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This week:
What happens when you give $70M to incredibly thoughtful people who want to make a big action movie? Something almost entirely great. One host says something almost entirely great. The other has… Some thoughts 🙂. It’s time for Joe and Greg to have the conversation that needed to happen about The Old Guard.
Joe’s Back of the Box
When a group of immortal mercenaries is ID’d and captured, the team must move heaven and earth to stop a pharmaceutical giant from keeping them as imprisoned universal donors to their anti-aging line of products. From the sands of the Sudan to the back roads of Europe, this movie packs a punch and then some, as the lore and mythos grow. Why them? How does it work? Charlize Theron leads this philosophical thriller. Can the Old Guard save the day one more time or will they become just another side effect of our disposable world?
The REAL Back of the Box
This is a movie with an interesting premise. It has tight action sequences and strong performances. The biggest question is why anyone would choose to be mercenaries if they could live forever? It seems impossibly dangerous even for people who cannot die. They seem to have amassed no wealth to speak of or wisdom or problem solving abilities beyond “ready, aim, fire”. So, if you can turn off your brain to these inconsistencies this is a fun ride and if you cannot then this whole movie will feel like a missed opportunity.
Note: This transcript has been auto-generated, so… You know… It’s not our fault.
Greg: Joe. In the last episode we released, we were talking about the movie tenet. I mentioned that Neal and the protagonist in tenet needed to go find a guy named Sanjay, but it turned out that Sanjay was just the husband to Priya. We were fooled to think that the dude was the one dealing arms, but really it was his wife and I called it a classic Lady Hamlet scenario, which is hilarious because it was really a classic Lady Macbeth scenario.
Greg: Yeah. So I just want to apologize to all of the Shakespeare people out there. I can’t believe I did that wrong. It’s kind of like when I said UHF instead of UFC, and we get paid the big bucks for this podcast, but not that much money. Now for me to get everything right.
Joe: Yeah, we can’t do it. That kind of research. Yeah.
Greg: And last time I checked, this isn’t called great bad plays.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And let me look into it real quick. Yeah. There’s never been a movie based on any of these Shakespeare plays, so it wouldn’t even apply to us.
Joe: Yeah, except for, you know, ten things I hate about you. And actually, hamlet and then the other hamlet, and then Macbeth.
Greg: Okay, let’s get to the show. Yeah.
Joe: Oh, well. Wait, wait.
Clip: Who are you? You can call me Andy.
Clip: I lead a group of soldiers. Fighters like you with an extremely rare skill set. What do you mean? Let’s just say we’re very hard to kill.
Clip: These are extraordinary individuals. They are extremely resistant to capture. If we can unlock their genetic code, the entire world would be begging us for the key. We don’t have all the answers with that. But we do have purpose.
Clip: I’m gonna keep popping up on.
Greg: Much like last time, the year is still 2020 on great bad movies. The same year that tenet came out, Gina Prince-Bythewood came out with a movie called The Old Guard, written by Greg Rucka, based on his graphic novel. And in this movie, we are talking about Charlize Theron, Kiki Layne, Matthias Schone Arts, Marwin Kenzari, Luca marinelli, and of course, to tell edgy offer, we’ll just throw in the bad guy Merrick, Harry Melling, who is like the token white straight dude in this movie, which is so funny.
Greg: Oh, and we should mention, Veronica. No, a Vietnamese name I can’t quite pronounce, but she’s incredible as Quinn Jo Skye Tucker. We are talking about the old guard. Had you ever seen this movie?
Joe: No, I had not seen this movie.
Greg: Okay, okay. Joe Tucker is the old guard. A great bad movie.
Joe: It’s a great premise.
Greg: Sure.
Joe: And it’s a great story.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: I liked it knowing. And I knew this before that it was based on a graphic novel.
Greg:
Joe: That kind of shines through in this. So here is tight action sequences.
Greg: Sure.
Joe: Really interesting concept. Yeah. Great performances. Yeah. Throughout this movie.
Greg: Totally.
Joe: Totally. I’m in. Is it a great bad movie perhaps. It definitely is a movie we should be covering. But here is my biggest problem with this.
Greg: So we’re going.
Joe: Is we’re going in hot.
Greg: I started with the positive. Yeah, it’s definitely a great bad movie for our show. But yeah, here comes the bad.
Joe: But the premise is Charlize Theron and her gang are immortal. Yeah, and they’re mercenaries.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Just throughout time. They cannot be killed. They have some rules, but they have been alive for thousands and thousands of years. Yeah, yeah. I don’t quite know how old Charlize Theron’s character is.
Greg: Somewhere around 6000 years old.
Joe: Yeah, something like that.
Greg: And she’s the oldest one.
Joe: I like that they don’t get into why, you know, there’s kind of like a philosophical question of like, why them? Why now? Why? Why us throughout the 6000 plus years? They don’t save any money. They have no accumulated wealth or wisdom. They just live their life like, yeah, a bunch of 25 year old mercenaries would today. And that was my biggest problem with this movie.
Joe: This is how you want to spend eternity doing the most dangerous. Like not trying to think systemically, not trying to solve the world’s ills through diplomacy or those sorts of things, or becoming the shadow government. Like, I could have thought of so many ways that they could have gone with this.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: But instead they’re just mercenaries. And by the end, I got kind of tired of the fact that, yes, they can’t kill them, and we’re going to see the CGI bullet holes being repaired and the bullets being kicked out of the wounds and stuff like that. Sure, sure. Fine. All of that to say, it is probably a great bad movie.
Greg: Probably.
Joe: It’s probably this is where you we have the conversation that needs to be had about these sorts of things. And so.
Greg: Really, yeah, I.
Joe: Have my rating as I’ve watched it, but I will it is not fixed, so I will if the spirit moves me, I may be able to adjust that. But having said all that great point heart. What did you think of this movie.
Greg: Oh that’s a good question. I love this movie. I think this movie is incredible. Okay. I also a couple times thought okay, so if I was 6000 years old I feel like I would be further along and in growing up, maybe in some of these things than maybe some of these people are. I also would be exhausted with the repetition of how dumb these people are that are on the planet.
Greg: Yeah, it is surprising that they don’t have like like there’s a point in the movie where they go to an abandoned mine that they found in like the year 1050 or something, right? Yeah. And Charlize Theron used to keep her stuff there. Why? Wasn’t, like, a treasure of a forgotten civilization also in there?
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: I mean, maybe they do have a bunch of cash somewhere. Who knows? We don’t really get into the particulars. Do we know she gives book or, like a first print of, Don Quixote at the beginning of the movie? Yeah. He’s like, this couldn’t have been cheap. She’s like, it wasn’t until, like, it’s a meaningful gift and it must have cost her some money.
Greg: Yeah, there must be a pile of money somewhere. We don’t really get into it, I guess.
Joe: And the other challenge I had with it was they’re immortal. They also like run around as if no one has a camera. They have. There’s one scene in the opening kind of five minutes where Charlize Theron is like in a selfie, and then she, like, right, helps the tourists take the picture and deletes herself out of it.
Greg: Yeah. Yeah.
Joe: That’s like the only time we see that. But if they’re so paranoid about being captured because capture is death for them, because they just kind of live forever, right? I would have thought they would have invested more in cloaking their identities and their features and all of those sorts of things. Not once in this movie do they try to hide their faces from a camera or anything.
Greg: I mean, can you in today’s world.
Joe: You’ve probably cannot. In today’s world I had like those two glaring things for me as I watched this movie. But all of that aside. Really interesting story, interesting characters.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: The big bad guy and this is the pharmaceutical company that wants to stop the aging process and wants to study them. And so that’s kind of the who they’re running from and who they get end up getting captured by some silly shootouts that happen. You know, there were a couple of moments where I was like, oh, okay. This is I know where this is going.
Joe: On the on the action side. But sure, I wasn’t watching this movie going, I’m expecting something I haven’t seen in an action movie and I appreciate it. The action sequences were tight and for the most part really done. You know, there was some CGI with especially the healing of their wounds.
Greg: Oh, sure. But like, you know, the fighting was real.
Joe: Yeah, the stunts were real. It was it was fun. You get a kind of moment where you get to see, like, just how crazy good Charlize Theron’s character is that, you know, at one point you like kills, like, you know, 15 people that are coming to get them. And. Right, you know, she’s just got an old ax.
Greg: An old battle ax.
Joe: Yeah. Again, that a little bit of forgiveness around the fact that it does feel like it would play better as a graphic novel than a movie. Some of these things like. Nobody’s going to read a graphic novel about the oligarchy of immortal beings that are ruling the world. The secret society, which is where I would have gone with it, but it was still a really interesting, fun movie.
Greg: Maybe there was a 500 year run there where you know, they were running things. They were like, well this, this isn’t how you do it. You should let this kind of fall apart and take care of things from the shadows.
Joe: And they got into a little bit of the lower around it which I appreciated. All in all it was, I feel like a little bit of a mixed bag for me in terms of some of those questions that just kept coming up in my head of you’re immortal beings and this is how you’re living your life, like I’m their parent or their mother, or coming into like, their.
Joe: Yeah, you know, it’s like, this is what you’re choosing to do with immortality is run around the world in planes and.
Greg: Be a mercenary. What would you do?
Joe: I would be 100% corrupted by power. Okay. And but I would start with good intentions of fixing all the systems. But I would look at it from a systemic perspective in the social work parlance that I was trained in. Sure, they’re doing micro work, and I like the macro work of solving the system, but they’re on the ground doing the micro cleanup work.
Joe: And to me, there’s, you know, if you’re immortal, what are you trying to do? You have all of time to fix humanity. How do you do that. You know, so that would be the the philosophical question that would be driving all of the, the choices to create the world that we want to live in. And then I would get totally corrupted by it and become just a total awful, probably dictator, but with benevolent tendencies.
Greg: But if you lived forever, if you were immortal and you were corrupted, how long until you were like this, isn’t it?
Joe: I don’t know, I would hope pretty quickly. I mean.
Greg: Okay, so when you’re 6000, your life. Yeah, I bet she has already done that a couple times.
Joe: All right. Generous, but all right, I’ll allow it.
Greg: You think so?
Joe: I mean, if they had just voiced some of that. Yeah, it could have been a conversation when they’re together or, you know, having a philosophical conversation around it that way. I would have appreciated that of, like, we tried that and it failed. And these are the reasons why. And that’s why we be. We decided that being mercenaries was more, yeah, had better efficacy for what we wanted to do.
Greg: I mean, there’s sequels in the graphic novel. Yeah. So maybe they get into that. Although I’ve heard that the graphic novel itself doesn’t get into the lives of the people as much. And so that leads me to something I, I was thinking about this whole week is we were kind of preparing for this episode. Your main issue with tenet was great movie, but no heart.
Greg: Yeah. This is the perfect follow up to watch after tenet, if that was your main problem with it. I think the action in this movie is great.
Joe: Yeah. Agreed. I mean.
Greg: They only had like 60 or 70 million to make this. They had 200 million and it was Christopher Nolan. But with Gina Prince-Bythewood did in this movie, I think is better than what Nolan did in tenet. Honestly, I think it’s a better movie than tenet because it has so much heart. This made me think about my life interesting.
Greg: Tenet was like, I don’t know what’s happening right now. This movie. People are making choices and figuring out what they want to do with their time. How much time do they have left. What are they doing with their time. So did that heart kind of translate to something for you in reaction to tenet, or did it not have the heart that you were looking for.
Joe: In comparison to tenet? This movie is all heart. Yeah. My frustration with the choices, the characters made, yeah, is more of a societal commentary than a commentary on the movie. I don’t know if that makes sense.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: In the terms of like, how they set up the universe and the world that we’re in, you just kind of have to accept what the movie is offering you. Yeah. Honestly, it’s probably one of the better movies we’ve ever done on this show. Yeah. In terms of just a tight script, it probably would fall in the action genre, but to me, barely.
Joe: You know, it’s more of like a thriller than an action movie. Like right on the edge for me.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: You know, because I feel like if it were an action movie, I would have wanted a little bit more action. And what I got was more character, and I was totally fine with that trade off. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t action scenes in it, but usually I want bigger, a bigger, bigger to a finale and we kind of get to the finale.
Joe: But it made perfect sense for the characters, and so I appreciated that. Like, they’re pretty true to the universe and the world they created.
Greg: Yeah. So I think there are things in this movie that they allude to and kind of like go around, you know, like the bad guys trying to get their DNA so he can learn what makes them immortal, and that can be a new pharmaceutical that they can help people with or make a gazillion dollars. Probably both. And they kind of like hand wave it off a little bit like other people have tried.
Greg: This is dumb. We’ve been through this one before. Yeah. And I feel like they do that a couple times in the movie. So yeah, I wonder what the most important blocks in their mind were. I guess they probably put them in the movie.
Joe: Right?
Greg: Maybe some of these things will be answered in the sequel that’s coming out right after this episode drops, which is why we’re doing The Old Guard right now, because The Old Guard two is coming out on Netflix on July 2nd. Yeah, unbelievable.
Joe: Which I will watch happily. And I loved how they set it up. Yeah, totally. You know, I can see seven movies of the Old Guard.
Greg: I think there’s five books. Okay, for the fifth one is about to come out. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah. So, like, I can totally see it. I could kind of see what they’re setting up. You talk about this a lot like it’s a gang of people that you’d like to hang out with.
Greg: Yeah, let’s get the game together.
Joe: And so that I really appreciated.
Greg: Right. We’re going to give Booker 100 years off, isn’t he?
Joe: Yeah. That’s what you get. I’ll be back. That’s all right. Yeah. So, you know I don’t want to get too hung up on. I don’t want the episode to just be about the fact that I am frustrated that they have what they what they did with their lives, instead of what I would have done with their lives.
Greg: Or what we know that they did with their lives. Maybe they have done all these things.
Joe: Yeah, but I still will have that caveat to make sure, like it’s still stuck in my head.
Greg: Okay, that’s fair.
Joe: And like I said, great action.
Greg: But not much action.
Joe: You said not much action.
Greg: I thought there was a lot of action in this movie. So let’s put a pin in that. Keep going.
Joe: Okay. So tight action scenes. Really good characters. Yeah. Interesting story. A bad guy for our times. And that actor I think he is from I know I recognize it from like Harry Potter and stuff like that.
Greg: Oh really. Okay.
Joe: Spot on. No development in the bad guy. He’s just.
Greg: Bad. Yeah.
Joe: You hate him. And by the end, you appreciate his demise.
Greg: He’s the least interesting person in the movie. Yeah, probably on purpose.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Let’s talk about the action in this movie. I feel like the action in this movie is quite good and pretty extended. It’s very kind of John Wick in action. Yeah. This movie came out six years after John Wick came out, and they had kind of just like, fully embraced that. John Wick had changed how people were viewing action movies.
Greg: It was made around the same time as extraction came out the same year. It starts with like that South Sudan ambush, which kind of explains their powers. It’s like her against 15 people. Yeah. She gets out the battleaxe. They all have guns. It’s so funny that, like, 15 people walk into a room and shoot the four of them, and then they all turn their back and walk away.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah.
Greg: Which was hilarious to be like, okay, we are in great bad movie territory right now. That’s very convenient that all of these people and then they’re like grunting and making noises as they’re like getting up and no one turns around.
Joe: No. Why would they.
Greg: Right. And then apparently they all ran out of bullets. And so they’re all like reloading all of a sudden because they realize that these people have gotten back up and are about to attack them. Yeah. And she has the battle ax. And something that I thought was very cool about this movie is they thought, well, these people, if they’ve been immortal, they probably didn’t have guns until recently.
Greg: So for like thousands of years they were doing up close. Battles. Yeah. So even their version of battle is different than the people that are around them. And they still use guns. They still kind of do stuff in formation just probably because it’s cool.
Joe:
Greg: But they’ve been around for so long that it’s mostly up close stuff, which I thought I’m going to get very philosophical and ridiculous in this episode because I mean that’s just awesome. You know that they’re, they’re fighting style is like an up close handheld. You know, they have guns. But there’s also like swords and axes and whatever, you know, and that’s all they need.
Greg: And they come from a time when life was like three miles an hour, you know, cars were invented. They are literally people who would walk village to village or like tribe to tribe back in the day, you know. And so their understanding of relationships is so much deeper than ours will ever be. You know, their understanding of, what it’s like to connect with human beings is just going to be entirely better than ours in the modern age.
Greg: And I liked that, since they’ve been around for thousands of years, their fighting style was more up close and, you know, kind of salty and gassy.
Joe: Well there’s a scene I can’t remember. It’s early in the film. They’re like getting all their weapons together. Maybe for their first action sequence. That first scene I can’t remember if it’s a second. Yeah. And they make a point. Not a show like this is another. It’s a subtlety in this. In this movie that I appreciated. Yeah. That everyone had their handheld.
Joe: And I made the assumption that, like, that’s their favorite weapon from, you know, so Charlize Theron has the round ax. So I was assuming that was like the style of the ax that she loved the most from whatever it is 6000 years ago. And like each person as they became immortal, I kind of assumed that like that, their favorite weapon was from that time.
Joe: And they make a point of showing, like the swords and stuff like that, right? Yeah. Don’t fit in with today’s weaponry, and yet they’re still adept at all of that. Yeah. So and that this is the highest compliment I can pay to these action sequences. To me, it felt Kathryn Bigelow ask.
Greg: Totally, totally.
Joe: Very rooted in reality. Super tight. Lots of handheld.
Greg: Yeah. Yeah.
Joe: I can totally see the John Wick in it. But to me, I got Kathryn Bigelow vibes even from like, the story and how it’s told that she is such an excellent director and her movies. I feel like she’s really able to, like, slowly turn up the heat within a movie. When I was watching, I was like, well, this person I would bet $1 million loves Kathryn Bigelow.
Greg: 100%. Yeah.
Joe: You know. And then I looked at the second unit director.
Greg:
Joe: It’s been, it has done everything we love.
Greg: I totally.
Joe: Totally was like, okay. Yeah, we’re in good hands.
Greg: So second unit director is Jeff Halberstadt. The first thing we should mention is that he did shooter with Marky Mark.
Joe: Well.
Greg: The second thing we should mention is this means war. Obviously.
Joe: So far, so good.
Greg: Iron man three, Ant-Man, doctor strange, Batman and the wasp. Captain Marvel Call of the wild continued on to do Black Widow, The Mother with J-Lo, a movie we will definitely be getting to. But the name that Gina Prince-Bythewood mentioned the most was a guy named Danny Hernandez.
Joe: That End Game Fight coordinator Danny Hernandez. It works at 80 7-Eleven.
Greg: That’s so he is all he. I mean, John Wick chapter two, he’s in there a lot of stunts and a lot of stunt choreography. He is the one who kind of trained up Kiki Layne, who had never been even, like, athletic in her life before. She never played a sports crazy. Yeah. There’s a hilarious story where Gina Prince-Bythewood was casting this movie, and, she got to see, like, an early edit of the movie If Beale Street Could Talk and Kiki Layne was in that movie.
Greg: Barry Jenkins invited her over to watch, like, a cut of the movie, and she actually said she’s great, but she could never be in the movie that I’m doing right now because she’s too soft, like she’s too emotional. She’s not tough. We need a tough person. And he was like, you should meet her. There’s a chance she was just acting, you know, or they that she could act in that way too.
Greg: And so she came in. A bunch of people came in for the part of Nile, but she was so embarrassed that she had said this out loud because, of course, she came in and like, could act like someone was tough and in control. Right? And she’s like, oh, right, you’re an actor and you’re a really good actor. So maybe you could be in my movie too.
Greg: But that meant that she had to learn all of the fight stuff, with Danny Hernandez for like four and a half months and I guess six days a week. They did two things a day is like morning and like late afternoon. Charlize Theron and Kiki Layne would do training six days a week. Kiki Layne was learning the stuff for the first time.
Greg: Charlize Theron was learning stuff for the first time as well, although she had trained in other things for other movies. She was in that movie Hancock. She kind of ended up being. It’s a spoiler for Hancock, I guess, but nobody cares about Hancock.
Joe: Yeah. Atomic blond.
Greg: Atomic blond was right before this. Yeah. Fury Road.
Joe: Which is David Leitch.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, but that was all kind of different kinds of fighting. This was a new kind of fighting for her. So anyways, they did quite a bit of training and something that Gina Prince Bythewood said was, it’s hard to make a fake fight look like, you know, like a real fight. It’s very hard. And so I guess Gina Prince-Bythewood was like, I think a kickboxer.
Greg: And so she understood what it was, what it was like to be in a fight. And so she was trying to capture that, what that felt like. But she said something that I’ve never heard a director say before, and she said, it doesn’t just have to look like a punch. You have to believe the intention behind the punch.
Greg: You have to believe that this person actually wants to punch this other person. Yeah. So there is a performance to it. It’s it’s like a dance, you know. And I was I’ve never thought, that’s where a fight starts to look hollow, you know, believe the intention. You don’t believe the performance of the fight, right. So those were the two things she was keeping in mind while she was filming this.
Greg: And she was like, sometimes we just couldn’t get those two things for like, 15 takes.
Joe: Those two. So Kiki and and Charlize Theron have a great fight on the plane. Yeah, it’s one of the best tight. We need to kind of see the the grit of both of these characters. And see the potential in Kiki who’s the, you know the nascent right up and coming one. And we need to see why Charlize Theron is the leader of this group and kind of sit back and enjoy it.
Joe: And I think that’s probably my favorite fight scene. Oh, interest in this movie.
Greg: Yeah yeah yeah. And it is both. It is them.
Joe:
Greg: In a very confined space. Yeah. You know, that is really them doing that performance.
Joe: Yeah. That’s interesting. And I can totally I’m thinking of movies where they don’t believe like that’s just stunt actors.
Greg: Right.
Joe: Yeah. Flailing around and so. Right. That’s what I really appreciate about the action sequences in this. And it does it it feels like the next evolution of where John Wick right is going or the what 8711 is doing. Yeah, they’re adapting their style to different movies because you couldn’t just have a John Wick fight scene in this movie, which to me would feel out of place.
Joe: But you bring in the some of those elements and then just how close it was. And again, I come back to that. Kathryn Bigelow like to me, it felt like Point Break or there are a couple scenes in that, or just like you feel really tight and close in on the action and feel cloistered and kind of claustrophobic.
Joe: And I love that idea. Yeah, really appreciated what they were doing and and how they were filming these fight scenes.
Greg: I think it’s spot on to say, Kathryn Bigelow, because this movie is 1,000% for us. But it is shot from a female perspective. Yeah. And I guess a lot of the department heads on this movie, Charlize Theron was a producer on this movie. A lot of the people who worked on this movie were not the usual dudes.
Greg: Yeah, and it’s so obvious that it’s adding up to something that’s more than what we usually get to watch. And it’s. And I don’t know if there was a moment like, I don’t know, maybe like a third in halfway Through where I thought, this is adding up to something that I’m, I’m not used to. This is this movie is more than I’m accustomed to.
Greg: And it’s all those micro decisions that the director is making. Like, there’s no male gaze in the introduction of these characters. The introduction of these characters comes from they were born warriors. That’s what she was trying to go for. Right? And we don’t explain how they became warriors. They just were born that way. There was no inciting incident that made them have to do that.
Greg: No, that’s who they are. There’s stuff in this movie that it goes a little bit deeper than that. I was ready for, honestly, and I just think it’s so much better than most of the movies we watch.
Joe: Honestly, I agree, I think the other piece that I like about that lack of the male gaze and all of that is. Yeah. And, I think the best movies get this is like when you start to overexplain.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: How especially things that are confusing like this. It’s a, it’s like my example of, like time travel. As soon as you start talking too much about how it works, you lose the audience because you end up having to, like, explain it. But then if there’s any cracks in it, but they just like they just like, this is the reality.
Joe: The reality is we don’t know why they’re immortal. They are okay. Yeah, sure. It’s a and the term I was trying to remember was suspension of disbelief. So that’s like easily suspend disbelief. So like this is my whole premise around suspension of disbelief. The big leaps are the easiest to make. Okay. They’re immortal. Great. For me, the smaller choice of why is this the path that they went down.
Joe: So it was a character choice to me of like, I had that question, and that’s where my suspension of disbelief kind of gets pulled out a little bit of like, and I just wanted one line and have probably, they probably have a written and it probably was one of those, you know, this is pushing two hours, so you can’t throw everything in there.
Joe: If they know it does well on Netflix, they’ll be a second one. So in a in a sequel, you can probably do a little bit more with worldbuilding and answering some of those questions and all of that.
Greg: Hopefully not. Yeah.
Joe: All right.
Greg: You’re I mean, don’t you think that’ll ruin it?
Joe: I would love to know why this is the choice they made.
Greg: Okay, okay.
Joe: I still come back to that of like, why mercenaries?
Greg: Okay. So in this movie we find out the title Ejiofor has been like tracking Charlize Theron and has figured out that she’s immortal and he’s he goes back 100 years and finds all these moments in history where she has been there and helped steer things towards or away from something horrible. It’s like the greatest selling of the good guy.
Greg: Yeah. Scene. Let’s let’s do it. And by the way, he’s he’s pointing at a board. What do you call those boards that have, like, the red string?
Joe: I just call him the Charlie from It’s Always Sunny board.
Greg: You know percent. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like usually there’s, like, a bad guy or the person who’s obsessed with the case, you know? Yeah, he’s got one of those where he’s, like, writing questions to himself and posting that on these pictures.
Joe: Yeah, she.
Greg: Is like CGI if it’s like photoshopped into all of these, like Forrest Gump, you know, throughout the last 150 years. Let’s listen to him explain to Kiki Layne what he’s discovered about Charlize Theron.
Clip: Where are they? They’re in a lab being tested. Tortured. Merrick. He only cares about her immortality. Not what she’s done with it. She’s done with it. Montenegro, 1916. She saved a family of refugees whose daughter would discover the technique for the early detection of diabetes. This one, her grandson, would save 317 people from the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
Clip: This guy, this man prevented an accidental nuclear exchange in 1978 and likely saved civilization as a result of the famous and the unknown names.
Clip: She saves a life. 2 or 3 generations later, we reap the.
Greg: Benefits. So maybe that’s the why.
Joe: That is the why. And to me, what was needed for me was that Charlize Theron knew that.
Greg: Well, the next thing in that scene is Kiki Layne says she’s in it. She’s too close to it. She doesn’t see the big picture of what she’s doing, so maybe she doesn’t know. She’s just driven by the need to do something and move on.
Joe: Yeah, I mean, I think the challenge that I had with that is that especially the for the first half of the movie, Charlize Theron is incredibly nihilistic and like, right, you feel the weight of living forever, which is I, I appreciate it again. Yeah. I really think that that’s an interesting like, oh yeah, this wouldn’t just be all sunshine and roses and you live forever.
Joe: It’s like the emotional weight and toll of it. So like, I just needed one more. So what then? What kind of thing for me. Okay. That’s where I’m marking it down in my mind.
Greg: I’m okay with one more in the sequel.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: Yeah. Yeah. I just don’t want, like, a meta chlorians like Star Wars prequels.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: That’s explain how the force works kind of thing. Don’t explain this to me.
Joe: I don’t even need the conversation to be long or drawn out. I just need it to be. We tried a lot of things. Yeah, this is what worked best for us.
Greg: Sure.
Joe: Next thing done, and then I. That’s all I need. Wow. I was watching, Stephen Merchant, maybe the creator of, The Office he’s talking about. Don’t overexplain. And so there’s a scene, an escape from Alcatraz with Clint Eastwood. And and he’s sitting down to eat, and he is like, you could do the classic scene where, like, they get into, like, the history and your childhood and all of that.
Joe: And they do this amazing thing where they tell the story of this character in like 30s, where someone asks them when’s your birthday? And says, I don’t remember. I was like, what kind of childhood that you have? And he goes short and it’s like, that tells you everything you need to know about his character.
Greg: Sure.
Joe: That a long speech would not have, you know, you could have gone into, like, you know, how terrible it was or you can leave it to the audience to fill in the blanks from there. Yeah. So it doesn’t need to be, as you say, explaining the force. Yeah. It just needs to be mentioned. Yeah. So that to me it’s always like if you answer the question before someone has it, then they are on your side.
Greg: Okay? And you were never on their side.
Joe: Yeah. You need to run their time. Yeah.
Greg: That was 30s. I was missing from this movie for you.
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: Something so interesting to me about this movie is that, well, first of all, we just get to know kind of the heart of the characters a lot, noticeably to the point where I would describe this as an action movie, but it’s like an action drama.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: And she pointed to, Black Panther, but especially Logan as something that she would say is in the same genre. Interesting that like, I mean obviously Wolverine and the people in this movie have similar kind of, you know, powers, I guess, you know. Yeah. Isn’t there a scene at the beginning of what was the James Mangold movie, The Wolverine?
Greg: He made that one before he made Logan. And they show like Wolverine going through like battles throughout the ages and it’s like a. Yeah, I guess he has been around for a long time. This is kind of the Wolverine story basically. Yeah. But he was not happy about it. He was a miserable person. I feel like she is kind of yeah.
Greg: The Logan of this movie.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely.
Greg: And we feel it. She’s not stoked about it. Her performance is really good in this movie, I think.
Joe: Yeah, I agree. Yeah. I mean, maybe that’s a better descriptor. Like an action drama, versus a thriller, which to me, thriller can kind of has elements of action but isn’t necessarily an action movie or doesn’t lean on it. So I think that that’s probably a better descriptor of what this movie is. It’s an action drama. I think it does a great job on both fronts in terms of what you’d want from an action movie.
Joe: Yeah, and what you want from a drama, what you want from these characters.
Greg: Yeah. I like this movie more than Logan Logan. I will never watch Logan again. That was one of the most harrowing experiences of my life. One problem I had with that movie was I was I was at like an 11:00 showing and there was a family with a ton of little kids in the theater. And that movie is like a pretty rough rated-r movie.
Greg: And, you know, it’s like 11. All of these kids, in my mind, I don’t want to say how other people should parent, but in my mind, they all should have been in bed and they were like, sitting like on the stairs, like not watching the movie, because it was so horrible for them. Yeah. And they were just waiting for it to be over so they could go home and I’m assuming, go to bed.
Greg: So it was like, that totally made it just like, why are we here? What’s happening? You know, so the movie itself was very affecting. And also the people I was watching it with, I was like, these kids need to not be in here. But I would watch this one again because, you know, there are like extended John Wick action scenes where like the team is working together and doing all kinds of like, crazy, you know, choreography as they’re like getting through like henchmen, basically.
Greg: And while there is a moment in this movie where I was like, why are we killing all of these people who work for this pharmaceutical company? I mean, they’re clearly bad people. They work for a bad guy. Yeah. But like these people are just like security people at a pharma company. Why are we cool with just all of them being shot, you know.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: But this movie kind of goes out of its way to talk about the trauma that happens from killing people, which really surprised me. And I was really kind of like, I don’t know if delighted is the right word, but I was so excited that a movie was willing to say it is not easy to kill people, and you feel it every single time, and it never leaves.
Greg: And that’s because the director read a book called On Killing, which was a book about being a soldier, came out like 1995, and it was about what it’s like to be a soldier. And like the PTSD and the trauma that that creates. And so she had all five of the people in the gang read that book. So she said, I want you to be operating from this place where, like, killing one person is as bad as you, almost losing your life or you lose like it is as traumatic as a harrowing event for your existence as well.
Greg: And each time that compounds on itself. And so they talk about that a little bit in this movie. Let’s listen to them talking about what it’s like to kill somebody.
Clip: I can’t do this. Yes you can. I mean, I’m not doing this.
Clip: You’re one of us now. We would do the same for you. I never even had a choice. If I had a choice, there isn’t a choice. The day I died, I killed the guy that killed me. They try to conditioner’s, you know, thousands of hours of training, two shots. Quick kill. They can’t teach you how to live with it.
Clip: You got to feel it. Oh, everyone. I saw what you did in that church. All those bodies. It’s supposed to be me. Is that we were supposed to do. And we don’t even know why you think knowing is going to make you sleep better at night. I can’t be that.
Clip: My family, they’re going to get old, and I won’t. But it’ll be years before they realize that. I still have time with them.
Greg: It’s pretty crazy. I don’t see Shane Black getting to that emotional depth in the movie.
Joe: No he does not get to that emotional depth.
Greg: I don’t know that he wants to. That’s not what he’s going for. But man I love this movie for going for it and really making me think like oh there is something going on here. Like in everything about it. But then when they would stop and talk about it, it’s like, what is this movie doing? Like, this is working, you know, this is a great bad movie on Netflix in 2020, but it’s it’s on a different level than extraction for me, you know.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Extraction tried there was like the Tom cruise staring into the middle of the distance. Suddenly, you know, Chris Hemsworth was like, half crying. Yeah, but not in this way. The depth wasn’t here in that movie. I might like that movie maybe a little bit more than this one. Maybe not. I don’t know.
Joe: It’s hard for me because I will watch extraction every single day of the.
Greg: Week, right? Like maybe less drama is a little bit easier to watch.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. And it’s still hard for me sometimes. And extraction too, because there are characters I like that I know die in that. And so yeah, yeah. And I also just watched extraction last nights, obviously.
Greg: What made you do that?
Joe: I had almost watched it two nights ago, so I watched I’d watch this and I’ve been on this Christopher Nolan kick.
Greg: Sure. After tenet.
Joe: And then I was like, maybe I’ll watch extraction. And I was like, no, I’m in the middle of The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight. It’s a little long for me. Yeah, and I will say, Heath ledger, everything that’s been said about his performance in that is probably doesn’t even come close to how great it is. Right. Like it is.
Joe: Yeah. The way that he pops off the screen in that movie, is insane.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And maybe there’s a little bit of hardness because I know that he, like, kills himself or has an overdose afterwards of this movie. And so I’m having this, like emotional attachment to him and like.
Greg: Right.
Joe: But he is so much better than everybody else in this movie. And that movie. So I was like, I ended up going back to that movie and got almost the end. And then. Yeah. And I was like, last time I was like, I kind of want to watch extraction. Still.
Joe: And then I did. Yeah. Sorry. And it was worth it. It’s not as deep as this movie. It’s got moments in it, but it’s not trying to tell, you know, it’s this is a story that we haven’t really seen before. In a lot of ways I mean there are parts of it we have, but outside of probably Wolverine.
Joe: Yeah. We don’t really see the emotional toll of being a superhero essentially. It’s kind of sure this is. Yeah. And so that’s an interesting point of view. Extraction is a great action movie. Like if I’m comparing like action movie to action movie, extraction is a better action movie to me. It’s got some real ambitions to it.
Joe: I don’t want that to sound like I’m taking anything away from the action scenes in The Old Guard. It would be weird to do a 15 minute one shot in the middle of the old guard.
Greg: The goal of of extraction was Actioning.
Joe: Yes.
Greg: The exact goal of the old guard was something maybe a little bit bigger.
Joe: A little higher brow. Yes.
Greg: Totally.
Joe: So yeah. But to me, they both lean heavily on the drama. I think the old guard to better effect than extraction.
Greg: But this movie also would have been better if David Harbor showed up.
Joe: Well, I mean, that’s just a David Harbor. That’s a commentary on David Harbor.
Greg: Exactly. Yeah. Except in this movie, they don’t, like, take a shower and have a drink and then they’re ready to go. Yeah. In this movie, Charlize Theron grabs a bottle of vodka and just starts pounding it. Because that’s where you are 6000 years later. Like yeah it takes me a few.
Joe: So again and all of those things are things I appreciated about this movie. I was like yeah, you know if there are no consequences. Yeah. And you need something to numb the pain. Awesome. Yeah. Drink all of it.
Greg: I’m pretty struck by the fact that that Heath ledger is he does have the greatest performance in that movie. And that movie has Christian Bale, one of our best actors, Michael Caine. Yes. Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Killian Murphy. Like, there’s a lot of heavy hitters.
Joe: Heavy, heavy hitters.
Greg: So it really says something about Heath ledger doing that.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, yeah. His embodiment in that movie of that character and the frenetic nature of it is. Yeah. Yes. So good. Right. The hard part for Christian Bale is he’s playing the protagonist. There’s no range in that, really. There are parts where you can go. I can see other actors playing that part. Yeah, but I can’t see anyone playing that part in that movie better than Heath ledger.
Joe: He won the Academy Award for that, if you remember.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And it’s one of those few moments where I sit back and watch and like, you know, you watch an actor perform and it’s so good, like the licking of the lips. That’s what I read. That started with him, like keeping his makeup on. And then they liked it. And so it just became part of this is character.
Joe: And so it’s it’s a take on the Joker that I hadn’t seen before. Usually he’s like kind of crazy, but also kind of cool. He’s not cool right at all. He’s odd and off putting. Right. And that was the surprise for me within it.
Greg: Which is not the vibe you get from Heath ledger, by the way.
Joe: No, not the.
Greg: Coolest, most attractive person in history.
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: I mean, there’s a there’s a parallel universe where he’s like the Paul Walker in Fast and Furious.
Greg: Yeah. Or the River Phoenix. Yeah. I think what you’re saying is they should remake The Dark Knight and Dwayne The Rock Johnson should be the Joker.
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: I was going to go Statham, but I was like, what? I think it’s the Rock. He shows up in a massive, bigger Batmobile.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Joker mobile.
Joe: But go into Samoa.
Greg: He calls everybody woman, including Christian Bale, who, by the way, is back as Batman, obviously.
Joe: Yeah, obviously.
Greg: Joe, it occurs to me that there’s probably some people who haven’t seen this movie. They might have no idea what we’re talking about. And so I feel like we should give them a synopsis of the movie, similar to when we used to go to Blockbuster Video, and we would pick up DVD or Blu ray covers from the shelves and read the synopsis on the back.
Greg: That’s right. It’s time for the back of the box.
Joe: It’s the back of the box. When a group of immortal mercenaries redeemed and captured, the team must move heaven and Earth to stop the pharmaceutical giant, keeping them imprisoned as universal donors for their anti-aging line of products. From the sands of Sudan to the backroads of Europe, this movie packs a punch and then some, as the lore and mythos grow.
Joe: Why them? How does it work? Charlize Theron leads this philosophical thriller. Can the old guard save the day one more time, or they become just another side effect of our disposable world?
Greg: Interesting.
Joe: I will take myself. Okay, that’s back of the box. Sorry everyone.
Greg: Give us a real back of the box review of your back to the box.
Joe: Real back in the box. So that was super meta. That one was c-plus, but c-plus. Okay, last line saves it for me. Disposable world. Anyway, sorry everyone.
Greg: All right. So so your marketing copy muscle is off this week. But this.
Joe: Week.
Greg: Thank goodness we can circle back and go for something a little bit more honest. Joe Skye Tucker’s honest take on this movie. Give us the real back of the box.
Joe: This is a movie with an interesting premise. It has tight action sequences and strong performances. The biggest question is why anyone would choose to be mercenaries if they could live forever. It seems impossibly dangerous, even for people who cannot die. They seem to amass no wealth to speak of or wisdom or problem solving abilities beyond ready, aim, fire.
Joe: So if you can turn off your brain for those inconsistencies, this is a fun ride. And if you cannot, this whole movie will feel like a missed opportunity.
Greg: So let’s talk about the opportunities that were not missed then. Are there any themes in this movie that you felt like it kind of hit out of the park?
Joe: I think it does a really interesting job, and a spoiler alert for one of my drinking games that I didn’t have a lot in. There’s a lot of religious imagery, throughout this movie. Yeah, yeah, without being preachy about it, or like picking a side or picking a lane or talking about they do mentioned, you know, God and those sorts of things, but, you know, there’s songs in it.
Joe: I think Kiki wears a cross for most of the movie. Yeah, there’s at one point they say that Charlize Theron’s character was worshiped like a god. But I think that it does a clever job of weaving in religious imagery into the movie without it being a movie about religion, if that makes sense. So it’s like, sure. So that would be my I feel like they nailed that perfectly for me.
Joe: What about you? Any opportunities not missed?
Greg: I just think that someone who’s 6000 years old would have a very interesting take on religion in general. You know, they probably seen some things and it would be really interesting to hear with there’s so many times where they could be like, you guys are just totally missing it in this way or that way. Yeah. That’s interesting.
Greg: I think a theme that they hit really hard early on is, defining yourself with what kind of sunglasses you wear. I realize my sunglasses gamer is completely weak. Yeah, in the beginning of the movie, she has, like, Ray-Bans on, and, Booker has a different kind of glasses on. I was like, oh, they all have, like, hyper stylized glasses for their characters.
Greg: I don’t have that. I’m like super normcore, I think. Do you have sunglasses that are like the Joe Skye Tucker sunglasses?
Joe: No, I have these glasses. I’ve had prescription sunglasses before.
Greg: We should say that you wear sunglasses 24 hours a day because you’re cool.
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: When you say these glasses, it’s the sunglasses you wear all day and night. Every day. Yes. Your sunglasses guy.
Joe: Yeah. Sunglasses guy. That’s me. It’s like that guy who only wear shorts. Then the guy who only has a jacket and high school, you know.
Greg: Yeah, I was both. Yeah. On a more serious note, I thought, you know, these people are immortal. And so when they die, in one way or another, their body kind of, like, heals itself, right? And the story of once they realized they couldn’t kill Quinn and so they put her in like an iron, some kind of iron cage and put her underwater.
Greg: And then we see her die and then come back to life underwater and then die. And we are just to assume that that’s what’s been going on for the last hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. That is like a perfect picture of certain kinds of trauma. You could point at all kinds of different things in society and say that is a perfect picture of what this person or that person is dealing with in one way or another.
Greg: And I was just like, that is not something that I think when I’m watching great bad movies.
Joe: Yeah, I.
Greg: Usually don’t carry something like that with me when I walk away.
Joe: Yeah, I that thing. Yeah, it’s probably like the worst scene for me. Like one just anytime someone’s underwater in a movie, I’m like subconsciously holding my breath right with them.
Greg: Right? Like the end of extraction.
Joe: Yeah. And then this is just the personification of the worst way to die. It’s like. Yeah. And you just assume that she just every four minutes.
Greg: Over and over and over again drowning.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah.
Greg: It’s I mean, a real this is like Gina Prince-Bythewood just being like, you’re welcome. Yeah. This one’s going to stick with you. This is what it’s like for this person and for this person and for this person. I thought that was incredibly strong. I really liked the characters of Joe and Nikki who are like Italian and I don’t remember where they’re from.
Greg: Everybody is kind of kind of from a different part of the world. They’re all like linked somehow, like they have dreams about each other. They all know that there’s a new one. They all know that Niall is out there because they’re dreaming about her and she’s dreaming about them. They don’t explain how they’re linked and I hope they never do.
Greg: But but that’s kind of cool that they all kind of are aware of each other somehow, but they get captured and like the soldiers say like what is it your boyfriend and they like stop the movie for a minute. To do the most awesome declaration of love between these two men because we find out that they’re a couple.
Greg: And he’s like you don’t even know we’ve been together 1000 years. You don’t like, you don’t even have a word.
Joe: Right.
Greg: For the relationship that we have. And I was just like this is so awesome. You know that they’re just like do you have no idea? And that would be the case of all of them, not just in the gay relationship, but all of them as friends. They understand friendship in a way that we don’t understand, you know? Yeah.
Greg: I was like, that is something kind of to strive for. There is something here. It’s like I am not immortal, but I would like to know how much deeper our relationships could be in our life. You know, again, this is not what I was walking away with from extraction other than David Harbor. Seems like a cool dude and despite attacking me in his kitchen, I still would love to hang out with him.
Greg: Those themes were really strong to me. These are parts of the things where as I was watching, I was like, oh, this is doing something that I’m not accustomed to. And it’s doing it in a language that obviously I traffic in, like I want to watch one of these movies every other week and that’s why I have this podcast, you know.
Greg: So I love it, I loved it for those reasons. So much heart. Those are the big themes. I’ll just say I don’t know why she would tell Ejiofor was in this movie, but it’s not as good of a movie without a minute. You know, he’s like an ex CIA guy. He also has, like, an Oscar scene a couple times where, like, his, his wife has passed away from ALS, and he.
Greg: That’s why he’s trying to catch. He’s trying to help Merrick capture them, because. How’s he describe it? Like this could be a gift to the world so that people don’t suffer the way that I suffered watching my wife passed away. So he gets a couple good scenes I like to at the end, he’s going to be their guy on the inside.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. I could easily have seen this movie as a six episode show.
Greg: 100%. How was it not?
Joe: I wonder if you know, if it’s like Charlize Theron or it’s like.
Greg: Yeah, I don’t.
Joe: Want to lose a year of my life to this. I can lose four months or whatever it is. Yeah, because a lot of what they set up at the end of this movie is sequels, essentially. Yeah. When we’re getting 1 in 10 days or something like that.
Greg: So right from us recording this, but.
Joe: When you’re listening to this dear listener.
Greg: Oh my gosh.
Joe: It’ll be out and you better have watched it is all I’m saying.
Greg: I have to interrupt you. The old Guard two poster I texted this to you yesterday. Yeah, Charlize Theron is like on her knees. She’s holding the the battle ax and there’s a helicopter out of nowhere in the poster.
Joe: I know what is that? That is next level. But that allowed.
Greg: Oh my gosh, so perfect. It is a movie for us for sure.
Joe: I’ll be very curious. It doesn’t have the same director, so that’s always a concern on us, right.
Greg: But right. And they filmed it in 2022 okay. Did you know that.
Joe: No I did not. Okay. It’s interesting.
Greg: Drama. It had some delays because of of Covid stuff but not really. What happened was Netflix had kind of like a whole restructuring of their film department and theory, you know, decided to spend less money on it. And then they just kind of shelved a couple movies. And Old Guard two is one of them. And so they started doing reshoots last fall, and that’s when it sounded like Netflix had taken it off the shelf and realized, you know, okay, we should probably finish this one, even though it wasn’t our idea.
Joe: Interesting. Okay. It does feel like it’s a little late for this sequel, right?
Greg: It’s going to be so good. Uma Thurman. It’s going to be so good. That’s my prediction.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: Yeah. There’s a helicopter out of nowhere on the poster. Do I have to say more.
Joe: No you do I think that Old Guard two is going to be our next Our Mission Impossible where we just we’re doing all of them.
Greg: We have no plans to cover it next. Having said that. We may have no other choice.
Joe: Yeah, I do. Either that or we’re going back to Mission Impossible one and going all the way back through eight again.
Greg: Absolutely. Oh my gosh, why wouldn’t we feel like the world kind of has Mission Impossible fatigue a little bit.
Joe: Yeah it’d be.
Greg: Yeah. But we will get to all of the other Mission Impossible movies. I can’t wait to hear your take on for more. I’ll just put a pin in that. And my, my board with with red yarn going on all over the place, my murder board or whatever those are called.
Joe: Yes, you can put that down, because I is. I will take two over for every single day.
Greg: I can, you have to come over to my house to watch this movie. Okay? Okay.
Joe: Okay, then.
Greg: All right. Joe, do you have anything else you want to say about the old guard before we get to box office and reviews?
Joe: Nothing about that, but just. I just want to make sure just because he’s on the world’s tallest building doesn’t make it that not cool. Mission impossible for.
Greg: I’m going to give that a boom. Okay, that is a hot take. Yeah, just drop right there. All right, Joe, let’s get to box office and critical reception of this movie. Well, there isn’t a lot of box office to talk about in this movie because it came out in July of 2020 on Netflix, never came out in theaters.
Greg: This movie was always going to come out at that time, Covid or no Covid, this movie doesn’t have that kind of, I don’t know, stain. What do you say? Like when we were talking about tenet, it was like, this is a weird movie to see in the theater. But this movie wasn’t weird to watch in 2020 because it just showed up on Netflix and that he’s always going to show up on Netflix.
Greg: The director said that she had been kind of positioning herself towards action movies, but she hadn’t done that yet. She made a pilot of a marvel show called Cloak and Dagger, but she’s famous for, like, the movie, love and basketball. I’ve ever seen love and basketball a long.
Joe: Time ago, I.
Greg: Think. Yeah. Secret life of Bees. She did The Woman King with Viola Davis right after this, which is supposed to be amazing. I never saw it. Did you see that movie? Okay. We got to see that movie okay. Because I mean I’ll just go ahead and say it. I will see anything that Gina Prince-Bythewood directs from here on out.
Greg: So this movie had a $70 million budget. She said that she was trying to find an action movie that had female protagonists. Nobody wanted to make that except Netflix was actively trying to make that. And so they approached her with this script.
Joe: Awesome.
Greg: And she said they gave her way more money than anybody else ever would have. So this a $70 million movie came out on Netflix, didn’t come out in theaters, so hopefully they got some subscriptions as a result. Let’s move on to the critical response. What do you think the tomato rating is on this for? Critical reviews?
Joe: Feels like a 70.
Greg: Yeah, it kind of does, doesn’t it? Like it’s mostly great, but there are a couple things that,
Joe: Yeah, I’m going to stick with 70. I’m going to go a little higher. I’ll go 75 on the critic score.
Greg: 8,080%.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: So this only has 2500 ratings for the audience. Score the popcorn meter. But what do you think the audience score of the popcorn meter is on this?
Joe: That’s going to be 70, I think. It’s not as well-received as it should be.
Greg: It’s exactly 70.
Joe: Yeah, because it feels.
Greg: Incredible. Incredible. All right. What did the critics say about this? In July of 2020, ace got his friends call him Tony from the New York Times said, I’m not usually someone to hope for sequels, but I guess if you live long enough.
Joe: All right, I’ll allow it.
Greg: Clarice Lo Rey at The Independent UK says none of this would work without someone like Gina Prince-Bythewood. Behind the lens.
Joe: Great.
Greg: Yeah. The A.V. club says, in a past life, this would be a standard B-movie shoot em up, but as Prince Bythewood presents it, The Old Guard is an effective and tender bundle of contradictions, a franchise launchpad about, among other things, endings. It’s pretty good writing right there.
Joe: Yeah, I seriously.
Greg: Let’s time out for just a second in the opening of this movie, which I did want to talk about with you. I was very concerned when the opening credits happened in this movie, because Skydance, the kind of the studio thing happened on the screen, and we were just getting the general Skydance music, no ominous music over the studio logos.
Greg: Right? Huge red flag.
Joe: Absolutely.
Greg: So I was like, oh, but then here’s the first sound you hear in the movie.
Greg: Bullets falling on the ground. We see Charlize Theron dead, and she says this.
Clip: I’ve been here before, over and over again. And each time the same question is this it will this time be the one, and each time the same answer. And I’m just so tired of it.
Greg: That’s the opening of this movie. So with that opening in mind, let me read this review from Kevin Marr, the guy who hated Mission Impossible seven but then loved eight. After pitiful efforts such as extraction, Triple Frontier and Six underground. Will this be it? Will this be the one and each time, alas, it’s the same answer. Hell no.
Greg: And we’re just so tired of it. It’s a Kevin Myers like lumping on all of Netflix. And I will accept that as an answer. Although I would not put this in the same league as extraction, I for sure wouldn’t do it as in the same league. It’s Triple Frontier a movie we will definitely be getting to.
Joe: Yeah or Sex Underground which is a movie I got like a third of the way through and said, like, this movie is terrible.
Greg: Yeah, I was so excited that Dave Franco is in it, like everything, Dave Franco and he was amazing. And then when he was no longer that, I was like, I don’t think I need to watch this anymore. No more Dave Franco I think I’m out. Was he in that whole movie? I feel like he died in the beginning.
Joe: I have no remember. I just was like because it’s Michael Bay.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Doing his thing. Yeah I checked out about halfway through that movie. Yeah. Yeah I just couldn’t do it. Although the fact that he lumps in extraction, which is one of the greatest movies that’s ever been made.
Greg: How dare you, Kevin. Ma.
Joe: Yeah, seriously, those are fighting words. Yeah. Did you not see, I’m going to just exaggerate every time now it’s going to be the 30 minute single shot camera scene in that movie.
Greg: And it actually was. Let’s exaggerate. There were no cuts.
Joe: Yeah, there were no cuts in that. It was all done.
Greg: Have you seen Triple Frontier?
Joe: I don’t think I have.
Greg: Okay. You need to watch Triple Frontier. I think what we’ve learned is you need to watch it, and then we’ll decide if we’re going to do it. And then when you watch it the second time, you will know what you disliked about it and ignore that for the second watch. You enjoy it. Okay.
Joe: All right. Oh I yes, I have almost watched this movie 7 million times.
Greg: It’s great. It’s great. It is a great bad movie for sure. We will be getting to Triple Frontier. Let me finish with Odie Henderson who is writing for Roger Ebert. Tom Odie says an excellent example of what this type of film can be, what I hope will be studied by the much bigger budgeted tentpoles. You know, in love.
Greg: He wants people to learn from this movie, and I completely agree with that.
Joe: I agree with that. Yeah, I like that.
Greg: All right, Joe, should we get to drinking games for the old guard?
Joe: We got to. Let’s do it. So we have our stock drinking games again doesn’t have to be alcohol I mean coffee, water, juice.
Greg: Right.
Joe: A mocktail, whatever you want.
Greg: Assign one of these to each person in the room. And then when it happens, you all yell at that person that they have to take a drink. It doesn’t have to be at all.
Joe: Absolutely. So starting our stock drinking game, silent helicopter slash low flying helicopter. I didn’t see one or remember one. It doesn’t mean there wasn’t 1 or 1 overhead. I feel like that could have been there when they attacked the church that they’re in.
Greg: When they get dropped off for in the South Sudan for that ambush at the very beginning. There are quite a few helicopter shots.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: It’s not super low flying. It drops them off and then it leaves and as it’s flying away from them, it stays six inches from the ground.
Joe: Okay. So you’re drinking.
Greg: You’re drinking when it drops them off. Pay attention. It stays so close to the ground in such a glorious way. It’s like Richard Donner is alive and well.
Joe: That’s right.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Push in and enhance. Not the classic, but we do have some of their, especially on the murder board that he has done for Charlize Theron’s character.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: You’re taking a drink on that one? Yep. Two people sharing a look. Slow motion look in the middle of chaos. I gave this one because I think when they’re captured, the couple are captured. I think they share a look. That’s what I was grabbing, but I can’t remember at 100%. Flip a coin on that one, okay? Okay. No, no.
Greg: Yeah, I can’t remember.
Joe: No. Silence. Suffering, ringing in the ears. Opening credit marks into place with a song.
Greg: Yeah, it’s like a needle drop.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: It also shows the three words in the slowest crossfade.
Joe:
Greg: It’s like the old. Yeah. Wait for.
Joe: It. Yeah.
Greg: It is like the old old. This isn’t like Die Hard where the words like fly in and like make a noise.
Greg: Yeah it was the opposite and I loved it. So take a drink with each word. How about.
Joe: That. Perfect. Perfect. Does it flashback to dialog. There are some flashbacks of dialog in this movie, so take a drink. Yeah, and to flashbacks within the movie. I have bad CGI around all the wounds being healed.
Greg: But you know what? It looks pretty good.
Joe: It looks pretty good.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Still take a drink? Yeah, I have great bad shots. Ish. There’s a lot of them getting shot because they’re immortal, all right. But there’s not a lot damage that happened with it because they’re immortal. So that one’s kind of maybe stretching it a little bit. Okay. Yeah, I’ll allow that. You could say maybe there are great bad shots in this movie.
Joe: Yeah. Inexplicably wet streets. I didn’t notice any. There’s not a car chase in this movie. And that’s usually where you see him or not. On night. Shots in the streets could have been that way when they have this, the fight scene in the church, but I don’t remember.
Greg: Yeah. The streets are inexplicably grassy at one moment.
Joe: That’s true though, so probably dewy. So it’s probably wet. So like by extraction.
Greg: It’s like, wow, we are driving really fast in this tall grass right now.
Joe: Yeah. No, give us the room or Interpol. So, yeah, I will toss it to you. Greg swineherd, what is your first drinking game that you have?
Greg: Okay, so to tell Ejiofor is ex-CIA. They talk about the CIA, they reference the CIA. You know, probably like five times in the movie. First ranking game for me. Any time they say CIA.
Joe: Oh, I take it right. Yeah, I have, and this doesn’t happen a lot, but happens early in the film. Any time the crew, which is the coolest crew in the world, or the immortal crew are. Yeah. Taking bets. Oh, yeah. With each other. Take a drink about baklava. Yeah. About baklava.
Greg: Yeah. Pomegranate. Pomegranate was in there. That was the twist I was not expecting in the flavor profile.
Joe: Yeah, I was out of some.
Greg: Next drinking game for me. Anytime someone takes a drink.
Joe: Oh, okay.
Greg: Take a drink.
Joe: Awesome. I have, anytime you notice the religious imagery. Whether someone’s wearing it or a song or they talking about it. Take a.
Greg: Drink. If this is your drinking game, the person to your left has to say up.
Joe: Yeah. You see.
Greg: The imagery? Time for a drink.
Joe: Exactly.
Greg: This only happens once in the movie, but it’s one of my very favorite things that happens in the world, especially in great bad movies, when someone finishes a cell phone call and then they smash the cell phone, oh.
Joe: We for sure need to add that as a trope as it happens. So much so it is the greatest. I’m adding this right now to our trope list.
Greg: Can we hear that part? It’s actually a pretty good saying, okay.
Joe: That’s a me.
Clip: I have the new one. And well, she stabbed me. So I think she has potential. Let’s see.
Greg: So when Korea throws it in the ground, is that with her foot right there? Amazing. I was like oh great. Bad movie. Love it.
Joe: Okay so here’s my question. Do you want that to be a trope or do we move that into a stock drinking game.
Greg: Stock drinking game.
Joe: Oh I like that.
Greg: Absolutely.
Joe: All right. Yeah. So we’re adding in smashing of a South Island for the listeners at home. You have to know that for Greg and I, this is the greatest. These are the greatest moments of our lives. I can’t. And I wish that that was hyperbole, but it really it isn’t. Wait till we get to the new trope. I cannot wait for your reaction to this new trope, but I need to add this to our template.
Greg: That’s making it official. Joe, what’s your next drinking game?
Joe: My next drinking game is anytime Charlize Theron is being nihilistic about living forever, take a drink.
Greg: Yeah, let’s get one. I have, anytime someone comes back to life.
Joe: I have that one too. So that one you’re drinking a lot.
Greg: You might want to, like, assign certain characters anytime that character comes back to life in this movie. Yeah. You can pick one of the five people in the gang.
Joe: Yeah, especially if you’re drinking alcohol, because that person may be in trouble. So. Sure, sure, I have, any time there are Tom cruise tears I could drink, but I notice now all the time.
Greg: Classic TCT.
Joe: Yes. And I have to say Chris Hemsworth.
Greg:
Joe: Man, he does a good Tom cruise tears and an extraction.
Greg: Yeah yeah.
Joe: Mr. eyes.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: No tears actually falls.
Greg: And listener we have gotten to extraction.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: There’s no point to get to it. It’s already been gotten.
Joe: Yeah. It’s by far one of our funniest episodes according to my wife. So and she would never lie to me.
Greg: Speaking of movies we loved and movies that we know that listeners have not listened to, the movie playing is number two on Netflix today.
Joe: It’s so good.
Greg: If you would like to hear the two of us laughing for an hour and a half or whatever. That movie is so much fun.
Joe: Gerard Butler and a movie called plain. Nothing else I say shouldn’t matter.
Greg: Yeah, yeah. All right. My next one is any time the battle ax comes out.
Joe: Damn it, I had that one too.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: Or access. There’s a scene where she grabs an ax.
Greg: Oh, yeah.
Joe: To me, it was a great moment of character continuity. I think there were other weapons that she could have grabbed. And clearly an ax is her favorite one.
Greg: She blocks a bullet with it. Yeah. And this is after she has become no longer immortal. That’s the thing that happens in this movie. And there was no reason for us to get into that. Apparently.
Joe: Yes. My. I have two more. Okay. Second, the last one is anytime I say you go first.
Greg: Nice. That’s a good one. I just have one more. And we kind of alluded to it in our stock drinking games. Any time they show the murder board.
Joe: That’s a rather awesome one. And my last one is anytime there are questions about how old they are, I think a drink.
Greg: Really good, really good. All right, Joe, moving on. Let’s get to Joe’s trope lightning round, aka signs. You might be watching a great bad movie.
Joe: I have a new trope and I will actually ask this to you, Greg. This might also need to become a stock drinking game.
Greg: Okay?
Joe: Anytime someone is punched in the face and smiles and then spits blood, I don’t know if that’s a drinking game or a trope.
Greg: I am going to say that’s a trope because it’s kind of gross.
Joe: Okay, okay.
Greg: But I love it there. Yeah, I completely love it.
Joe: That happened early in this movie. Yeah. Charlize Theron fighting Kiki on the plane. Yeah, so many movies have this, and I finally, That’s awesome. So we have a hero becomes the hero moment when Kiki kind of decides that she’s going to be part of the team. Yep. We have some pretty damn bad color filters on. Third world countries are developing nations.
Joe: They’re the best at something. Have some revenge at the driver of the protagonist after the team members are captured, you have definitely like the game of vacation or the henchmen who are allowed to hurt the good guys. Yeah, yeah. And how much?
Greg: Right? One of them gets a name? Keane.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: A lot of yelling at the name Keane. That’s a good drinking game. Every time you say Keane.
Joe: Absolutely. Yeah, we’re adding that one in.
Greg: Yeah okay.
Joe: Then we have finding out a critical piece of information. So what is like the character just like oh yeah I found him. Let’s go here. Like okay great.
Joe: There’s duffel bags of money or guns I mean, and money and medical care from, she gives herself when she’s no longer an immortal. She assisted yourself up.
Greg: Oh, that’s a great scene. Yeah, she doesn’t stick yourself up. She goes to, like, a CVS, right?
Joe: And is stitched up by someone else.
Greg: And she says, do you have a bathroom? And the woman says, no way. But we have a back room or like a stock room, do you need some help? And then just in a really sweet scene, she just randomly helps. The stranger says stitches would be better, but this will help. I loved that scene.
Joe: Yeah, that was a good scene.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And then a lot of checking if a gun is loaded and those are our trope lightning round. Not quite so fast this time but yeah.
Greg: And it was like Booker just interrupts like right after a dramatic moment. Guys I have an address. It’s in London. They’re like great let’s go.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Next plot point. Let’s do this I actually recorded that audio. I don’t need to play it, but I recorded it because I was like, that is the funniest thing that’s ever happened to me.
Joe: Yeah, they did set it up, thankfully. Charlize Theron ask Booker, see if you can find out some information.
Greg: So it does hang together. Yeah, it hangs together. Barely, barely.
Joe: It does hang together.
Greg: So another scene that I really loved was when Kiki Layne decides, like, I am going to go help them. They’re trapped at Merrick headquarters. And she would tell her gaffer like gets her in, but then says, I’m going to help you. And she’s like, why would you do that? If you get shot, that’s it for you. I can get shot and it’s fine.
Greg: Yeah, it was kind of like a little bit of a subversion of the typical moment in a movie. She’s like, no, you’re just a dude. You should leave. Yeah, yeah, they love it. So yeah, I was so great. All right, Joe, we’ve asked more questions than we’ve answered in this in this movie. Is it time for us to answer some important questions?
Joe: Absolutely. Let’s do it, Joe.
Greg: First important question about the old guard. Did it hold up then in 2020 I.
Joe: Didn’t see it then.
Greg: Yeah, I.
Joe: Think it did.
Greg: Back then we viewed Marvel movies and like comic book movies as a different thing.
Joe:
Greg: I don’t think comic book movies had quite been ruined the way they have five years later, where we’re kind of like, I don’t know, maybe the Fantastic Four, I don’t know. Yeah. So I’m going to say yes, this movie held its own doesn’t hold up. Now, the fact that it’s a comic book movie does that a ding or does it hold its own?
Joe: I think it still holds up now.
Greg: Me too.
Joe: I think, because it doesn’t lean into the comic book. Yeah, nature. And I think it’s a graphic novel and it isn’t in the, like, Marvel Universe versus DC universe, which have very prescribed rules to them. And I think the challenge that’s happening with, especially with Marvel, because there’s so many of them, is they become really formulaic and you kind of have to be, yeah, once you’re in that universe.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And so there’s a lot of stuff I feel like they do that breaks the rules of, of those universes. But to me it this holds up. Well. You can make the case that this is a comic book movie. But yeah, to me that’s like the fourth or fifth thing that I would describe this movie.
Greg: As 100%, and I love it for.
Joe: That. Yeah. Me too.
Greg: A little sci fi fantasy. This is a bit more in the Joe Skywalker world than it is in the gregs.
Joe: When I read I agree. Yeah, yeah.
Greg: But I it’s still so rooted in like, real human beings that I’m entirely there for it. Howard, this other good guy in this movie. Next important question.
Joe: They don’t up until the end or like the final third when you get to the murder board right of everything that’s happened. Yeah. And then you kind of see the why behind it. Yeah. Which I did appreciate, which a lot of my frustrations with this movie maybe would have been taken out of that had been earlier in the film I think.
Joe: But they sell a good guy. Well in this.
Greg: Yeah. Yeah. How do they sell the bad guy.
Joe: They show it. Yeah. And he’s pretty despicable. And he does a good job of playing that character. There’s not a lot of range on that though. But what do you think on that one.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Mid as I could say there’s.
Greg: A lot of shorthand I think going on. Yeah. Tech bro.
Joe: Yeah. Anyone that’s wearing a blazer with a hoodie. Yeah. Just you know, is like a bad guy. Yeah. That’s the new dress code.
Greg: Absolutely. Joe, why is there romance in this movie?
Joe: There’s really only romance with the two gay characters. Why do they have that moment where they talk about their their love for each other?
Greg: And it’s so sweet.
Joe: And it’s very sweet. It’s maybe, like a little over the top, but in the moment I was all in. Yeah. Like, yeah, love each other. Go for it. I’m in.
Greg: Yeah, I thought it was. I thought it was awesome.
Joe: And I was like, if you hurt a hair on either one of these people’s heads in this movie, I will never watch the sequel. That’s basically what I felt.
Greg: And it was also like played for a laugh. Like they start to kiss and the soldiers pull them apart. You know, it’s like they’re trolling them a little bit. You know, I love that there are so many different aspects to ours, like, but also just the relationship aspect of it I thought was just me. I talked about that.
Greg: Are we bad people for loving this movie?
Joe: Not as bad as some of the movies we watch, okay? And we’re probably like, not great people, but like, maybe we can turn the corner. That’s why I have, like, I know there’s hope. There’s hope, there’s hope. Yeah.
Greg: I mean, this is a rated R yeah movie.
Joe: It earned its R rating.
Greg: So yeah. By the end of it I was like, I think, I think we’re sort of bad people for living that.
Joe: Yeah probably.
Greg: Does this movie deserve a sequel?
Joe: Absolutely.
Greg: Yeah. I was surprised at how stoked I was at the end when, when they kind of realized we can work with two. It’s Elijah four. He can be kind of like they’re their Nick Fury. Yeah. It’s great. I was like, awesome, great. I love where this is going.
Joe: Yeah. And spoiler alert they do bring Quinn back. Right. The last.
Greg: Thing. Yeah.
Joe: We don’t know if she’s going to be good or bad. Complicated is probably the best way to put it because she’s you know, you would assume spent hundreds and hundreds of years underwater trying to escape. Yeah. And Booker has been expelled from the group for 100 years and. Right. Like that’s the final scene. So. Right. Like a little nice little cliffhanger, which I, I liked, I’m in for.
Joe: I’m here for it.
Greg: Next question. Does it deserve a prequel?
Joe: This may surprise you. I would allow some prequels, but I need them at least 250 years before this one. So okay, let’s go back and like, see how they met or yeah, you know, origin stories. I would allow that for this case because I think you could tell the story at different points in time, but I want it in different time periods.
Joe: Totally. That’s that would be my caveat for it.
Greg: I’m going to say, yeah, there’s there’s three prequels, at least. And each prequel is Charlize Theron having dreams about a new immortal that has sprung up in the world. This is the slowest getting the gang together. One prequel at a time.
Joe: I mean, I meant for that. Yeah.
Greg: My answer to this is, 6000 years of prequels.
Clip: Okay.
Greg: A lot of time to cover here. Yeah. And I think it’s, I think it’s in the form of probably TV shows similar to Yellowstone, where you just name the year and Harrison Ford is one of the characters.
Joe: Perfect. Yeah. Old guard 1847.
Greg: Yeah. The oldest guard. Joe, should the old guard have been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars?
Joe: I would have been happier if Old Guard was nominated and Top Gun freaking Maverick.
Greg: Okay, okay.
Joe: This is a better movie than Top Gun Maverick. That said, if I am choosing between watching Top Gun Maverick next, or The Old Guard, I’m leaning slightly toward Top Gun Maverick just because I need like, no stakes.
Greg: Yeah, I think this movie should have been nominated more so than The Trial of the Chicago seven, which was nominated that year.
Joe: Okay, I’ll allow it.
Greg: So I’m going to say yes, Joe. Next question. How can this be fixed? AKA who should be in the remake?
Joe: Okay, so I figured out the way that I need to answer this. And it’s kind of by combining two different kinds of movies.
Greg: Okay. Yeah.
Joe: So combining Terminator two, because you have a bad guy that is stronger than the good guy in that movie. And I’m also adding in the movie underworld with, Kate Beckinsale. That’s a vampire movie. But they have their immortal and they are just rich beyond, you know, their wealthy. And so you kind of take those two pieces and you layer them together and that’s how you fix it.
Joe: How do you fix this movie or a guy who is in the remake.
Greg: You know what. For the second time in the history of the show, I kind of didn’t take any notes while I was watching this movie because I just really enjoyed it. This was kind of an Edge of Tomorrow experience for me. Okay, I was strongly considering trying to make this a great, great movie in our in our canon, and by the end of the movie, I decided it was not there.
Greg: Having said that, I had very few ideas for how this movie could be fixed because it had me the whole time, so I don’t have one. Okay, and I will say, one of the things I was reacting against in this movie is I. It’s a week where I saw another movie directed by the underworld director Len Wiseman called ballerina.
Greg: Last time I checked what month ran. We’re not in January right now, so we don’t need to talk about the world of John Wick right now.
Joe: Let it be said that Greg’s fine heart is bringing John Wick into this. If you’re playing the meta drinking game of Will I talk about, I did not bring it up.
Greg: First someone had to warm this up.
Joe: Someone that someone had to just chill.
Greg: Until now. I mean, we will be getting to ballerina, so I will not be. I’ll just say that it was better than I expected, okay? But it was nowhere near as good as the old guard as far as, like, really making you feel something for the characters in it. Yeah, which is not a surprise coming from the John Wick universe.
Greg: Yeah. So when it comes to being fixed, this is the movie that fixed ballerina in a lot of ways. For me, that was so I was just like enjoying it, you know? So I don’t have anything for this one this week. All right. Joe, what album is The Old Guard.
Joe: Under my premise? There was an album that has an interesting concept to it, so I picked a concept album.
Greg: Oh, interesting. Okay.
Joe: That doesn’t always deliver on the concept, so I feel like there are a few missed opportunities within this. Yeah. So this is David Bowie is outside.
Greg: Oh wow. What songs are on outside?
Joe: My favorite is Hello Space Boy, but there’s some other ones on it. So it’s basically he gets together with Brian, you know, again this is in the mid 90s like 95 I think and it’s a concept album about someone who commits murder as art. It’s kind of the premise of it. Okay. So there are some really great songs on it, like Hello Space Boy and some kind of a concert EP.
Joe: Falls a little flat concept album that I love. I love a good concept album. So I’m all in on like the ambition of that. Yeah, yeah. And it kind of there are some misses on it. So that’s what album it is for me.
Greg: That’s interesting I don’t think. Yeah, 1995 I must have listened to this.
Joe: I’m sure because we live.
Greg: Together. We must have listened to this together. Yeah, yeah.
Joe: They toured with nine Inch Nails after this. I saw them at the Tacoma Dome.
Greg: Yeah. And one of those songs was on the radio a lot that year.
Joe: I’m afraid of Americans, although that one is off of the next. But anyway.
Greg: Anyway, I love the idea that that’s a great album. So what song do you want to put on our playlist? Great bad movies music on Spotify.
Joe: I have to go with Halo or Halo Space Boy, that’s my favorite one on that album.
Greg: Okay. All right. So for me, the album that this is stems from, it’s a familiar form, a great bad movie, but it was surprisingly effective just because of different perspectives kind of coming through in the writing and then the directing and then the acting. And so I was it immediately brought to mind an album that had the exact same effect on me, where there’s this one song, I’ll tell you what it is in a second, where it starts with, like this electric guitar as a texture, and then that kind of fades out and then there’s like finger picked guitar, acoustic guitar, and then a woman starts singing.
Greg: And all throughout that I was like, okay, yeah. Texture. Electric guitar, fingerpicking, acoustic. Yeah, whatever. You know? Heard this a million times. Her voice sounds really nice. And then I got the chills and then I teared up and, like, had a real, like, examining. I had to take stock of my life while I was listening to this song.
Greg: And it was the song is Funeral by Phoebe Bridgers. And so it’s her album called stranger in the Alps, and I’ll be putting funeral on our playlist, and I’m sorry to everybody that loses it in the car while you’re listening to it. It is one of the greatest songs you will ever hear, and it’s just a song and it’s finished.
Greg: I was sitting in my kitchen and I was just like, I forgot music could do that. And that’s a little bit how I felt. Watch this movie. Like, I forgot movies could just do this, like tell you stories from different perspectives, from different people around the world who are living different lives than me. And suddenly it’s like, well, I want to know this person, and I want to hear what it’s like to be that person coming from that perspective, you know?
Greg: So this movie had a strange power like stranger in the Alps, basically. Bridgers.
Joe: That’s awesome.
Greg: And the song funeral. Yeah.
Joe: This is a weird little aside that I had. So there’s a song called The Great Ship by Emma is the artist. I may have shared it with you a while back.
Greg:
Joe: It’s like an eight minute song. It’s really around Themes of Death. And I was listening to it in the car with Milo who is a musician. My son is now his goal is to go to the Berklee School of Music. That’s like how he’s trained. So yeah. And like his appreciation like the first half of the song, kind of middling.
Joe: And like when I first heard it, I thought it was two songs. I was like, oh, okay, now we’re in a second song, right? And I remember him listening to that song in the car, and he was like on his phone. And then it goes into this second part of the song, and he literally puts his phone down and was like, actively listening to this moment.
Joe: And like, it was a similar moment that you’re describing of like, yeah, yeah, oh, I see where we’re going with this. And it’s this amazing, like build. And to me, it’s a song that I get emotional about every time I hear it. So like, those songs are so rare.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, they’re so good. You can’t ignore them.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Greg: All right. That’s amazing. Let’s get down to the rating of this movie, Joe.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: We have a rating scale. Great bad movies. Good bad movies. Okay. Bad movies, bad, bad movies. Worst case scenario. Awful bad movie. How do you rank the old guard?
Joe: I almost feel like this movie may break our rating system in some ways. Yeah, because as we’ve talked about it, typical. Yeah, I like it more. Obviously, but to me there’s like as a movie, I think it’s a great movie and premise, well-acted, well written, impeccably directed as an action movie. It’s really great. So I’m on the cusp with you of like a great, great movie.
Joe: I think it’s a great bad movie for me. But I could be talked into a great, great movie because I think it everything that it does, it does at a like an exceptional level. Yeah. If Edge of Tomorrow the only great other great, great movie that we have unstoppable. Unstoppable.
Greg: Here’s why I don’t think this is a great, great movie.
Joe: Okay. Yeah. Talk me off the ledge because I’m like, it’s the greatest movie we’ve ever done.
Greg: It’s the opening action scene and the closing action scene where in that opening action scene, our protagonists get shot, and then we find out that they are immortal and their body is just like self-heal themselves pretty fast. All like 15 people with machine guns turn around and are just, like, hanging out now. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And then when they see that the gang is getting back up and it’s going to fight them, all of them have super powerful machine guns, right? And they start like trying to like, load them and, you know, whatever, fix them and jam them. Whatever it is. There’s like 15 of them, yet they only seem to be attacking one at a time.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: When that happened, I was like, well, okay. That’s. Yeah. And same thing at the end. There’s like a million bad guys all with these guns. And yet.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: They’re only attacking one at a time, which doesn’t make any sense. This would be over so fast even if they you know keep self-healing.
Joe: Yeah. And it also like the 15 people and especially in the opening scene seem to have forgotten like you would assume are incredibly strong mercenaries and of themselves. Right. Have completely forgotten the hand-to-hand combat of any kind. Totally. Yeah. Just like, oh, my guns jammed. Oh, I guess I’m going to get stabbed. Kind of. Yeah. Okay, I’ll allow it.
Greg: And and they’re so good at fighting one on one, but it’s like, well, if one of the other people also attacked our hero at this moment, that would be game over. Yeah. Luckily, not one of the other 15 people is available to also attack our good guy at this moment. Yeah. When that started happening, I was going like, oh, okay, that was a great bad movie.
Joe: All right, great bad movie. I will, I will break my rating into a great bad movie land.
Greg: So but I mean, there is a chance that we need to create a new thing where it’s like, this is a great, good movie. Not a great, fine movie. Ten it was a great, fine movie. Yeah. I hesitate putting the word bad in this, but that’s that’s the problem of our show’s title.
Joe: You know.
Greg: Movies have greatness and badness.
Joe: Exactly.
Greg: And this movie was more effective than usual. I mean, but also it’s also kind of a Jackie Chan movie at times.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Greg: And Jackie Chan was incredible. But seem to only get attacked one time.
Joe: Yeah. I remember going to see when we lived together. Rumble in the Bronx. Yeah. Where are you? There. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Okay. That was my first Jackie Chan experience. Yeah, I had heard about him, and like everyone. And once you kind of get over. Okay, the the arc and the the, the characters are a little different. What he does in those movies are so insane.
Greg: Yeah, totally. Police super cop.
Joe: Is this a super cop? Yeah.
Greg: Great.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Great movie. All right, Joe, we did it.
Joe: We have nailed it. We had the conversation. The new bad about the old guard. Just in time for the old guard to. So you’re welcome. Everyone quite right? Yeah.
Greg: I wonder what it’ll be like to watch old guard and old guard. Two in a row. Yeah, sometimes it’s too much. Old guard.
Joe: We’ll see. Yeah. Stay tuned for the next episode after this one. But the old guard two or not.
Greg: Yeah. Have you seen blade?
Joe: Oh, yeah.
Greg: Is blade a great bad movie?
Joe: Oh, yeah, 100%. All of them are.
Greg: Okay, because when blade two came out, I had a party at my house where we watched blade one and then immediately drove down the road to the most fair cinemas and Slap Blade two. Oh my.
Joe: God.
Greg: And about halfway through blade we were all like, this might be too much blade.
Joe: That I am a little worried about that with this as well.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Less worried about it for this, but there is some worry. Yeah.
Greg: Okay. Yeah. Well listen, if you have enjoyed this podcast and you were listening to it someplace like on our website or something, check us out on your favorite podcast app and follow Great Bad Movies on on your podcast app. If you’d like to help out the show, the best thing you can do is share it with a friend or share it on your social media or whatever.
Greg: We’re great bad movies. Show on Instagram. We’re great bad movie show on YouTube. We have a website, great bad movies.com, we’re great bad movies. Show a gmail.com if you’d like. Reach out to us lots of ways you can get Ahold of us. What movies do you think we should cover? We would love to hear what you think we should cover on this show.
Greg: And, you have a friend that loves great bad movies as much as you do.
Joe: We know you do.
Greg: It brought us together. It can bring you together with your friends as well. Absolutely right. And review the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. That helps us out. That’s like the best way, honestly, you can help us out with the, the different platforms for the show anyways, blah blah blah. Spoilers for the Old Guard.
Joe: Oh yeah, spoilers. Spoilers for The Old Guard and probably the old guard too. But who knows? You haven’t seen this. Yeah.
Greg: Well, listen, Joe, this has been great. But now that these wounds on me have finally healed, I think I should get out there and find some more CIA adjacent adventures that I can get paid for.
Joe: Yeah, that’s that’s good, that’s good. I’m. I’ve got to go to. I’m running late. I’ve got my new nihilism class, so I got to check that out.
Greg: Is that why you’ve been half crying this whole time?
Joe: Yeah. Yeah, Charlize Theron’s teaching it, so I think it will be great.
Greg: Literally kicking rocks. Yeah. She didn’t.
Greg: Okay, awesome. Well, actually, you know what? That really works for me because I I’m sure you’ve noticed I’ve been recording this episode stuck in a cage underwater this whole time, and it has not been pleasant. So I feel like I should go.
Joe: That that doesn’t sound pleasant. Anyway, I just had the same dream as my coworkers, so apparently it’s time to get the expense reports together. That’s not exciting. Not a new person that’s, you know, immortal. It’s just paperwork.
Greg: It’s boring. But it’s my life. Okay, well, that works for me because I have been wearing the wrong highly stylized sunglasses my entire life. That’s what I’ve just realized. And, I think I should get out there to the sunglasses hat and make that change.
Joe: I think that I think that’s a good idea. I just found out I’m a mortal. No, I’m not going to invest any of my money. I’m just going to live like I’m 25 for the rest of eternity. It’s okay.
Greg: That makes sense. That makes sense. I loved that when we find out that Charlize Theron is, no longer immortal, I was like, well, there can’t be a sequel.
Joe: Yeah. Now it’s just.
Greg: Turns out when you’re in your 40s, I guess you can still keep making movies.
Joe: Apparently it did.
Greg: Not occur to me until the end, like, oh yeah, I guess we could do more. Yeah. She’s still alive.
Joe: Yeah. Anyone know when the flaming guitar guy goes on, or is that a different fandom? I don’t know,
Greg: So do you need to leave?
Joe: Yeah, I gotta go. Flaming guitar guy.
Greg: Investigate the fandoms. Okay, well, that works for me because I, I need to go Google. How many degrees of separation between this movie and great bad movies is. Oh, I just did it. Do you want to hear.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely.
Greg: Sure. Tell Ejiofor it was in the old guard two intelligent for also starred in Doctor Strange with Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch starred in The Courier in 2020, which also starred Rachel Brosnahan. Rachel Brosnahan appeared in an episode of mercy in 2009 with Michelle Nolan, Michelle Nolan plays Doctor Melanie Parker on the Canadian TV show Private Eyes. And the theme song The Band Aid.
Greg: The theme song for Private Eyes. Dear Rouge does the theme song for our show now. That’s right. Six steps, six degrees.
Joe: Six degrees of Dear Rouge. Thank you for the theme song.
Greg: So I need to go watch that show.
Joe: Apparently.
Greg: Yeah. Okay. Well, Joe, that works for me. I will see you so.
Joe: All right. See you soon.