'The Old Guard 2' with Charlize Theron, Uma Thurman: Director Victoria Mahoney had to protect the 'treasure' of first film

Yahoo

03-07-2025

Five years after the first film was released, Charlize Theron returns to the character Andy for The Old Guard 2. This time, Andy has to face Uma Thurman as Discord, believed to be the first immortal, and Andy's friend Quynh (Vân Veronica Ngô), who has spent centuries drowning in an iron maiden.
The film was directed by Victoria Mahoney, also notably the first woman to direct a Star Wars film. And in taking on the continuation of The Old Guard series, the "story of action" was of the utmost importance.
That's particularly shown through how Mahoney chose to tackle the action at the beginning of the film, compared to the last action sequence of the movie. You can tell the Immortals are in a different state of mind. The colours are brighter at the beginning, there's a fun quality and levity to that beginning sequence, which is very different to what we see as we approach the end of The Old Guard 2.
"I'm deeply invested in the act breaks, and requirements for each act break," Mahoney told Yahoo Canada. "So I reverse engineer to sort of a juxtaposition."
"And then I'm, in this particular film, honouring the first film. ... I love to sort of pick up and have to kind of find your way and navigate, with the cast and the crew, to create a new path, to honour the path that was orchestrated, to not betray the path, but also to sort of find sighted land and sight of new land. ... I believe that the third act payoff would have been infected or devalued if we had not opened with that."
That includes a particularly funny thumb gag where Nicky (Luca Marinelli) and Joe (Marwan Kenzari) are trying to outrun some henchman as part of the mission that starts off the movie. Without revealing too much, Joe's thumb ends up being cut off and as he sticks it back on and they both start laughing.
There's also the foot gag, where Nicky's foot is being slowly ripped off as he's hanging onto the outside of a car, being driven by Joe.
"The amount of real estate we gave that was specific, so that audiences could get the silliness of like, 'Oh we can laugh.' It's like Popeye. ... And then it goes serious again when you cut to Joe and he's concerned about Nicky. So this tonal balance is so exciting to me."
But moving from the first to the second film, fans were expecting a reunion between Andy and Quynh, with an increased curiosity in what that first interaction would be like.
"When I got the call and I got hired, I felt as if I was given something that was wonderful, sort of a treasure, and I was asked to get this treasured item from point A to point B, and I was asked to protect it, to elevate it, to allow it to shine, and to not destroy it and betray it," Mahoney said.
"And then in that particular scene, the history of these two characters, of what leads us, and then the environment, the set, the space, the time, the time that we actually have to shoot it, all the factors of how we bracket time, to make sure that it's honoured in the way that it deserves. ... We all knew what it meant to us."
The cast of The Old Guard 2 was quick to highlight the collaborative nature of Mahoney as a director, and someone who's informed by the actors she's working with.
"Vic has this way of really getting to the centre of who you are as an actor and who your character represents," Henry Golding said. "So I remember the very early discussions in which she asked me what I wanted this character to be like, and so with that perspective, she really sort of injected this character with a lot of ... historical traits of where I'm from, the Asian history."
"I think one of the greatest moments was asking me what type of weapon that I wanted. ... I really wanted it to be based in my Asian roots, and chose a keris, which is sort of a dagger, which is from Malaysia and Indonesia. ... So something as simple as that can really define character creation. Because once you hone in on the history of something, you can really fill it out."
For Chiwetel Ejiofor's Copley, he's far more a part of the group of Immortals following the first film, where we got to not just be introduced to his character, but have empathy for him by the end of that movie.
"I love the whole journey of Copley's character and just how it's evolved, how it's evolved over time, and how the audiences can really follow that journey from where he started as this sort of antagonistic character, and really a bit of a problem, and people really began to understand where he's coming from, and his own personal history," Ejiofor said. "And now, absolutely, he's part of the gang."
"He's not immortal. So he's risking life and limb in a slightly different way. But he's not afraid to kind of get stuck in there, which is also definitely fun to play as well."
But a core part of the beating heart of The Old Guard 2 remains the love story between Joe and Nicky, with the second film leaning into their relationship much more, and growing concerns of what could happen if they didn't have each other.
"For me, the heart of their of their relationship is, what would it be like if you would ask a 95-year-old human being, what is the difficult side of being 95 years of age? One would probably say that you'll lose everyone around you, and you'll see the graveyard quite a few times," Kenzari said. "So I guess that element of, what would it be like if Nicky would lose Joe, or Joe would lose Nicky is, I think, what was the emphasis of their journey in the in the second one, which I think is, on a dramatic level, intrinsically for both of these characters, an interesting point of where you take it."
With The Old Guard 2 quickly becoming the most popular movie on Netflix after its release on the streaming site, it's clear that fans have been waiting for more from the immortals.