The comic-book movie starring Charlize Theron was directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, who assembled a diverse team for the film.<\/b>
\nThe new Netflix adaptation of \u201cThe Old Guard\u201d graphic novel might be the most radical superhero movie made so far.
Sure, the plot doesn\u2019t immediately signal this: The story follows four immortal soldiers who for centuries have fought the good fight for humanity, and just as they take on a new recruit they come under fresh attack from powerful forces.
But look a little closer: The team\u2019s commander is a woman, Andromache of Scythia \u2014 Andy, for short \u2014 played by Charlize Theron. And the newly recruited immortal Nile is a young Black woman Marine played by Kiki Layne. Two men, a Christian and Muslim, provide the romance, having fallen in love after killing each other (repeatedly) during the Crusades.
Then there\u2019s the production itself, led director Gina Prince-Bythewood. The first Black woman director of a superhero or comic book movie, Prince-Bythewood hired many talented women filmmakers for her team \u2014 including her longtime editor Terilyn A. Shropshire \u2014 to give more women a shot.
\u201cThe crew I put around me were who I felt was best for the job and would impact the film positively,\u201d Prince-Bythewood says by phone from her home in Los Angeles recently. \u201cIt\u2019s not a politically correct thing at all; it is that these women were incredible.
\u201cThe reality of our industry is that their resumes are not as long as their male counterparts, but it\u2019s not about talent: It\u2019s strictly about opportunity,\u201d she says.
What Prince-Bythewood did with the opportunity when Skydance Media hired her to direct was make a movie that\u2019s as thrilling as any superhero movie \u2013 and more human than most.
\u201cPart of my pitch to Skydance and then Netflix was that for this film, it is an action-drama,\u201d she says. \u2018And the quiet parts are as important as the big set-pieces, because without the audience investing in the characters the action can feel monotonous.
\u201cIf everything is tied together, for me, that\u2019s when I get most invested. So it was really about starting there.\u201d
A new direction
Before \u201cThe Old Guard,\u201d Prince had mostly directed smaller budget dramas and romances like \u201cLove & Basketball,\u201d \u201cBeyond The Lights\u201d and \u201cThe Secret Life of Bees.\u201d
But she\u2019d been wanting to move into the action side of things, directing the pilot of the Marvel series \u201cCloak & Dagger\u201d and spending nearly two years on the Spider-Man related comic-book movie \u201cSilver & Black\u201d before it stalled out.
\u201cSo it was kind of that perfect moment,\u201d Prince-Bythewood says of the day she received Greg Rucka\u2019s screenplay for \u201cThe Old Guard,\u201d the comic book he\u2019d created in 2017. \u201cI started reading and I fell in love so quickly with it. I just thought the story was so interesting.
\u201cIt kept surprising me. The immortality of it, yet it was about the tragedy of immortality, which I felt was different and real and true.
\u201cAnd love the fact that it was this group of warriors from different cultures and sexual orientations and genders that have come together to save humanity,\u201d she says. \u201cI mean, that\u2019s the world that I \u2014 when I look out \u2014 that\u2019s what I see, that organic diversity.\u201d
Landing Charlize Theron as Andy was a casting dream come true.
\u201cCharlize is one of the few women that really rock this space,\u201d Prince-Bythewood says of the Oscar winner whose action film credits include such fare as \u201cMad Max: Fury Road\u201d and \u201cAtomic Blonde.\u201d \u201cI knew going in that she knew what it would take.
\u201cWith Nile, I had been auditioning a lot of women, but there was just that thing missing for me, the believability that they were a Marine, that they had toughness,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd Kiki (Layne) came and auditioned, and literally five seconds, and I was like, \u2018Oh my god, I\u2019m seeing Nile.\u2019\u201d
The Marvel pilot and aborted \u201cSilver & Black\u201d project taught her a lot about making an action movie, and the budget those movies receive gave her all the tools she needed.
\u201cI\u2019m not going to lie, it\u2019s going to be hard to go back to having the resources I had before, but with those resources, with that bigger budget, comes a lot more pressure, a lot more voices,\u201d Prince-Bythewood says.
\u201cSo you just to ignore the pressure and focus on telling a good story, because at the end of the day, whether you have $7 million or 10 times that, you have to start by telling a good story.\u201d
Making the cut
For Shropshire, editing a film for a woman director wasn\u2019t unusual. In addition to working on all of Prince-Bythewood\u2019s projects, she also worked multiple times for Kasi Lemmons on films such as \u201cEve\u2019s Bayou\u201d and Ava Duvernay for the miniseries \u201cWhen They See Us.\u201d (Duvernay is also at work on a superhero movie, an adaption of Jack Kirby\u2018s \u201cNew Gods.\u201d)
Still, Shropshire is the first Black woman to edit a superhero film, and the rare editor to cut one by herself, without a co-editor or two to handle the voluminous frames of footage these movies produce.
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely a gauntlet to be thrown down to take a project like this on,\u201d she says. \u201cBut again, what\u2019s great is that I too love these movies. And when your director gets to flex their muscles, so do you. You get to kind of use different tools in your toolbox.\u201d
Prince-Bythewood focused on making the characters fully realized, and Shropshire emphasized this in the editing of \u201cThe Old Guard.\u201d Unlike some movies in the genre, the action sequences allowed for the emotions of each punch or gunshot to be apparent on the characters\u2019 faces.
\u201cIt was very important for Gina that some scenes, which again, typically are so fast-paced to the point where you can\u2019t even keep track of what\u2019s going on, she wanted to keep things grounded in a kind of reality,\u201d Shropshire says. \u201cYes, these people have extraordinary gifts, which might be considered a curse at times, but she wanted to feel like they moved through life in a very grounded way.\u201d
She says she never really paused to think about whether she\u2019s the first to do this or that in Hollywood.
\u201cIf I am the first, I am happy to take that title, and I hope that won\u2019t be the case for an indefinite period of time,\u201d Shropshire says.
\u201cEditing is a craft you can hone and continue to master, and then you just wait for the opportunity, for someone to give you a project like this so that you can truly show your work,\u201d she says. \u201cUnfortunately, in this business those opportunities are rare.
\u201cI cannot tell you that if Gina had not asked me to do this I could have walked into an interview with someone who\u2019s never worked with me before and, you know, I would have been the obvious choice.\u201d
The next adventure
Prince-Bythewood says that as she was wrapping up \u201cThe Old Guard\u201d she\u2019d convinced herself she wanted to return to a smaller project next, another love story perhaps.
\u201cAnd then an opportunity came that will be announced very soon, and I\u2019m like, \u201cOh my god, I can\u2019t turn this down,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cSo I\u2019m going back into the sandbox, the bigger sandbox, but I still hope, absolutely, that I can bounce between both worlds.\u201d
She may have made history, but she\u2019s more hopeful that she\u2019s made a terrific film to which viewers will flock and make a success.
\u201cWhat I\u2019m most excited about is proving myself in that world so that there\u2019s never that question any more of, \u2018Can she do it?\u2019\u201d Prince-Bythewood says. \u201cMy hope is in the same way that (\u201cWonder Woman\u201d director) Patty Jenkins opened the door absolutely 100 percent for that group of women that have movies this year, that I have done the same for others as well.\u201d<\/p>\n