IDs: Gay, Chronic Illness, Terminal Illness, Sapphic, POC

Director IDs: POC

CWs: Some violence and blood, mentions of torture

The Old Guard, based on the comics by Greg Rucka, follows a group of immortal mercenaries who have been responsible for keeping humanity safe for hundreds of years. The oldest, Andromache, has been alive for thousands of years. The film begins with the discovery of a new immortal, Nile. While Nile is acclimating to immortal life with the Old Guard, a pharmaceutical company is simultaneously attempting to track down the mercenaries in order to test on them to discover how their immortality works, then monetize the results. The film features not one, but two queer storylines. The first is Andy herself, whose former partner, Quynh, was locked in an iron chamber and thrown into the sea during the Salem Witch trials. The mercenaries’ immortality works through fast and intense regeneration, rather than stopping injury altogether. Due to this, Quynh is destined to drown, awaken, and then drown again, over and over. When we enter the narrative, Quynh has already been lost at sea for hundreds of years. The second queer love story is between Joe and Nicky, two men who fought on opposite sides of the Crusades when they both realized their immortality. Joe was a Muslim soldier, while Nicky was one of the Italian Crusaders. They have been lovers for a thousand years, and their love is a true bright spot in the film. They are tender with one another, and they share small, intimate touches throughout the movie. They even have a big action-movie kiss when they are about to be killed. Both of these queer couples are also interracial and intercultural, which is great representation to see, especially in such a huge film. 
None of the mercenaries are conventionally disabled, and their immortality grants them, in many ways, super-abilities. Yet, their immortality can also disappear at any given time, as we learn later in the film. When this happens to Andy, we witness her decline and near-death. While the ability to die is hardly a disability, when one has been immortal for 7,000 years, it becomes a bit like one. Sometimes it seems that Andy’s injuries are just typical action-movie stuff, but other times, her health feels more like a chronic or terminal illness. The other mercenaries care for her as if she is a sick family member. She reflects on all of the time she has been alive, and she makes final wishes. It all feels very much like a terminal illness diagnosis, even though, technically, she is still alive and well.  

We also see the ways that immortality impacts the mental health of the mercenaries, particularly through Nile, as she struggles with what immortality means for her future. We learn in the last moments of the film that Quynh has somehow surfaced, and, while its hard to say for certain, it seems insinuated that she has some trauma, PTSD, or madness as a result of her time at the bottom of the ocean. The film takes the idea of immortality and explores what it actually means and feels, and how it affects the person over a long period of time, while also exploring what it would mean for that immortality to suddenly and irrevocably disappear. The Old Guard implements elements of the “superpowered supercrip,” while also questioning and examining the ways that immortality itself could serve as a disability. 

Discussion Questions

1. Do you think immortality functions as a disability in this narrative? Why or why not?

2. How does this movie's queer representation differ from that you have encountered in other major-motion films? Why do these differences matter?

3. What is the film saying about pharmaceuticals and/or Big Pharma? Does this commentary correlate to the film’s representation of disability? Why or why not?