IN ‘THE OLD GUARD,’ THE COMIC MOVIE GETS AN OVERHAUL

For all the painful absences of this summer, it has been a season blessedly bereft of superheroes.

No, they’re not all bad. And there is much of the normal rhythms of the movies’ main-event months to be nostalgic for. But one thing I haven’t missed is the unending business of franchises — their perpetual erection, expansion and, occasionally, hopeless collapse.

For better or worse, world building is on us this summer. And that has, in many ways, been a good opportunity for further examining the kinds