MovieChat Forums > The Old Guard (2020) Discussion > Lived all that time and still too stupid...

Lived all that time and still too stupid to figure out how to die?

posted 4 years ago by TerraFirma69 (1925)
27 replies | jump to latest

There are ways to obliterate yourself if you want to. eg, build a machine that cuts off your head, dashes it to tiny little bloody cellular bits and incinerates it and the body. Don't tell me there's any coming back from that.

If you're going to argue that wouldn't work somehow, then if you lived for a few centuries you can't tell me you couldn't come up with something equally or more thorough and final.

I mean in the movie it depicts them whining about not being able to die and it never even addresses something as simple as what happens if the head is cut off.

[–] HAL 9010 (903) 4 years ago

Andy says she has been burned, so assuming flames consumed her, she was split up in lesser bits that your device, and she still returned.

[–] Moonglum9 (10709) 4 years ago

I wonder if you cut one of them up into a bunch of pieces and separated them if each piece would grow into a whole new person?

[–] HAL 9010 (903) 4 years ago

The lab cut little pieces from them, and they remained just that... so I don't think so. I think it is heavily hinted their purpose is somehow divine, and if so, it stands to reason they can't be replicated. There can be only one Andy, for example. And whatever happens to her, in whatever creative way it may happen.... she will return/regenerate somehow until her time is up. So again, given the source of their powers, I do not think the OP has a point or even the villain of the movie... it is not a natural mutation we can manipulate or play with. It is a divine power.

[–] HAL 9010 (903) 4 years ago

[deleted]

[–] TerraFirma69 (1925) 4 years ago

Assuming flames consumed her and she was split up? I assumed she meant she was burned as a witch but remained whole and recovered.

If she was indeed as you say 'split up in lesser bits than my device', well how did that recovery work?

I'm ok with going with the spirit of the movie but I also like it when they make an effort to address obvious questions like this.

They could simply say 'we just reappear but we don't know how', something like that would be better than nothing as an answer to one of the main questions (ie what are our tolerances etc?) a person who became one of them would be asking.

[–] HAL 9010 (903) 4 years ago

Naturally she recovered, but if the flames consumed her it explains why she never tested your machine :) And a good witch fire, burns like it is nobody's business....

While I agree it is not explored, it is heavily hinted that their existence is somehow divine, and if so, it stands to reason they can't be destroyed no matter the level of creativity. So given the source of their powers, it is not a natural mutation we can manipulate or play with or destroy. It is a divine power, destined by an otherworldly agenda. And deadly-ingenious-machines can never be a match...

Anyway, why do they think they wanted to kill themselves?

[–] TerraFirma69 (1925) 4 years ago

Didn't the one who betrayed them seem pretty keen on ending it? I assumed given his attitude that they'd at least seriously talked and speculated about it.

[–] HAL 9010 (903) 4 years ago

Now when you mention it, I don't recall what his agenda was?

[–] Alex (1478) 4 years ago

Too tired of living and he knew Andy was wanted to die the most.

[–] TerraFirma69 (1925) 4 years ago

Yeah he talked about he and Andy living with grief and was looking for a way out that he hoped the mad scientist could provide.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

I think a more complete method of suicide would have been submersion in a very strong acid which would have broken the person down into its smallest parts possible as each molecule would be pulled apart and transformed by the acid.

In the end it was difficult to give a shit about a character that cannot die, at least with Superman you had kryptonite... but if you have a character that simply can't die then there is no suspense when they are supposedly in harms way since there is no real threat.

[–] TerraFirma69 (1925) 4 years ago

Ha, I like it. Broken down in acid and then make sure it goes through a mixer and is further and further diluted and then spread all over the desert with a crop duster. Pretty hard to come back from that.

As to your second point, I think it was easy to give a shit about them since their immortality and it's complications is actually a cause of constant lingering unhappiness and fear for them.

Understandably so as demonstrated by the utterly horrific ordeal of the woman in the iron maiden and the experimentation in the lab. They have no superhuman strength or magic abilities to avoid things like that, and the prospect of such fates would make their lives very stressful to say the least.

Not to mention the hardships of having relationships with mortals, that would certainly grind you down.

[–] Ryker (194) 4 years ago

I took it to be that they didn't actually try to kill themselves. They try to do good with their gifts while they can (although Andy is pretty apathetic at the start of the film).

[–] TerraFirma69 (1925) 4 years ago

Also the one who betrayed them seemed like he wanted it to be over. They would all have considered it and discussed it at some point surely?

[–] Ryker (194) 4 years ago

True but I guess I figured they must have had that convo plenty of times over the last 200 years since he was with them. At the end of the day they're sticking to their mission and can't give him what he wants.

And to your first point, I doubt Booker (the one that betrayed them) ideally wants one of the painful options you laid out. He likely just wants to be able to live out a normal life (likely with a partner) before his time comes and he thought Merrick could help him find the key to that.

[–] TerraFirma69 (1925) 4 years ago

Agreed, despite my thoughts he probably wants to simply be made mortal and live out a life - not be mashed to bits by my horror machine.

Watching the movie though I got the impression that they wanted a way out of something that they had no control over or insight into and that was ultimately making them unhappy so I was (maybe in an overreacty way) speculating on them not using their imaginations to achieve that.

[–] Ryker (194) 4 years ago

"Agreed, despite my thoughts he probably wants to simply be made mortal and live out a life - not be mashed to bits by my horror machine."

Lol, love that sentence.

Yeah, the fact that the immortality is random makes Booker more eager to find someone who can hopefully explain it (and end it) with science. They don't really have the tools or knowledge to do so themselves.

[–] TerraFirma69 (1925) 4 years ago

Perhaps this could help:

https://youtu.be/lfsMMVgIToA

[–] jlam888 (574) 4 years ago

Can vampires do it?

[–] TerraFirma69 (1925) 4 years ago

I don't see why not.

[–] Hegetus (4) 4 years ago

I guess they've been shot in the head enough times to make them stupid. Or are we supposed to believe that a higher deity always repairs their neural pathways and grey matter to identical state as before?

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

Yes, I wondered how the 'rules' of immortality worked in this movie.

The villain's main plan was based on immortality happening at the cellular level. That would keep you from aging, keep your body protected from disease, enhance your ability to recover from a certain level of bodily damage, maybe regenerate lost limbs... essentially the same powers as Wolverine/Deadpool.

It certainly wouldn't let body parts re-join though, keep you from starving, enable you to survive nuclear fire, getting crushed to a pulp, etc.

[–] TylerAArse (2654) 4 years ago

You'd think quick decapitation would finish one off. It's kinda like watching a vampire movie. Different movies have different rules. One would think that if you lived for a few hundred years, you'd figure out a way to end yourself. For all we know, a head-chop would just leave their head rolling around on the ground watching the body for the next 100yrs.

[–] TerraFirma69 (1925) 4 years ago

....until someone was kind enough to join the neck stumps back together. Man, the would be a super annoying 100 years, 'specially if you weren't facing a window.

Then what if that Samaritan decided it would be funny to put it on facing backwards, would it knit like that?

Or if two immortals had both done it in a pact, could you swap their heads?