'The Old Guard' Clips: Charlize Theron's Group Of Immortal Soldiers Meets A New Member

Love & Basketball director Gina Prince-Bythewood has comic book properties on the brain. For a while, she was attached to direct a Silver & Black movie for Sony about Marvel characters Silver Sable and Black Cat (that project fell apart). She recently directed an episode of the Freeform series Cloak & Dagger. Now she's directing The Old Guard, a Netflix movie adaptation of Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernandez's comic book series about "a covert group of immortal mercenaries who must fight to keep their team together when their extraordinary abilities are exposed."

Four new clips from the film have arrived ahead of the movie's release next week, and you can watch them all below.

A quick note: each of these videos (annoyingly) has the trailer attached to the back end, so the footage you're looking for will be front-loaded in each one.

When a straight-faced Chiwetel Ejiofor can deliver a line like "there was an anticipated amount of carnage" to a dorky-looking villain, there's no mistaking the fact that you're in a comic book movie.

Theron has had a bit of a mixed record in comic book films. She starred in the kick-ass action spy thriller Atomic Blonde, which was based on the comic The Coldest City. But she also starred in the notorious dud Æon Flux, which effectively put director Karyn Kusama in director's jail for years. I would not say that I'm excited by these clips, but as I just (re)learned after hating the Eurovision trailer and loving the actual movie, perhaps out-of-context moments like this aren't always the best way to judge films before seeing them.

Here is the movie's synopsis:

Forever is harder than it looks. Led by a warrior named Andy (Charlize Theron), a covert group of tight-knit mercenaries with a mysterious inability to die have fought to protect the mortal world for centuries. But when the team is recruited to take on an emergency mission and their extraordinary abilities are suddenly exposed, it's up to Andy and Nile (Kiki Layne), the newest soldier to join their ranks, to help the group eliminate the threat of those who seek to replicate and monetize their power by any means necessary.

Theron, Ejiofor, Kiki Layne, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli, Harry Melling, Van Veronica Ngo, and Matthias Schoenaerts star, with Prince-Bythewood in the director's chair and Rucka writing the script based on his comic.

The Old Guard debuts on Netflix on July 10, 2020.