canon divergent au where it is nile who has secretly been in contact with her family when the events of tog 2 happen and discord uses that connection to threaten nile to join her so this time the team has to rescue nile instead of the other way around EXCEPT while being kidnapped by discord nile meets and gets to know quynh and start working together behind discord's back so when the team arrives and fails at their rescue mission (which discord was able to prepare for) nile and quynh take her by surprise (and actually nile's family is safe bc they knew what was happening and were not kept in the dark so they were able to contact the team and get help from copley or something) and then nile and quynh together kick discord's ass and also become emotionally close
ok tog gifmakers. if anyone makes a gif of the moment where nile is actively bleeding out and dying and she STILL is trying to reach out to quynh after finding out she lost her immortality. PLEASE send it to me or tag me or whatever. I need to paste that scene onto the inside of my brain forever and ever and ever
Man one thing I will say about TOG2 is that Veronica Ngô killed it. Slew every scene she was in, acting in English which is her third (at least?) language. There are scenes that I think only worked because of the subtlety of her face acting. Went toe to toe with Charlize Theron in both action and dramatic moments and made it look easy. Queen shit.
KIKI LAYNE Talks Working With Charlize Theron and Her ‘Poignant’ Hair in ‘The Old Guard 2’
Source: New Beauty interview, 9th July 2025
The Old Guard 2 was cool because I got to wear my locs out for the first time. That was so meaningful, as a Black woman, to wear a style that the industry has not always made kind space for. It’s a style that I think a lot of us feel we’ve been tricked into thinking: “Oh, it’s not professional, it’s not nice, it’s not pretty or beautiful.” To be leading an action film while having natural locs, I think that’s probably been my favorite hair moment so far in a film. It felt so much more poignant to wear a style that the industry hasn’t made much space for, really.
I've been trying to write something about the action in TOG2 and it's honestly hard because the more I look at it, the more things I notice that are just stupid, lazy or nonsensical. And it just makes me annoyed on behalf of everyone who worked really hard on making the action in the first movie so damn good.
Because the action in TOG1 was really, really good. It felt grounded and like there were real stakes and consequences. It was emotionally impactful, rich in character details, and it also looked fucking badass. It stood out from the general slop of weightless, bloodless PG-13 blockbuster action. And it seems clear to me from behind the scenes videos that Gina Prince-Bythewood approached the violence in the film with a lot of care and intention, and that the filmmaking team had really thought through every detail of fight choreography, weapons, set design, practical and VFX, cinematography, lighting, and score.
Obviously what makes an action sequence "good" is somewhat subjective, but I think a useful rule of thumb is: good action should tell a story. We should learn something about the characters and their relationships through the way they fight, and be able to track changes in those things over the course of the film.
TOG1 was chock full of beautiful action storytelling. The action sequences were for the most part not long, but they were full of character and relationship information, and they were a delight to watch over and over again.
Nile and Andy's fight on the plane tells us (and Andy) a huge amount about who Nile is as a person--that she's determined, resourceful, brave and stubborn; sneaky and gutsy enough to restrain Andy while she's sleeping; skilled enough to land a hit on her in a brawl; and tough enough to keep fighting even after Andy breaks her arm. Andy's solo fight in the church tells us that she's the best of the best, but it's come at a cost, and that she will do things alone even when help is available right in the next room. Joe and Nicky have the van speech moment, but the practiced way they fight side by side, the way they always look for each other first in a fight and are still genuinely scared and enraged watching the other one get hurt or killed--these things tell us just as much about their relationship.
And one of the unique things about TOG is that the characters really fought as a team. I have written before about the phenomenon of characters fighting next to each other but not with each other; once you start noticing this in movies you will not be able to unsee it. I think there are a number of reasons for this trend in fight choreography, from individualist writing choices (wanting to showcase each character as their own Special Unique Hero in preparation for their spinoff film even when they're part of a team), to the practical reality that if you're filming a bunch of actors in front of a green screen, they may literally not have been in the room at the same time as each other.
TOG1 didn't do that. It opened and closed with two great ensemble fights, where we saw the characters being aware of each other in space, helping each other, covering each others' backs, and checking on each other, as if they were actually all people in the same room who cared about one another. It meant we had great character moments like Joe running to Nicky's side after the kill floor regeneration and the whole team following Nile's lead to cover Andy with their own bodies in the final fight when she's mortal but still not acting like it.
In a sequel, we should have seen how these relationships have changed, now that Andy is mortal, Nile is part of the team, and Booker is not.
The first action sequence should have allowed us to see the new status quo. How does the team work together now? Are there friction points, like Nile still being less experienced and Andy forgetting she's not invulnerable? How do they integrate someone like Copley, who has some of the same tech skills that Booker did, but really shouldn't be in the middle of the action when there are other options?
Instead we got...idek what was going on at that Temu ass Bond villain mansion. What even was that mission? It was obviously planned, but they walked in in broad daylight, with no weapons, no body armor for either of the mortals, and half a plan they were seemingly making up on the fly. (We see them on a mission right at the beginning of TOG1 and they are stealthy, silent, and armed to the teeth. This was. Not that.) In the first film, they are trying hard enough to keep a low profile that Andy deletes a photo of herself in a tourist's selfie. And then we see their worst fears about what happens when people discover their secret realized! They add Copley to the team explicitly to help them cover their tracks. You would think if anything they'd be more cautious now. But they're firing guns into the air and going on very noticeable car chases because...it looks cool I guess?
Pairing the two mortals together in the fight makes NO sense. And then it makes even less sense that they split up once they're inside the house and don't cover each other's backs! There is a moment when Copley and Andy are taking cover and Copley seems to need to draw Andy's attention to the fact that she's standing next to a wall of swords. Motherfuckin Andy??? The woman who keeps a sword bucket by the safehouse door??? Gtfo.
Nile's and Copley's positions should have been switched from the beginning. It almost seems like the fight was choreographed to be that way and then got changed at some point. Copley could've even gotten to drive the boat into the garden when things went off the rails! Then the "remember you're mortal" line would have meant something and revealed information about how he's changed in the six months he's spent with them, other than just being lazy exposition.
What was the objective? Kill the bad guy? That's not even really their deal. Yes obviously they kill people...but go back and listen to Copley's speech from TOG1 when he's describing their impact on history. Almost everything he mentions involves rescuing civilians. Which is exactly what they thought they were going to do on the South Sudan job. We don't know anything about this guy and we don't care, so we don't have any sense of stakes.
I could go on with nitpicking but the overall point is that it feels like none of these things were thought through from a character and worldbuilding point of view. Building an action sequence around what looks cool with no sense of overall coherence instead of starting with "what story are we telling?" is a recipe for a bad action sequence.
The Andy and Quỳnh fight in Rome is the one action sequence that works, because someone somewhere did put thought into it. It has a story and an emotional throughline. The choreography is actually telling a story (even after 500 years apart, they know each other well enough to block every strike; Andy doesn't actually want to fight Quỳnh and keeps trying to get her to stop) and they're both acting their faces off. It's like a vestige of a better movie that's still in there somewhere.
Unfortunately, all the problems with the opening sequence recur in the (too long) climax at the World's Least Secure Nuclear Facility. If there was any time we would expect to see all six of them fighting back to back and acting like a team, it would be in the finale. But no!!!
They enter the facility as a group. Nile is even in front!
But then they immediately split up into trios, pairs and solo fights, and stay that way for the rest of the sequence. And then complain about Discord trying to separate them! Guys y'all did this to yourselves with a stupidass battle plan.
This means the emotional impact of the climax of the film is completely fractured. Andy is the only one to see Booker die. Copley is maybe (?) killed off-screen and we get no confirmation about whether he's dead or alive. Nile gets the information about her immortality-ending powers alone, and then gets stabbed by Discord and captured alone. Andy fights Discord alone, on the world's most boring concrete slab.
It's the complete opposite of everything that made the first film powerful and unique.
Good action is not just about the coolest moves or the most outlandish stunts; it is about using physicality to say something. TOG1 did that really, really well, and TOG2 just does not measure up.
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