The Old Guard Review Charlize Theron Has an Axe to Grind

The Old Guard is a 2020 Netflix/Skydance action-take chances picture directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, based on the comic of the same name by writer Greg Rucka (who wrote the screenplay and produced) and creative person Leandro Fernandez. It stars Charlize Theron as Andromache of Scythia (she goes by "Andy"), a mercenary who has lived for millennia, along with her younger comrades-in-arms: two veterans of the Outset Crusade, Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli), and the baby of the bunch, Booker (Matthias Schoenarts), a French soldier who fought for Napoleon.

Turns out, living in the modern era is a challenge none of the four envisioned, and staying hidden is becoming increasingly difficult every bit records become more than comprehensive and social media becomes omnipresent. Tired from nearly endless fighting, Andy reluctantly agrees to practice a second chore for a former contact (Chiwetel Ejiofor), intending to take some fourth dimension off later on. But things are non what they seem, and the former warrior has to deal with unexpected fallout, as well every bit the enkindling of a new immortal (KiKi Layne), the first in nigh 2 hundred years.

On June 30, 2021, Charlize Theron confirmed in an interview that a sequel was in evolution.

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This film provides examples of:

• Abandoned Area: The protagonists have a safehouse in a hamlet outside Paris that has been abandoned considering it's directly under a busy drome's flying path. When this hideout is compromised, they accept shelter in an abased mine they discovered centuries agone.
• Action Girl: Andy, Nile, and in the by, Quynh.
• Adaptation Deviation: The twist of Andy losing her immortality as Nile joins is not in the original comic, equally Andy remains immortal at the end and intends to encounter Booker in a century. The film leaves the matter somewhat ambiguous, with Andy moving much more naturally than when she'd been wounded.
• Adaptation Expansion: The movie adapts the kickoff book of the comic, also as elements of the second, which was published in the leadup to the movie. Similar Quynh dropping in on Booker, Copley's research into the consequences of Andy's actions and his more heroic nature, and mention of Andy once being worshipped equally a goddess.
• Adaptational Heroism: Copley has a a sympathetic motive for his actions, and comes to regret them, even being willing to backup Nile when she's most to Storm the Castle.
• Adaptational Intelligence: Of a technological sort. In the comic, information technology's showcased that only Booker (the youngest of the group) has any understanding of modern engineering (Andy barely knows how to use an old flip-phone, let alone a smart one). Indeed, the comic has Nile realizing Booker is a traitor when he's able to "gather" information off a laptop inside an underground bunker equally Andy doesn't grasp that "simply because yous have a estimator doesn't automatically mean y'all're on the Internet." In the film, all of the group are shown to be tech-savvy with Andy easily using a smartphone (which makes sense equally they're long used to adapting to the times they live in).
• Adaptational Name Change:
  • At Ngô Thanh Vân'southward request when she was cast, Noriko was renamed Quynh and made Vietnamese, equally Vân is Vietnamese.
  • Andronika (Andy's existent proper name in the first consequence of the comic) was changed to Andromache, in Greg's own words, "because I inverse her proper noun".
• Adaptational Nice Guy: The immortals are a much more jaded bunch in the comics, and as well more aggressive, fifty-fifty towards ane another. In the moving picture, they prove a lot of affection towards 1 another, and while they are withal skilled and deadly warriors, they are also more than friendly and polite to non-combatants.
• Adaptational Skill: Andy knows her way around a smartphone in the moving picture, dissimilar the comic where she has little skill with personal engineering science.
• The Alcoholic: Booker drinks notably more alcohol than any other charcacter. He regularly takes a swig of liquor from a hip flask and is drunk during the post-timeskip scene.
• An Axe to Grind: Andy uses a labrys (a double-headed axe) in battle, in addition to her guns. When Merrick gets a concur of her labrys, she settles for using a regular fireman's axe to fight mooks until she gets it back.
• And I Must Scream: Imprisonment and torture is the greatest fear of the immortals, as they cannot even hope to dice of injury or erstwhile age to escape it. In particular, Quynh was locked in an fe sarcophagus and dumped into the Atlantic Ocean, where she's been drowning and reanimating over and over since the Middle Ages.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Played dramatically; Andy is a nihilistic atheist and suggests to the Christian Nile that if she already believes in God and so she should be fully prepared to take that she'due south immortal now.
• Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: The older immortals take a penchant for using blades and melee weapons alongside firearms.
• Artistic License – Chemistry: The RMS Titanic has been underwater in the Atlantic Ocean since 1912 and electric current estimates say that it may rot away entirely by 2050. By the same token, Quyhn's far smaller purely iron bury would have taken far less time to rust to the signal where she could pause free from it. The coffin would take rusted enough for her to escape within decades, not 500 years.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: The team has horrible trigger discipline, routinely leaving their fingers on the trigger at all times contrary to safety guidelines. However, given the squad's ages — Andy is literally twice as old as gunpowder — and the fact that they are all immortals with fast healing for whom an accidental gunshot is just a brief, if nasty, inconvenience they never learned proper gun safety. Nile, having been trained in the 21st century, is the only exception.
• Artistic License – Military: One of Nile's boyfriend Marines calls for a medic when she's injured. Marines are the only co-operative of the U.S. armed forces who don't accept their ain field medics, instead relying on the Navy's hospital corpsmen, and so this is a mutual mistake.
  • Not necessarily. Aye, it is true that the Marine Corps does not have its own medical personnel, relying on Navy Corpsmen. Notwithstanding, Corpsmen practice deploy with the Marines, and railroad train with their Marine units as combat medics. It is not out of the realm of possibility that Nile's unit would accept brought a combat medic with them, or have one that they could get to them/meet them at evac quickly. And then, Dizzy yelling "Medic" is perfectly within the style that Marine units would piece of work. Also, her yelling that would trigger others to pass the message that they need a medic to whoever accept the communications equipment, if they hadn't brought a medic with them.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Nile is the youngest immortal, only experiencing her outset decease at the beginning of the moving-picture show (Andy fifty-fifty says "She's simply a baby" on seeing a sketch of her). Booker, who fought under Napoleon, previously held this position.
• Badass Coiffure: Four (subsequently, five) immortals who betwixt them are skilled with virtually every kind of weapon, along with centuries of experience.
• Battle Couple: Joe and Nicky are lovers and mercenary comrades-in-arms — and have been for nigh a g years.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. Nile and Andy get as much blood and dirt on them every bit the guys, if not more. Andy particularly is ordinarily covered in a layer of grime.
• Been At that place, Shaped History: Andy assumes nothing she does matters, but Copley's research shows that she has saved numerous lives who in plough assistance others or have descendants who do, from a adult female whose daughter creates a groundbreaking diabetes handling to others who salvage important lives.

  Copley: She saves a life and 2, three generations after, we reap the benefits.
  Nile: She's in information technology... she can't see it.

• Bittersweet Ending: The already depressed Booker is cut off from the others for a century as punishment for his betrayal, but Andy has establish new purpose in her life and is ready to guide the team in a new, more than helpful direction — and Quynh has somehow freed herself.
• Blessed with Suck: An immortal can survive virtually any course of injury or decease, but they still experience the wound and recovery. And 1 day, their immortality may just stop working, significant they dice permanently.
• Trunk Horror: Nile's body is mangled afterward jumping off the skyscraper with Merrick to protect Andy. Thanks to her Healing Factor, she gets ameliorate. Merrick on the other manus...
• Blast, Headshot!: Subverted. Andy shoots Nile in the dorsum of the head when she first tries to escape and Keane shoots Nicky in the mouth during the terminal boxing. However, since they're immortal, they shake it off.

  Andy: You've got claret in your hair.
  Nile: Wonder why.

• Bottomless Magazines: Averted. The team spends a lot of of the last battle passing each other new magazines. As well with the striking team in Sudan; they empty their weapons into the protagonists and then they're caught with empty magazines when they come to life.
• Brought Down to Normal: Each immortal knows that at one point or some other, it will just "switch off" and they'll die similar anyone else. When Andy keeps bleeding from a stab wound, she realises her time has come.
  • Brought Down to Badass: They've still got centuries of combat feel, though. Andy takes point in the final fight, and at ane point manages to deflect a bullet with an axe.
• Bulletproof Human being Shield: In the terminal battle the immortals accept turns taking bullets to protect the at present-mortalized Andy. Possibly justified thanks to their Healing Factor, which is shown to rapidly repair internal damage.
• Bullying the Dragon: Downplayed in that the odds are to their advantage (there's 5 of them and two of the immortals, they're fully kitted out while Joe and Nicky are unarmed and chained up), merely the soldiers in the van were still a scrap likewise cocky when information technology came to Joe and Nicky, who are both immortal and have centuries of experience in combat. Mocking their human relationship later on Joe makes information technology clear just how much they mean to each other results in Joe and Nicky killing them all off-screen.
• Burn the Witch!: Quynh thinks this is what will happen to her and Andy, but the reality is far worse. Unusually, it seems that the witch hunters tried to hang them start, they just had to resort to more extreme measures after it became clear that hanging wasn't working.
• Machine Cushion: Nile tackles Merrick out a window, the pair slamming into a car several dozen stories beneath. Subverted, in that Merrick doesn't survive the fall, and Nile conspicuously merely survives past virtue of being effectively immortal.
• Casting Gag: Charlize Theron as Andromache of Scythia. A famous Amazonian warrior from Greek myths was named Andromache, and archeological findings related to said myths were found in the modernistic-day locations respective to ancient Scythia. Theron famously refused to play the Queen of the Amazons in Wonder Woman.
  • Merrick's insistence that Copley bring him all iv immortals instead of just 1 is even funnier when you consider his previous role as Dudley Dursley.
• Catapult Nightmare: Nile suffers one thinking of the man she killed and so feeling Quynh drowning and resurrecting infinite times.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: What actually makes the team deadly is that they've had hundreds—in Andy'due south case, thousands—of years to strop their skills, more than whatever non-immortal foe they face will always have.
• Combat Pragmatist: The four senior team members are all uncommonly skilled in this; centuries upon centuries of experience have left them with unequaled mitt-to-hand technique, forth with musculus memory which tin can't be matched. Just witness the "Killing Room" scene, where you accept such gems every bit Andy firing a pistol with the butt pressed directly against several mercs torso armor (thus ensuring the round has enough energy to penetrate annihilation short of a steel or ceramic-reinforced vest), and so when she finally runs out of bullets, hitting one of the men in the face with it. Joe kills i merc with his shotgun, and so instead of wasting fourth dimension working the slide to chamber another circular, draws his scimitar and starts carving them upward leaving Nicky openings to shoot them.
• Cool Sword: Booker, who had his initial military service in the early 1800s, is the simply 1 of the "old" squad who doesn't employ a bladed weapon beyond a knife.
  • Andy uses a labrys, a double-headed axe from at least the time of Ancient Hellenic republic (and possibly earlier). She uses what looks to exist a 18th century cavalry saber for the church massacre as well.
  • Joe, beingness an 11th-century Muslim warrior, uses a scimitar.
  • Nicky, being an 11th-century Crusader, uses a European longsword.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Merrick owns a company named after him, and has a goal of unlocking the hush-hush to immortality to turn a profit off of it. Even if that means unethical and painful experiments on alive immortals. He even stabs them just to see proof that they're immortal.
• Crapsack Earth: Andy has begun to experience this style about the world as it currently exists; at one point she flat out says that it's getting worse instead of better.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Joe vs Keane in the climax. Keane is special ops, but Joe has centuries of feel, and is angry that Keane shot Nicky.
• Muddied Business: Nile feels this manner after seeing the carnage Andy leaves behind at the church. She flatly says that she doesn't desire to become used to that, and temporarily leaves the grouping.
• Disco Dan: Comes with the immortals being a Living Relic, to at least some degree. While Andy and the others have long gotten used to keeping upwards with the times, admitting with some difficulty, they still retain elements of their corresponding eras.
• Dreaming of Times Gone By: Nile dreams of Quynh drowning and reviving over and over once again.
• Driven to Suicide: Booker's motivation for betraying the team. He saw all three of his sons die, and the guilt has go as well much for him to behave. He figures that if Merrick can learn why they tin can't dice, perhaps he can learn a way to kill them.
• Drowning My Sorrows:
  • Implied. Booker deeply regrets his betrayal of the team and dreads his century-long exile. Before he'south left alone, he has an emotional goodbye with Andy knowing that he will never run across her again because she's no longer immortal. In his next scene, half dozen months later, he stumbles home drunk and upset, giving the impression that he has spent the whole fourth dimension drinking to numb his guilt, loneliness, and grief.
  • Andy is shown taking a lengthy potable straight from a vodka bottle, showing her disillusioned grapheme at that stage in the movie.
  • Averted with Quynh, who is introduced pouring herself a drinking glass of h2o. Given that she spent a large part of her life drowning, it's an interesting choice.
• Empty Piles of Clothing: At that place'due south a pile of children's shoes outside the building where the Sudanese schoolgirls are supposedly being held hostage. After surviving the subsequent ambush they admit that was a particularly practiced impact of Copley's.
• Evil Brit: Merrick is the main villain of the story. His goal is to unlock the secret to immortality and profit off of it. In the process, performing many painful and unethical experiments on immortals. He is even willing to stab them for proof of their healing gene.
• Eye Awaken: A variant; the first time Andy comes back to life, having died with her eyes open, is shown past her pupils contracting as she focuses on the footing in front of her.
• Face–Heel Plow: Booker betrays the team because he wants to die and hopes medical science will discover a style.
• Fakeout Escape: Merrick sends the penthouse elevator down to the ground floor to make it await similar he's running for it.
• Faking the Dead: As Andy is taking Nile out of Afghanistan, Nile correctly points out that she's now technically AWOL. By the end of the film, Copley has ready a program that will "show" she was killed in action.
• Family of Choice: The grouping of immortals accept intendance of each other and acts every bit a exchange for the family they lost with the passage of time.
  • When Booker is checking in at the hotel in Morocco, the hotel clerk ask him (in French) what brings him to Marrakesh. Booker responds, "la famille" (family). He could just be lying to the clerk, or it could be an indication that he truly thinks of the other immortals as his family.
• Feeling Their Age: Andy and Booker, though for different reasons. Andy feels like nothing she's done has ever really made a difference, while Booker is consumed by guilt about living while his sons died.
• Firing One-Handed: Done an atrocious lot by the team, though with centuries to get used to information technology, their accuracy is more conceivable.
• Flashback: An extended one serves to flesh out Andy's backstory when the team fills Nile in on why she's so jaded.
• Flirting Nether Fire: When Joe and Nicky get captured, they flirt betwixt each other to go along the tension down, whether it'due south commenting on how nice their kidnapping plane is or joking nigh that time in Malta in the middle of a torturous experiment. When information technology comes to other people, however, they're more serious. Compare Joe joking with Nicky about getting a bedhead to him yelling at Booker in the same state of affairs.
• The Fog of Ages: Andy is so old that she can't remember her own historic period, or what the members of her family looked like.
  • Even her "existent" name, Andromache the Scythian, reflects this. She was already thousands of years old by the time the Scythians entered the historical tape in the 8th century BC. The Scythian era is but the furthest dorsum she tin remember, and evidently when she met Quynh.
  • In the comics, it's stated that Andy is half-dozen,732 years old. In behind the scenes materials for the picture show, they just said that Andy estimates that she's effectually "six to vii yard" years quondam - updating information technology considering realistically, it would have been hard for Andy to keep track of her exact historic period earlier formal record-keeping in the pre-historic era.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Quynh's existence is hinted at a couple of times before being properly revealed:
    • Nile's dream almost the other immortals while she's in the infirmary includes a wink of someone screaming underwater.
    • When Nile asks Andy how many immortals there are, Andy replies, "Four." Nile and the audition presume Andy is including herself in the count, but the question was actually how many others in that location were—every bit in besides Andy and Nile.
  • Booker is found with his chest blown open up and the others missing. However we know the people snatching them a) know he's immortal, and b) want every immortal in their custody and then they'll take a monopoly. Why and so would they leave Booker behind if it wasn't role of their program?
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: You know that necklace that Andy always wears? A few very brief shots from the flashback sequence show that it originally belonged to Quynh.
• A Friend in Need: Nile abandons Andy and Booker just before they confront Copley because she wants to spend equally much fourth dimension with her family as she can before they realise she doesn't age. Only when she discovers that Booker betrayed Andy, she immediately turns effectually to save her.
• Friendly Sniper: Nicky, the squad'south about empathetic and kind member, is also a highly-skilled sniper.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: By the end of the film, the coiffure consists of two women and two men.
• Giant Mook: Andy fights 1 near the end of the story, making his size and force mean nothing until he tells her where Merrick is.
• God Guise: When Nile tries to still believe in God afterwards discovering her immortality, Andy tells her that she was one time worshiped as a god, and therefore doesn't believe at that place'due south any real ones.
• Skilful Samaritan: The drug store cashier who, without asking any questions or enervating anything, takes Andy to the dorsum of the store to dress her shoulder wound.
• Gun And Sword: Most notably during Andy's fight scene in the church building; but Nicky and Joe also carry their swords from the Crusades into boxing along with more than modern weapons.
• Happily Married: While Joe and Nicky are non stated to be literally married, their relationship has lasted for 900 years and they are nonetheless very much in love with each other.
• Healing Factor: An immortal will heal from any wound inside seconds or minutes, depending on the severity. At least until they i twenty-four hour period don't, at which signal they can be killed just as easily as anyone else.

  Andy Nothing that lives lives forever. One day, our wounds just don't heal up anymore. We don't know when.

• Heel–Confront Plough: Copley turns on Merrick when he makes it articulate he'due south more interested in profiting from the immortals' secret than genuinely helping people with it (plus, his willingness to torture them for years if necessary), helping Nile to salvage the others.
• Hibernate Your Gays:
  • Averted with Joe and Nicky, who are shown embracing in their sleep, kissing and openly declaring their love for each other.
  • Downplayed with Andy and Quynh. The motion-picture show never outright confirms that they were a couple ^annotation although Joe telling Nile that "information technology was [Quynh] and Andy earlier me and Nicky" tin be read as referring to his and Nicky's Official Couple condition in addition to their immortality, but betwixt Quynh serving as The Lost Lenore to Andy, them pledging to be with each other "until the cease," and the fact that they were a couple in the graphic novel, information technology'south pretty hard to read their relationship as ideal.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Nicky comments on this almost word for give-and-take to Copley afterwards the latter'due south betrayal, and the fact Copley looks ashamed foreshadows his later heel face turn.

  Nicky: (as he is being led abroad in chains) Nosotros are unremarkably a much improve gauge of character than this.

• Immortal Hero: The immortals arbitrate in different conflicts trying to do expert and have had an immeasurable impact on the world. The villains are regular mortals trying to harness immortality for their own purposes.
• Immortality Hurts: The immortals ever recover from their injuries, only they definitely nevertheless feel them.

  Booker: Just because we keep living doesn't mean we finish hurting.

• Immortal Immaturity: If anything, the moving picture is a deconstruction where centuries and millennia of feel have fabricated the immortals more well adjusted, genuinely good people. Most notably, the homophobia that some narrow-minded soldiers testify is called infantile past one of the immortals.
• Immortal Procreation Clause: Averted. Booker had iii sons, with at least one of them existence conceived after he was already immortal.
• In Medias Res: The film opens with a shot of Andy, Booker, Joe, and Nicky lying expressionless on the floor. Information technology and then cuts back to a day or so earlier, showing who they are and how they got there.
• It Works Ameliorate with Bullets: Booker pulls this on Andy when he betrays her handing her an empty pistol for a raid. Information technology works, despite her age and experience-possibly because he used Joe's USP and non her usual SiG P226.
• Wiggle with a Heart of Wiggle: Merrick is introduced as the corporate jerk who got Copley to beguile the team, just then he seemingly shows a moral conscience when he claims he simply wants to study the immortals considering they could assist him cure all disease. As the story progresses, still, it becomes apparent that he's just an arrogant prick who only cares about the money and celebrity that such a cure would bring him and thinks nothing of torturing people to get what he wants.
• The Kindnapper: Andy simply walks into a Coalition military machine base, knocks out Nile and drives off with her in a stolen Hummer. When she tries jumping out of the Hummer, Andy shoots her in the caput every bit well.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: After witnessing Andy wipe out virtually of their men, Keane and Copley make up one's mind to get clear of the church building before she catches upward to them.
• Living Forever Is Crawly: Joe and Nicky, soulmates whose love has but grown deeper over the centuries.
• Dearest Redeems: Unsaid with Joe and Nicky's backstory, as they met locked in battle on opposite sides of a violent holy war. Now, centuries later, they accept fallen in love and completely transcended their erstwhile hatreds. This is more than emphasized with Nicky, who directly states that "the beloved of my life was of the people I had been taught to hate."
• Married to the Task: Played straight with Andy and Booker, who are both implied to be incredibly lonely, merely having their work to distract them from immortality. Averted with Joe and Nicky, who have each other.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": The mercs in the "Killing Room" scene, having merely emptied at least a hundred rounds into four people, accept this reaction when those same four people get up and begin to attack, quite angry most having had at least a hundred rounds emptied into them.
• Mook Horror Show: The fight at the church. Andy pretty much massacres multiple teams of soldiers, leaving Copley and Keane staring in horror at the camera footage of the dead. It'south at that point that they decide to cut their losses and run for it.
• Noodle Incident: When yous live forever y'all pick up a few stories.

  Nicky: You know, I was thinking most Malta.
  Joe: What time in Malta?
  Nicky: *looks at him*
  Joe: *laughing* Oh, that time in Malta.

  Joe: What are you thinking? Oslo '67?
  Andy: Nah. São Paolo '34.

• Non Wearing Tights: The team are basically superheroes, simply they never wear costumes or call themselves by codenames.
• Official Couple: Joe and Nicky have been a couple for almost a millennium and are still very much in dearest.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Joe and Nicky, handcuffed and chained to the floor of a truck, still manage to impale their entire group of captors barehanded.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Keane and Copley, having abducted Joe and Nicky, have this moment when they realize exactly what a pissed off Andromache is capable of, and wisely decide to get the hell out before she finds them.
  • Nile has 1 straight after this, when she sees the 20 or and then men Andy killed and realizes that ane adult female did that in less than five minutes.
  • Keane gets another moment of this when Nile shows upwards, and he realizes there's a 5th immortal nobody had counted on.
• The Older Immortal: Andy is much older than the rest of the immortals, though she won't (and probably tin't) give her verbal age.
• One-Hit Polykill: Nicky waits till a spotter walks backside another spotter (across his line of fire) and kills both with a unmarried circular from his bolt-action sniper rifle.
• One-Woman Army:
  • Andy goes upward confronting several teams of heavily armed soldiers, and mows through them similar grass.
  • Lampshaded when Andy tells Nicky that she commands an army. It just happens to be an regular army with only iv soldiers in it.
• Only Known past Their Nickname: The immortals only use their modern nicknames with very few exceptions. Andy introduces herself to Nile using her original proper name and Quynh screams it during her flashback, while Joe calls Nicky's original proper noun in passing during 1 scene.
  • Andy's real proper name is Andromache the Scythian. ^notation Though Andy actually predates the Scythians past a couple thousand years
  • Joe's real proper name is Yusuf Al-Kaysani. ^note "Joe" is a nickname for Joseph, the anglicized class of Yusuf.
  • Nicky'south real proper name is Nicolo di Genova.
  • Booker's existent name is Sebastien Lelivre. ^note "Le livre" being French for "the volume"
• Outliving One's Offspring: Booker outlived all three of his sons, and that fact still haunts him.
• Playing Possum:
  • Andy does this by shooting the pilot of the cargo plane she and Nile are on, after telling him in Russian to play dead. Andy and Nile use the aforementioned trick on Merrick during their fight later in the film, with Andy existence the one who pretends to be dead.
  • Nile lets the guards at the belfry shoot her, then kills them subsequently they come upwardly to search her torso.
• Pragmatic Accommodation: The reason for Quynh'due south And I Must Scream fate was changed from the comic because the original version (existence accidentally done overboard during a storm) would have been incredibly expensive to picture show, and it merely wasn't worth spending that much money on a scene that would merely make up perhaps ninety seconds of the film's runtime.
• Race Elevator: Lykon and Copley are blackness, while they were Ambiguously Brownish and white in the comic, respectively. Comic Andy was Ambiguously Brown but white in the film.
• Really 700 Years Old: Andy, Joe, Nicky, Booker, and Quynh. Andy is by far the oldest, then onetime that she claims she tin't remember her age ^note In the comics, she says she's half dozen,732, Joe and Nicky are each around 950 or and then, while Booker is around 240.
• Red Herring: When Merrick demands Copley capture these immortals, Copley points out that this would be rather difficult, but he may exist able to get hold of one. This seems to refer to Nile, who has just proven immortal while serving with the United states war machine in Afghanistan, so information technology wouldn't exist strange for an ex-CIA agent to have found out about her. He'due south actually referring to Booker. When Nile turns upward on Copley's doorstep, he doesn't fifty-fifty know who or what she is.
• Regretful Traitor: Booker truly regrets giving up the team, but he's so tired of living that he considers possibly dying an even trade.
• Reluctant Warrior: Nile takes a life for the first fourth dimension after shooting an enemy combatant who was hiding in an Afghan village. She feels incredibly uncomfortable with killing and temporarily leaves the squad because she can't bring herself to kill another person. Nile only changes her mind when she realizes that Andy is in legitimate danger because Booker betrayed her.
• Resurrective Immortality: If peppered with enough bullets or subjected to enough concrete damage the immortals can temporarily "die", simply to chop-chop heal and come back to life when enough of their bodies have repaired themselves.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Downplayed equally they can't kill Booker for his betrayal, and so he'southward ostracized from The Old Guard for 1 hundred years, making him effectively alone in the world. Copley tin can be killed, merely instead they give him An Offer You Cannot Refuse; from now on he's to place and cover upwardly all traces of The Sometime Baby-sit, and notice them assignments and so they can proceed their work.
• Save This Person, Save the Earth: Andy's actions, every bit Copley discovered, accept done this over and over again through history — her actions have saved hundreds, if non thousands, of seemingly inconsequential people who years down the road either performed a great service to humanity or had children or grandchildren who did the same. Andy, notably, is entirely unaware of this for most of the film, as her policy of avoiding repeat jobs or interacting long-term with non-immortals kept her from realizing what was going on.
• Spiral This, I'm Outta Here!: After the church assault turns into a massacre every bit Andy obliterates the assault team, Copley tells the team leader it'southward fourth dimension to go, and they waste no time legging it, either.
• Senseless Violins: A nylon instrument case is shown being carried well-nigh past various characters; it's eventually revealed to be holding Andy'south double-bladed axe.
• Sequel Hook: Booker returns to his apartment to find Quynh waiting for him, having somehow escaped her imprisonment.
• Shared Dream: Whenever a new immortal suffers their first death, all of them dream about each other. Andy has sought others out, and Nicky lampshades that it used to take years before mod engineering.
• Short-Range Guy, Long-Range Guy: Joe and Nicky. Befitting their corresponding Carmine Oni, Blueish Oni natures, Joe is emphasized equally a particularly good melee fighter (such equally when he kills Keane, the security primary with his bare hands), while Nicky is the Cold Sniper of the group.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: Upwardly to Eleven, as Nicky and Joe killed each other multiple times during the first crusade before falling in dearest.
• Slashed Pharynx: Nile dies for the first fourth dimension after an enemy insurgent slashes her pharynx. Her squad-mates are shocked when they look at her neck and find that there's no trace of the wound.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: Joe and Nicky are regarded as this by Booker, who bitterly notes that they could non possibly understand his grief and despair because they've found happiness with each other.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • Had Andy not traded her pistol (which was unloaded past Booker before the raid) for the SMG she had given to her, Nile wouldn't have figured out Booker'due south treachery and gone back home to her family unaware of the danger Andy and the other immortals were in for Merrick'south experimentation.
  • Copley and Merrick have no idea that Nile, a new immortal, has just come on the scene. Nile evades capture considering she decides to go domicile instead of raiding Copley's house, significant she is left free to rescue the others.
• Spoiler Comprehend: On the poster, Joe, Nile, and Nicky are grouped to i side while Booker is grouped with Copley on the other. This foreshadows that Booker has been working with Copley all along.
• Storming the Castle: During the climax, Nile breaks into Merrick's tower to rescue the others, and so together they fight their way to his penthouse to terminate him off.
• Survivor Guilt: Booker is tormented by the memory of his sons dying, while Andy was separated from the simply other immortal she knew at that fourth dimension, and considers it a failure even though she spent decades trying to find the other adult female.
• Take That!:
  • In-Universe: Equally Nile asks a group of Afghan women about the location of a wanted bombmaker, ane of them replies that "to use woman as shields is to be no man at all"... immediately before discreetly pointing out said not-a-homo-at-all's hiding place.
  • Merrick is an obvious take on Martin Shkreli, and past extension all other immoral, predatory pharmaceutical executives of whom he's just the nigh famous.
• Technician Versus Performer: Andy is the performer, banking on her immortality and years of combat with acrobatics and lots of violence, while Nile is the technician who'south only just recently gained immortality and was trained more to make combat encounters quick and efficient with headshots.
• Technology Marches On: In-Universe. In centuries past, it was easier for the team to wing below the radar. The 20-first century, however, has led to an increase in the ubiquity of modern surveillance systems and record-keeping, not to mention smartphones. Andy at one signal offers to accept a photo of a grouping of vacationers so she can delete the moving picture i of them merely took which had her in the background. On the plus side, it takes the immortals well-nigh thirty seconds to piece together who Nile is and where she has awakened from their vision but by how much they know of current geo-politics and cultures when they previously needed years to observe each other.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Joe is not happy that Booker is helping them escape Merrick, simply rightly stifles his anger when Andy points out there volition be fourth dimension for recriminations after they're safety.
• They Would Cut You Up: The basic plot of the motion-picture show.
• Time Skip: A pocket-size one. The final scene takes identify half dozen months into Booker's century-long penalisation of isolation and reveals that at some betoken, Quynh escaped her imprisonment at the lesser of the body of water.
• Throw-Away Guns: The team picks up and discard weapons frequently during the final battle. Justified in that they didn't have whatever weapons to start and are using weapons picked upwards from the security guards they've killed.
• Undying Warrior: The film, equally with the original comic, features the adventures of a gang of immortal mercenaries drawn from various eras of history - including ancient Scythia, the Crusades, the Napoleonic Wars, and the 21st century conflicts in the Middle Due east. All of the immortals possess agelessness and Resurrective Immortality - with a twist: after an indeterminate period of time, they volition lose their immortality and dice permanently... and given their violent lifestyles, they rarely go whatever advance warning.
• Villainous Breakdown: With his forces destroyed, Merrick degenerates into ranting at Andy and trying to kill her, in spite of her possible use to him.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Copley'due south wife died of amytrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig'south Disease). He idea that if the team's abilities could exist studied and replicated, it might save other people in the futurity. Merrick'southward attitude of "locking them up for years if that's what it takes" is a bridge also far for him, and he not merely helps Nile suspension them out, just agrees to assist them stay subconscious and notice more jobs in the future.
• We Will Not Use Photoshop in the Future: Subverted, as part of the theme of technology reshaping the earth. Copley initially tries to sell Merrick on the team'southward immortality with a video of them getting back up and killing all their attackers after beingness gunned downward. Merrick derides it every bit "a 2 million dollar snuff movie" and wants physical proof.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Dr. Kozak gets punched out past Nile and is never seen or heard from again, even though she presumably survived the team's escape, knows that they're immortal, and has tissue samples and data collected from them.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Booker never got over losing his mortal sons and Andy becomes jaded from what she sees as the globe going down the drain, assuming their actions never made a difference. Copley'south conspiracy wall finally shows her how incorrect she is, tracking how the lives they saved in plough improved others.
• Earth'southward Best Warrior: Andy, who has "forgotten more means to impale than entire armies will ever learn".
• You Can't Go Home Again: Nile tries to defy this upon learning she'due south an immortal. One of the reasons she temporarily left the team when they started their raid at Copley's house, besides her reluctance to impale. She somewhen comes to term with this when Copley helped in proving that she "died in action".

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheOldGuard