If you’ve been craving your high-octane summer blockbusters, Netflix’s ‘The Old Guard’ has you covered this year. With a diverse and talented cast led by Charlize Theron, and directed by talented filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood, the action superhero flick is based on a graphic novel series about heroic and unkillable warriors, selflessly saving humans across the ages, sometimes even against their own better judgement. Here’s everything you need to know about the film before you hit the play button.
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1. The story follows a group of immortal soldiers: ‘The Old Guard’ tells the story of a secret group of immortal soldiers who fight against evil across the centuries, led by their oldest warrior, Andromache of Scythia, aka Andy, who is slowly losing faith in a world that refuses to learn from its mistakes. And in the 21st century, technology and privacy being so interlinked, Andy and her compatriots find that immortality is a hard secret to keep, especially when a freshly-minted immortal, Nile, joins the group.
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2. The film is an adaptation of an Image Comics graphic novel series: ‘The Old Guard’, written by Eisner Award-winning Greg Rucka and featuring art by Leandro Fernandez, was first published by Image Comics to critical acclaim in 2017. While the movie, the screenplay for which was also written by Rucka, closely follows the events collected in the first volume called ‘Opening Fire’, it also borrows a few events from its still-in-progress second volume, ‘Force Multiplied’.
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3. Director Gina Prince-Bythewood is the first Black woman to helm a comic book movie: Gina Prince-Bythewood, director of intimate and personal films like ‘Love and Basketball’ and ‘Beyond the Lights’, joins the rank of women directors such as Patty Jenkins (‘Wonder Woman’), Cathy Yan (‘Birds of Prey’), Cate Shortland (‘Black Widow’) and Chloe Zhao (‘Eternals’), who have broken the glass ceiling when it comes to superhero films. But with ‘The Old Guard’, Prince-Blythewood also becomes the first Black woman to helm a massive comic book adaptation, a significant achievement in an industry where gatekeeping is still a rampant issue. “The things that I influenced, that I noticed, that I corrected, that I amplified, absolutely come from a black female lens,” said Prince-Bythewood in an interview with Washington Post.
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4. Meet the immortals: Charlize Theron as Andy aka Andromache of Scythia — World-weary and emotionally-drained from fighting for centuries on end, Andromache of Scynthia (Andy) is the leader of the titular Old Guard and the oldest member of the group. While the movie itself never divulges her actual age, it’s mentioned in the comics that the unkillable warrior is around 6,732 years old.
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Matthias Schoenaerts as Booker aka Sebastian Le Livre — A French warrior who fought in the Napoleonic Wars, Booker is jaded when it comes to his immortality, especially after having had to watch his sons die while they raged against their father’s inability to help them even as he never aged himself. Booker is played by Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts, most famous for his role in the romantic drama ‘Rust and Bone’, opposite Marion Cotillard.
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Luca Marinelli as Nicky aka Nicolo di Genova — An Italian nobleman trained in the arts of war since his youth, Nicolo aka Nicky answered the call of the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, in 1095, when he asked for help from the entire Christian world to join his Crusades against non-believers. It was during this war where he met an enemy soldier who, like him, turned out to be immortal. And against all odds, after years of violence and hatred, the two found love and eventually joined Andy’s group to fight injustice across the world.
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Marwan Kenzari as Joe aka Yusuf Al Kaysani — Having fought, died and been resurrected multiple times during the Crusades, Joe was a Muslim warrior who discovered his immortality while fighting against Christian invaders. Played by award-winning Tunisian-Dutch actor Marwan Kenzari, Joe eventually finds love in another immortal during the same Crusades, but on the opposite side of the war. We most recently saw Kenzari play Jafar in Disney’s live-action remake of ‘Aladdin’.
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KiKi Layne as Nile Freeman — The newest member to join the group, Nile Freeman is a young US Marine whose life is upended by the discovery that she cannot die when she recovers from a fatal wound in Afghanistan. Confused and upset, all Freeman wants is to return to her regular life and loving family, but she is forced to join Andy’s group when she realises she can never get back to her ‘normal’ again. Freeman is played by KiKi Layne, who shot to fame in the 2018 drama ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’.
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5. French-Lebanese actress Natacha Karam makes a significant cameo: Natacha Karam, a French-Lebanese actress also of Northern Irish descent, plays a US Marine alongside Layne’s Nile. While she’s only been seen in smaller roles so far, we’re certain Karam’s cinematic journey is just beginning. According to IMDb, Karam’s very first credit is a small role as Tamara on a 2017 episode of the long-running BBC series ‘Silent Witness’. In the same year, Karam was seen in a more significant role on the NBC military drama ‘The Brave’ (2017), in which she played Jasmin ‘Jaz’ Khan, a sniper on a team of elite special ops soldiers. Next she appeared on ‘9-1-1: Lone Star’, where she plays Marjan Marwani, a paramedic and firefighter. And while the show has been renewed for a second season in 2020, Karam’s star is just on the rise. She is next set to appear in the superhero film ‘Samaritan’, starring alongside the likes of Sylvester Stallone, Martin Starr and Dascha Polanco.
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6. Will there be a sequel?: ‘The Old Guard’s’ final scene ends on a cliffhanger that could see the movie going in some interesting directions. And while the movie itself is doing well, both in the United States and in the Middle East where it’s comfortably perched on most-watched lists despite having only released last week, no official talk of a sequel has happened yet. However, giving hope to fans, director Prince-Bythewood revealed to Entertainment Weekly that she and Rucka have plans for two more films in mind. “The graphic novel itself is a trilogy,” she said. “Where the story goes is pretty phenomenal, so if the audience is for it, I think we are as well.”
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