The Prestige TV Podcast - 'The Old Guard' (Spoilers)

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

This episode contains spoilers for 'The Old Guard.' 'The Old Guard,' on Netflix, is the perfect vehicle for Charlize Theron, who excels in high-octane action scenes. Hosts: Jason Concepcion and Shea Serrano Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to TV concierge, a daily podcast, back in your eardrums, where the ringer helps you navigate the crowded TV landscape. My name is Jason Concepcion, and today I am joined by multiple time. Do it. New York best-selling author, podcast host, PDF author, Chezano. What up? sir. What up? Today we're going to be talking about the new Netflix action movie Old Guard, starring an international cast headed up by the legendary Charlize Theron, Kiki Lane,

directed by Gina Price Bithwood from a script by Greg Rooka based on his comic book series of the same name. Shea, would you think of Old Guard? I greatly enjoyed it. You and I have spent a large amount of time in our relationship talking about Charlize their own, particularly with regard to her action movies. Yes, right.

So when this movie came out, when the trailer came out, we were both immediately texting each other like, oh, fuck, new Charlize action. Let's go. Charlize has incredible,

incredible fight confidence. She just knows what to do in these scenes. She's outstanding in this movie. Great, great, great. That's the thing you watch her and you're just like, just have her fight more.

More. I don't know what, she does to train. I don't know what she has done, but ever since really Fury Road, she's just been a fight pro. Atomic blonde is like next level, but like, anytime you can combine Charlie's action vehicle, Immortal heroes who have some kind of like Seal Team 6, 8 team kind of vibe to them, and like John Wick style, tactical action. I'm just in before I hear anything else.

I don't even need to know anything else about the plot. That's enough. That's all you need. It's immediate. You know what? A very underappreciated Charlie's movie was Hancock, where she's with, she's there with Will Smith. And it turns out she's like a twist. Don't do it.

All right. Spoil it. Go ahead. It's a decade old. You should have seen it already. But it's, it's got like a line through to the old guard. Like we find out that Charlize can. cannot be killed.

She's a superhero. And she gets in a fight with Will Smith. And she hits him with an 18 wheeler, which is just like, it's outrageous, first of all. But when you watch the scene, it very much feels like she's really hitting him with an 18 wheeler. She's just outstanding in these situations. To your point, I thought the best part of this movie,

my single favorite scene is when she's in the helicopter, I mean, in the airplane with Niles. And Niles tries a fist fighter. And Charlize is like, all right, I guess we're going to do this. I guess I'll play with you for a little while. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like a tiger pawing at a kitten. Just like, that's cute, that's cute, that's cute. She's so unbelievably good in those moments.

Yeah, I wish we, that'd be my only thing with this movie. I wish you would have got more of her just doing that. I, again, love this movie. I have, I do have a few questions as I was watching this about how, how does the immortality work? How does the healing factor work? If you cut, for instance, we know that you can survive underwater for like 600 years trapped in a coffin. Dude, that was crazy.

I think that's the wildest part of the movie. Yeah. But so if you get your head cut off, does the head, I would imagine the body would grow back, but does it grow back down from the stump or is it like Deadpool 2 where you grow a new head? and then do your memories You know we saw numerous We saw various members of Charlie's crew Get shot in a head and survive and stuff

But does Is it like a magic base thing where your memories Just are intact no matter what Or is it like a Wolverine thing where yeah You get shot in the head And if it destroys your head You lose some of your memories Even though you do survive

Those are just the only questions I have Shay do you have any thoughts on that So I had the same sort of question with regard to decapitation when you're watching the movie, because that does not happen in the movie. It doesn't happen. They shoot them. And this was like a really interesting twist because I didn't read the comics. I didn't know anything about it going in. But I thought it was a really interesting twist because you find out, oh, there's like this group of people who are momentarily immortal.

Like they can stay, they can get killed a certain number of times and then eventually they just stop coming back. It's a lot of times. It's certainly a high number. thousands of times. Thousands of times. It's like fucking Super Mario Bros. with the cheat code on there. You just keep on resetting a level.

But you hear that and you automatically, I think we have at this point been conditioned to automatically just think superhero. That's like the first thing I thought, oh, this is a superhero. But then you watch it and you realize they're not superheroes at all. They don't have super strength.

They don't have like any sort of mind-bending abilities. They're just like a normal person who comes back to life. So if you shoot them once or twice, they're like incapacitated, you can just grab a hold of them. Right. And we saw that happen. Yeah. In fact, in the beginning of the movie, Andy says, you know, we can't do jobs in the same

place twice because people might try and capture us and then they'll torture us for like 600 years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I thought that that was really, really clever, like a really fun twist on it. But yeah, I had the exact same thought. After they've killed them like once or twice and seen them come back, I'm like, just cut the head off and then like separated from the body and see what happens. Like, this doesn't seem that complicated.

But I don't know how that works. Maybe they address it in the comics. But at this moment, I do not have an answer for you, Jason. So this movie was directed by Gina Prince Bithwood, who was also, she worked as a television writer for many years and then directed an absolute classic and love in basketball. Outstanding. Outstanding. Like, what a pivot. What a pivot.

It just to go from that to this. This is such a great, I don't know, entrance into the action movie genre. Like, you watch this and you're like, okay, whatever her next thing is, sign me up. That's what, that's like the level that this movie is, I felt like. So with this movie, she becomes the first black woman to direct a comic book movie, a really cool development in this genre that has really ruled Hollywood for a decade plus now. Any thoughts about that? And any, do you want to, should we, should we cut it up on love and basketball really quickly?

We should definitely talk. We should definitely talk about love and basketball. What an amazing career to be like, I did, by the way, I did love and basketball. That's all you need to say, really. Yeah, that's a Hall of Fame season right there. That's like, that's incredible. So when I was watching this and I started reading about her and reading about, like, this is like her first action movie thing that she's done, I was, I was immediately, like,

the first thing I thought of was when Catherine Bigelow did, point break. And I was like, after that, every movie that she made, I want to, I want to watch it. I want to be a part of it. And then you hear like, oh, there's a person who directed Love and Basketball. It's got this new action movie with Charleston. It's just like checking off so many of the boxes of things that I love and enjoy. It's just great.

It's just great to watch. Now, so, of course, this is something of a trend with Netflix now of these kind of high pedigree action vehicles that you would have expected to see in a movie theater. There's John Wooz Manhunt, J.C. Chandor's Triple Frontier, Michael Bay Six Underground. We talked about extraction the last time we were on TV concierge. And now this. I would assume we're going to see more and more of these kind of films, whether it's comic quick adaptions or what have you, these kind of, you know, writing our wheelhouse action movies

with recognizable stars on Netflix. Are you game for that? I'm absolutely game for that. You're talking about let's get some really good actors, check. Great. Love it. Let's get a really good director. Love it. Let's pay everybody a lot of money.

I like it a lot. And let's make these movies look great. I thought out of the ones that you listed, I think the old guard, for me is the second best of that group. I think extraction is like 10% better. If I have, like, if I have to pick between those, too. Slightly better set pieces.

Slightly better set pieces. Yeah, yeah. But I think I like the story in Ongard more. I just love the lore and the way that also the setup, and this is like not too much of a spoiler, but the fact that they set you up so strongly for a sequel is great. Yeah. I'm ready for the sequel. Yeah.

So as soon as that, are we allowed to spoil it? Is that, we can talk about it, right? We technically shit. We can lightly spoil it, I think. But like not too much. Okay, I won't spoil like the big thing. But I will say like one specific part of the movie that really was like, you know, when you're watching the movie, there's a thing that would happen. And you go like, fuck, yeah.

Like with extraction, the one part early in the movie during the chase scene when the camera comes like swiping across and we go from like outside of the car into the back seat of the car. I was like, that's fucking cool. I want to watch the rest of this movie. With this one, it was when, and this part is in the trailer, so it's not a spoiler. but they come walking into the room, they get all shot to hell. We see them lying they're dead. Nobody's moving. And they hold on that for just long enough.

And then you slowly start to see their heads and faces start to heal themselves. And the one character, the fucking bullet pops out of his head. And I was like, yes. I love it. I want to see this happen as many times as possible. It's so much fun. It's just fun. You know what it was for me that really hooked me in?

So this is on a weekend that I, also watched Palm Springs. So it was really a weekend in which I was just diving into these new films that are trotting on tropes that I'm familiar with but are putting new spins on it. The moment in this movie, in Old Guard, that really hooked me is Joe and Nikki have been captured by the bad guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And one of them is like, oh, you're upset because we're like messing with your boyfriend.

And they're in a relationship, these two immortals. And Joe goes on like a tirade about like, basically about you don't understand our relationship. You don't understand what love is when you've been with a person for a thousand years. And I was just like, holy shit. Yeah. I think that this story really dealt with the effects, both. positive and negative of like basically living forever, the deep bonds that you can forge with other people and also the trauma that that happens because you're living this violent lifestyle for

1,200 years. Highly recommend watch it now. Any closing statements, Shay? Yeah. If you haven't seen it, turn the podcast off right now because I'm going to, I want to talk to Jason for a second about one part of the movie that. Okay. Just turn it off.

Just be like, that's the end of the podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Check in next time. TV concierge, whatever. Bye. Okay, Jason. Yeah. Okay, listen. I was like, again,

they're like a bunch of parts in this movie I really, really like. But the one that really, for some reason, reached into my chest and grabbed the hold of me is when they were talking about Charlize,

their own best friend. And they're like warriors together. Yes. And you see them get captured. You see them getting killed multiple times and tortured. And they finally decide that they're going to take her friend

and they're going to put her in a fucking metal box and drop her into the ocean. Nightmarish. Nightmarish. So they do that and they show her going down there. And again, she's not a superhero. She can't like bust out of this thing. She's just trapped in there until she can figure out how to open it. And the, and they're like super crazy part is we see it happen. They show it one time at least. They drop her in. The box fills up a water. She's trapped. She's like screaming her head off. Just air bubbles coming out. And then she dies. She dies. And then she comes back to life and she's still in the box. And she starts screaming

again and then she dies again. And you realize she fucking must have died 40,000 times in this box when she gets out, she's fucking everybody up. Like this is going to be the worst, baddest, meanest person. Like, who has ever done that before?

It's just such a great, great, great thing here. She's pissed. I can imagine, can't imagine like her, again, this is still spoiler type of three. Whenever they do the sequel, And Quinn confront Charlize. Charlize will be like, excuse me, Andy.

And he'd be like, well, we look for you. We look really hard for you. If you're Quinn, you must be like, you can't have looked that hard. You did not look that hard. How hard did you really look? It's going to be good. I'm excited for the old guard too. Really, really fun movie.

Well, that's it for today. On behalf of myself, Shea, super producer, John Kerma, and everybody at the Ringer, we hope you're staying safe and healthy. Thanks for listening to TV concierge on the Ringer Podcast Network.