ADAPTED FROM THE ACCLAIMED COMIC BOOK, NETFLIX’S THE OLD GUARD INTRODUCES US TO CHARLIZE THERON’S IMMORTAL MERCENARY ANDY. CREATOR GREG RUCKA AND DIRECTOR GINA PRINCE-BYTHEWOOD TALK ABOUT WHAT MAKES THIS STORY OF IMMORTALITY DIFFERENT

WORDS: STEVE O’BRIEN

COMICS © 2017 GREG RUCKA & LEANDRO FERNANDEZ. IMAGE COMICS, INC

WHO WANTS to live forever?” the great Freddie Mercury once sang. Who indeed? For some, the dream of eternal life is the ultimate trophy, but think about it: yes, you may be able to one day jet off to work in a flying car, chew on a Sunday roast food pill or finish Marcel Proust’s Remembrance Of Things Past, but is it really worth seeing everyone you’ve ever loved grow old and eventually croak before your ever-youthful eyes?

That’s the sadness behind the action of Netflix’s new SF flick The Old Guard, in which a band of ageless mercenaries, headed up by the tired-of-life and centuries-old Andy (Charlize Theron), are pursued by a ruthless pharmaceutical honcho who plans to replicate and sell the group’s death-defying powers.

Immortals are a heavyweight presence in the world of SF, from Marvel’s Eternals to the elves of Middle-earth, but usually it’s all about them being serene and god-like and impossibly wise. What few books or movies ever seem to explore is the built-in tragedy of a life spent without death as its inevitable end.

“I had this idea for this woman - I knew she was a woman - who was just so incomprehensibly old and was also so incomprehensibly sad as a result,” says comic book writer Greg Rucka, who debuted The Old Guard via Image Comics in 2017. “I knew she was old because she couldn’t die, and I knew she was sad because she couldn’t die, but everybody else had.”

Rucka’s initial thoughts for the story were, somewhat amazingly given the melancholic nature of the eventual comic book, more akin to a Looney Tunes cartoon.

“I thought it was kind of silly. I could do anything I wanted to them, and they’d be fine!” he laughs. “But the further I got into it the more I got to recognise what it was I was actually writing about, which is I was actually trying to thematically argue the necessity of death. Why it is people have to die, and why it’s important and right that they do. We are creatures of narrative. All of us are born knowing, or eventually learning, that the story ends the same way, no matter who you are. Prince or pauper, you’re gonna die. And that inevitability is what gives our lives meaning. If you don’t know that there is a last chapter coming, then what’s the reason to get out of bed in the morning?” he reasons.