#and it's a goddamn GUT PUNCH when booker turns his coat as a result

[words-writ-in-starlight]

ok i watched the old guard after your posting abt it since by now i trust everything you say regarding media recs. im simply amazed. the moments where faith is adressed in the best ways is when the movie Implies faith, without talking about it directly. the implications, the subtle nods, the questions youre left with... my relationship with the concept of God and Religion is Complicated(tm) but it tugged a string i thought was cut. thank you for bringing this to me

The Old Guard is just so good!!!  I am so glad that it tugged a heartstring you’ve missed feeling!

Honestly, a lot of ink has been spilled on this, but I feel the need to throw in my two cents: this is a movie about people who like each other and Christ I have missed that.  Remember when I went through a brief phase of profound bitterness about the MCU and talked a lot about how the emotional beats of the later films fall apart because they never spend time establishing that these people like each other?  The Old Guard is like the opposite of that.  Every scene in the first two thirds of the movie is about how much the Guard loves each other.  Even Booker--even Booker, and that’s a whole separate ramble about Booker, so for now just trust me--loves them!  That’s why his betrayal hurts, and it’s why the viewer kinda fucking gets it when Joe is shouting at him in the lab, and it’s why it means a lot when Nile barks “No man left behind” at him.  They have inside jokes, they touch each other and bring each other gifts, they check in after they die.  This movie proves that you don’t have to put your whole fucking plot on hold to show that your main characters are emotionally attached, you can just...do it.  Just pepper it into interactions you already have.

It just--it’s a take on immortality that says hey, yeah, immortality sucks, it has the potential to be absolutely miserable, but also we are not meant to be alone, and being together is a way to find joy even in an immortal life.

And like--it’s not a movie that does a lot with faith, except for Nile and Andy’s conversation about it, except for Nicky and Joe’s offhand mentions of the Crusades, but something about that core take of togetherness is what makes immortality worth having speaks to me, on that level.