’s the point

he’s not a mortal man… he’s been alive for centuries… to not effectively communicate with your husband of over 900 years is just bullshit

i’m so tired of these lame ass excuses

[grumpyeagleandfriends]

I'm sorry, I'm still walking around during my day-to-day life thinking about the dumb lore they introduced in TOG2.

"The secret is that there is a first and final immort—"

NO ONE FUCKING CARES. THE ENTIRE POINT IS FOR IMMORTALITY'S EXISTENCE TO BE AN UNEXPLAINED PHENOMENON THAT CAN BE SEEN AS BOTH A GIFT AND A CURSE! IT IS A DIRECT METAPHOR OF THE HUMAN CONDITION YOU BAND OF MORONIC MONEY-HUNGRY FOOLS.

[exploding-skarks]

EVERYBODY STOP POSTING GIFSETS AND START TALKING ABOUT HOW THE RETCONNED THE WHOLE FIRST MOVIE !!!! WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCKKKK !!!!!!

[nicojoe]