The most dramatic scene in ‘The Old Guard 2’ was Charlize Theron’s idea

Though “The Old Guard” franchise is filled with exciting action sequences, it also has some serious moments, and one of the most dramatic in “The Old Guard 2” was imagined by its star, Charlize Theron.

When immortal warrior Andy (Theron) learns that her friend from centuries ago, Quỳnh (Veronica Ngô), is actually alive, Andy is beside herself. She has felt guilty all this time that she could never locate her friend. And, to make things worse, Quỳnh has teamed up with the evil immortal, Discourse (Uma Thurman).

In one scene, soon after learning Quỳnh is alive, Andy has a memory from back in medieval times. In one of her darkest moments, she almost strangles to death a man who seems to have done nothing wrong to her until Quỳnh tells her, “This is not who you are.”

This dramatic moment is relevant towards the end of the movie when Quỳnh has her own dark moment. After an all-out battle between Andy’s team and Discourse at a nuclear plant, Andy comes across Quỳnh as she’s about to blow up the facility. In that moment, Quỳnh says to Andy, “Is this when you tell me that this isn’t who I am?”

“That was all Charlize,” “The Old Guard 2” director Victoria Mahoney told Business Insider, revealing that Theron came up with the sequences when they did reshoots on the movie.

“It was to give the audience another view of who these two were in time and what they’ve meant to each other,” she continued. “It wasn’t just fighting side by side but pulling each other from the dark side.”

Mahoney said they were able to build out the Andy/Quỳnh relationship thanks to the groundwork laid out in the first movie.

“My job was to grow all these wonderful aspects of what had already been planted,” she said. “How to honor them, celebrate them, and then expand.”

She also hopes that delving deeper into their relationship will make the audience think about the Andy and Quỳnh in their own lives.

“Going to your darkest self, many people can relate to that,” Mahoney said. “And that makes them think of the person in their lives who says, ‘That’s not you.'”

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