astrabear

[astrabear]

*This poll was submitted to us and we simply posted it so people could vote and discuss their opinions on the matter. If you’d like for us to ask the internet a question for you, feel free to drop the poll of your choice in our inbox and we’ll post them anonymously (for more info, please check our pinned post).

[astrabear]

Surprisingly enough, people who saw the first movie before seeing the second have a vastly different understanding of the events of TOG2 than people who've only seen TOG2.

Joe can be as sad as he wants (I have big brown eyes myself, they don't work on me), but the events of TOG2 prove that the exile was the right thing to do.

Regardless of how anyone felt about him personally, they were not safe around him. The moment he had an opportunity to get what he wanted, he abandoned a mission in which ten million lives were at stake and left the team vulnerable to capture (again). His death scene was filmed as though it had weight, but it accomplished nothing and had zero strategic value. He just bailed.

They were right not to trust him. They were right not to keep him around. He was dangerous to them, he was a liability. True, they could have stayed in touch with him while still keeping him off the team, and that's basically what Joe did (making no difference whatsoever), but it's also fair and reasonable to want to take more than six months away from someone who has hurt and betrayed you. "How can we trust you not to sell us out again?" You can't. He did.

[astrabear]

Hey anon, I'm not going to publish your unpopular opinion because whoo boy it really is unpopular. I don't share it myself, and that's ok. I think a lot of TOG character interpretation is taking very small details and extrapolating from them. Sometimes I am on board, and sometimes I am not. I could list a bunch of small moments that contribute to the fanon you're talking about, but you're allowed to just not be into it.

[astrabear]

in keeping with tog, i wanna know top 5 unpopular opinions of andy & quynh. neither has nearly enough meta but andy in particular seems not to have as much in the tag despite being a main character

This is so hard! People don't talk about them enough for me to know what opinions are popular or unpopular. Also, I'm super super picky when it comes to reading fic centered around them. (I love writing it but don't seek it out to read.) But I'll do my best.

Not an opinion, but a fact that people just don't seem to accept - Quynh is not short! I can't tell you how many fics I have read in which she is super tiny. I attribute this to a combination of never seeing her standing near the other characters and ethnic stereotypes (Asian woman = itty bitty). Ngo Thanh Van is 5'7 aka 1.7 meters. Yes, she's shorter than everyone else in TOG, but not by that much - she does not, for example, only reach Marwan Kenzari's shoulder (the most recent one I've encountered in fic.)

A lot of people seem to assume that because we see Andy with short hair and jeans that she's fundamentally uncomfortable with overt femininity. I think that's reductive, overly simplistic, and not reflective of someone who's been alive for over six thousand years and presumably has a much different relationship to gender and identity than we do.

I headcanon Andy/Quynh/Lykon. (In the early fandom days, there was a lot of "all the immortals are just a big messy polycule." That's almost entirely died out in favor of rigid and self-contained ships. I think given the length of time they've spent together, there's probably been some sexual interaction in any combination you can think of. But to me, A/Q/L were a unit for a long time.)

Their relationship is just so much more interesting than kaysanova.

I'm feeling vindicated because long before TOG2 came out I was very firmly in the "Quynh's not evil, just hurt and traumatized" camp. Too many fics in which she's unambiguously terrible (and some where she was unpleasant even before being tortured nonstop for 500 years.)

[astrabear]

Top 5 unpopular tog opinions!

Oh wow, the first ask is just going STRAIGHT for the jugular.

I. It isn't canon if it's not in the text.

I.a. That video with character backgrounds that got released after the first movie came out is garbage, is not canon, and has done irreparable harm to the fandom. Back in the beginning, we got a wide variety of origin stories in fanfic; now there is One True Story for Joe and for Nicky and no one writes anything else.

I.b. Word of God is also not canon. Greg Rucka can say whatever he likes about the characters; it's only canon if it's in the material itself. People aren't wrong if they, e.g., see Booker as straight.

I.c. The script that came out a while back is also not canon. Lovely insight into what they had in mind at the time, but if a scene never got filmed, or got cut, it's not canon.

II. This post here

III. [fic name redacted] isn't actually that great. (I will not publicly name this fic even at gunpoint, I don't want to make anyone feel bad or yuck people's yum. But it's incredibly popular and I don't get the adoration for it and I never have.)

IV. The soundtrack is good. (Not entirely sure how popular or unpopular that opinion is - fans seem very polarized, either loving it or hating it, but I'm unclear how many are in each camp. I've seen more haters than lovers. But I will stake out my position - I really like it. For the first movie, not the sequel.)

V. It's good that we haven't gotten a Crusades flashback. It would add nothing to the story or our understanding of the characters, and there's so much that could go wrong with it. For the eleventy-billionth time, Joe and Nicky are not the main characters.

[astrabear]

This was in my Facebook memories from July 19, 2020 (yes I'm still on Facebook, I'm old, it's allowed.) I don't remember having that thought, but I was right.

There are a lot of things I love about The Old Guard (it has entirely eaten my brain, I have watched it like half a dozen times and read all the comics. In the past 50 hours). One of its smaller pleasures is that the central conceit allows them to have bad guys who can actually aim.

[astrabear]

put “top 5” anything in my ask and i will answer ok go

[astrabear]

bring back tumblr ask culture let me. bother you with questions and statements

[astrabear]

You have Joe and Nicky.

Because Quynh needs a hug, and the first movie already established that they are the best at hugging.

(And I had to compensate somehow for not getting my emotional satisfaction of seeing their reunion, or at least a moment between them, a moment dedicated to their deep and close relationship…)

[astrabear]

Joe can be as sad as he wants (I have big brown eyes myself, they don't work on me), but the events of TOG2 prove that the exile was the right thing to do.

Regardless of how anyone felt about him personally, they were not safe around him. The moment he had an opportunity to get what he wanted, he abandoned a mission in which ten million lives were at stake and left the team vulnerable to capture (again). His death scene was filmed as though it had weight, but it accomplished nothing and had zero strategic value. He just bailed.

They were right not to trust him. They were right not to keep him around. He was dangerous to them, he was a liability. True, they could have stayed in touch with him while still keeping him off the team, and that's basically what Joe did (making no difference whatsoever), but it's also fair and reasonable to want to take more than six months away from someone who has hurt and betrayed you. "How can we trust you not to sell us out again?" You can't. He did.

[astrabear]

debated reblogging one of the many booker posts but nah I'm gonna do my own that isn't a joke for once

is the exile morally justified?

does it have to be? from the perspective of the people who were hurt, andy, nicky and joe, this guy betrayed their most important secret to someone with the intent of getting them forever killed, presuming for all of them that they wanted that. they aren't coming at it from a moral point of view and they're not trying to heal booker, they're coming at it from a "we can't be around you right now" point of view. And based on how many people in this fandom have blocked each other over pettier shit than being sold out to an evil pharmaceutical corporation, I know most of you get that feeling. which isn't even getting into all three of them having lived through centuries in which crime & punishment had nothing to do with rehabilitation. since they all chose to use their immortality to be mercenaries, I have my doubts they read foucault.

is booker in character

yes

what's the---

okay, fine. so the big problem with movie 2 in my opinion is that movie 1 ends with both protagonists, nile and andy, having completed opposing character arcs. andy has learned to have faith in her mission despite losing immortality; nile has learned to let go of the things she used to have faith in and join the mission after becoming immortal. They're foils for each other. it's neat. even if it does accidentally have nile end up going from "I don't want to kill people" to "I will kill a whole bunch of people to save three guys who can't die".

the problem this leaves for movie 2 is that nile and andy have experienced their growth. they don't get new arcs. the person who does get an arc is quynh, but she isn't situated as a protagonist, she's like a secondary antagonist? which, her being the one to get an arc could work as a plot if she were the one holding the reins, but since we have discord running things, quynh doesn't really have enough screen time to be the main character. andy does, but she doesn't really grow or change in this movie. nile has neither, which sucks.

my theory is that at some point back when this script originated, the idea was to follow quynh and booker way more closely and give them the dueling character arcs (or maybe that is just what I wish the original script had been). bc quynh starts from a place of hope (did andy talk about me, why didn't she search for me) and goes to a place of despair (humanity is worthless) back to hope (reconciling with andy), while booker goes from a place of despair (6-month bender in paris) to a brief flutter of hope when he tells quynh about andy to...nothing?

we left booker in part 1 being punished for betraying the team to meet his own selfish ends (depression is a selfish creature). he seems accepting of this punishment , but clearly doesn't deal with it well from there on in. the movie briefly implies he respects andy and her mission while he's talking to quynh, but when he's reunited with the group, he treats them with the same disrespect he did before by alienating them and using nile to commit suicide.

this is incredibly jarring not because it's out of character but because we the audience do not expect characters to remain static when they are sympathetic characters doing bad things. the reason booker's behavior strikes us as ooc is not because it's not inkeeping with his established traits and desires, it's because it's not how we're used to scripts being written.

what's the problem with the booker plot then?

it doesn't go anywhere. it's a screenwriting dead end with the worst possible implications. if quynh and booker had been given full arcs in this movie and they did duel like andy and nile's did, booker could still have done what he did, but we would have gotten much more of booker tentatively reuniting with the team, indicating progress in his mental health, having them hash out whether exile really was the right call for him (even if it was the necessary call for them). then tuah revealing nile's super secret immortality destroying power and him taking advantage of it would be an epic betrayal meant to split the team apart. seeing andy and the others' reaction to it would cause quynh to abandon her search for revenge bc she might not care about humanity but she cares about these people. tbh this would be incredibly devastating BECAUSE of how realistic it is for people who are suicidal to seem improved, happy even, shortly before killing themselves. It would also set tuah up for a heel turn and him and discord as the villains of a hypothetical third movie.

that would make sense on a narrative level and wouldn't leave us with a story that implies receiving no help for suicidal ideation is fine actually because you can die a hero's death saving no one and also your friends won't mind you used them to kill yourself.

unfortunately it is not the script they wrote. they wrote an entirely senseless death scene (both on a narrative level because if you just gave andy back her immortality why die for her and on a moral level because you just implied suicide is good, actually) and used the cinematography of a heroic sacrifice. that in turn makes everything that came before it that could have been poignant and meaningful vanish.

is it okay to cut people from your life who need help when they hurt and endanger you?

can you help someone who is so far in their own misery all they do is hurt and endanger you?

is it your moral duty to offer that help even when you are the one being wronged?

how do you live with being used as a tool for someone else's wish to die?

what does family mean when family treats you this way?

all good questions this movie could have addressed but chose not to.

tl;dr: booker's characterization is consistent but that doesn't make it good; booker's punishment in movie one isn't about him and a script not focused on shoehorning in the three days of filming uma thurman gave them would have delved into the ramifications of that

[astrabear]

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.

[astrabear]

I don't know if a serious answer is wanted, but I've always just assumed that the stabbing was to keep him from stopping her taking the books, and the books will be used while torturing/manipulating the shrinky-dinks into giving her immortality. Like, the potential for Joe/Nicky emotional torture is off the charts. (I'm still Team Lying Liars, but this aspect seems straightforward enough.)

why did discord steal the books and stab tuah. for what. they literally never come back to that. "she knows everything about everyone" ok and uses none of it? taunts nile exactly once and the sous-vides the boys. what???

[astrabear]

I cannot overstate how excited I am about this fic. It's been years, I think, since I last got so thoroughly hooked. I suspect one reason it's gotten so little engagement is because of the lack of tags - a lot of people read fanfic because they want to feel a certain way, and tags and tropes help them know what feelings they're going to have. But this one is a mystery. I don't know if it's going to end in happiness or heartbreak (or some of both) but the first five chapters make me feel like Icarus. Maybe I'll fall later, but right now I'm flying, and it's exhilarating.

Chapters: 5/? Fandom: The Old Guard (Movie 2020), The Old Guard 2 (Movie 2025) Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Nile Freeman & The Old Guard Ensemble, The Immortal Family Characters: Nile Freeman, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Andy | Andromache of Scythia, Quynh | Noriko, Discord (The Old Guard), James Copley Additional Tags: Mystery, Angst, Mythology References, POV Multiple, Post-Movie: The Old Guard (2020), The Old Guard 2 Spoilers, That’s All You Get For Now 

Summary: Once upon a time, they lost.

Lost the battle, lost the war, lost far more than they can possibly imagine, or that they could ever understand. Lost because they could do no differently. Lost because they had no other choice, in the face of a threat to lose it all.

But now they must find each other again. When they don’t know how or where to begin, the odds are impossible, and even for the immortals - and those who used to be - they are running out of time.

[astrabear]

Or the fact that we see Andy flipping through Tuah's books and there's an illustration of Nile stabbing Andy, the event that Tuah supposedly didn't know about. Or their lack of reaction to the existence of immortals they haven't dreamed about. Or or or ...

Queerness visibility debate aside, one of the things I'm finding frustrating about the sequel is that while there are some great character moments, there are also so many inconsistencies and weird omissions in the film that could mean something, or could just be bad writing/editing, that it's really hard to work out which - if any - of those actually mean something and what's just us putting more thought into it than anyone involved in the writing/editing decisions did.

Take the opening heist. On first watch, this was one of my favourite parts and I do still think it's a lot of fun with some good character details, but on reflection the concept doesn't really add up with what we saw in the original.

In the first film, Andy's so concerned about staying off the public radar that she goes out of her way to delete a holiday snap that she appeared in the background of off someone's phone, and they all seem to take the weight of killing people seriously. Here, they're apparently fine with doing an extremely unsubtle shoot-'em-up car chase through a populated area, not as an unavoidable escape tactic but as a planned strategy. Is this supposed to mean the characters now don't care about visibility or collateral damage to bystanders (sure, maybe Copley could scrub the CCTV later, but that wouldn't do much good if they'd hit a bus full of random people on that road), or did the writers just want a cool car chase and not bother to consider the implications? I assume it's the latter.

In the first film, Nile insists on going in to Merrick's alone rather than let mortal Copley come with her, and once they find out Andy's mortal, they're all shown to be shielding her as much as possible. Here, they're all - Nile included! - apparently fine with a plan that involves the two mortals going into a firefight alone, without kevlar or anything (sure, they snark about Copley undercounting the guards, but there's nothing to suggest that they weren't expecting anyone to be shooting back), while immortal Nile's seemingly just expected to be the get-away driver. Is this supposed to mean the characters have become overly cocky and/or simply stopped giving a fuck about protecting the mortals, or did the writers just want to do a cool fight scene and give Copley some action and not think about anything else? Again, I assume it's the latter.

Now this is pretty standard action movie stuff, but it's disappointing when the first one didn't go the standard action movie route on these things, and it wouldn't have been that hard to do the cool stuff in a way that made more sense - before I saw the film, I was expecting that both the car chase and Andy & Copley fighting in the mansion with no protective gear would be the result of things not going according to plan, rather than that being the plan. 

And it just keeps going from there. Are any of the many, many ways the whole 'last immortal' business doesn't make sense supposed to be a hint that some or all of what we've been told about it isn't actually true, or is it just bad writing? Is the fact that Tuah only tells Booker about the immortality transfer thing - not Andy, the only one of them he seemingly has any relationship with, not Nile, the person it's actually ABOUT - supposed to be a hint that he's secretly in league with Discord and/or has some other agenda of his own, or is it just bad writing? I genuinely have no idea.

When Booker re-joins the group, do we see nothing even resembling an apology or contrition from him because he's actively supposed to be even more of an asshole now, or did the writers just forget that he did actually somewhat recognize how badly he'd fucked up at the end of the first one? Is his whole generally weird vibe supposed to hint that he has something more going on that we don't know about yet, or is it just clunky writing? Again, no idea.

Discord tells Quynh "I pulled you from the ocean because I needed you by my side" - it's not "I saved you when Andy couldn't", it's "I saved you because I wanted something from you". And Quynh doesn't really react to that. Does she not notice the implication that Discord would've left her there if she didn't need her? Does she not care because she didn't expect anything from anyone other than Andy? Does she not care because she never really with Discord as such anyway, just using her resources while it was convenient? Or does she not react because it didn't occur to the writers that there was anything in that statement to react to? No idea.

We see Joe and Nicky still fighting when Andy comes in with Tuah, and then we don't see them interact again until the cliffs of Moher scene, which is a lovely scene in its own right, but doesn't really acknowledge the earlier fight. Are we supposed to assume they did make up to some extent at some point in between, but either it was cut or never written in the first place because it wasn't considered important? Or are we supposed to assume that they haven't properly made up, that moment was just sort of a time-out because they have bigger more immediate problems and they still need to figure things out between them later? Or that that was the extent of them making up, they weren't fine before that scene but it's all good after it? I'm assuming it's the first one because it's my preferred interpretation and I feel like it fits best with how Luca and Marwan played it, but who knows.

In the final sequence with Andy and Quynh, Andy doesn't have the necklace at first, and she doesn't have it at the very end either (Quynh is wearing a necklace with seemingly the same sort of cord at the very end but I can't tell for sure if it's the necklace). But there is a shot partway through (just before the blanket bit) of Andy sitting on the steps in a tank-top where she clearly is wearing the necklace (along with another longer pendant that she was also wearing in the port scene and when first meeting Tuah, but I think not again after that). Does this mean Quynh gave it back to her and they didn't bother to show that, despite it being such a focus earlier, and then they forgot at the end? Or Quynh gave it back to Andy and then Andy gave it back to Quynh all off-screen? Or is it just a continuity error, they forgot Andy wasn't supposed to have it at that point when filming that bit and either never noticed or didn't bother to fix it later? It's probably the last one, but again, who knows.

I'm all for some good speculation, but it's frustrating when it seems like the most likely answer to most if not all of the 'what does this mean' questions is just 'it means nothing and that's not a deliberate choice, they just didn't care'. It's not like the first one was perfect in this regard either (why did Andy say "it's been 200 years" like that was a lot when it seems to actually be the shortest interval between new immortals they've had apart from Joe & Nicky's two-for-one special; how was jumping off the train in the middle of nowhere going to help her get to Afghanistan; etc.) but I feel like more of the probably-careless 'wait what' stuff there was easier to write off because it didn't really matter to our understanding of the characters the way these things do.

[astrabear]

No but fr did she go watch every time the Romans crucified a random agitator/preacher/political adversary in the hopes this one's weird little cult would take off or