Genre: Action/Sci-Fi
Director: Rian Johnson
Writer: Seth Overton
Based on the video game series
Cast: Henry Cavill, Tom Hardy, Martin Sheen, Alicia Vikander, Lupita Nyong'o, Mads Mikkelsen, Dominic Purcell, Simon Pegg
Plot: It is the year 2185. Two years have passed since the events of the first movie. After his sacrifice in saving the Council - one that cost him his life, Commander Shepard (Henry Cavill) has become a hero on the Citadel with a statue being raised posthumously in his honour.
However, what nobody knows is that Shepard has been brought back to life by the "Lazarus Project" an initiative funded by Cerberus leader - The Illusive Man (Martin Sheen). Now working for Cerberus, Shepard is sent to investigate a recently attacked colony, where he finds clues suggesting that the Reapers are working by proxy through an insectoid species called the Collectors.
The Illusive Man explains that the Collectors reside beyond the Omega-4 Relay, a place from which no ship has ever returned, and tasks Shepard with assembling a team to stop them. Shepard is also given command of a new starship, the Normandy SR-2.
The Commander returns to the Citadel where he reunites with his old team-mates Garrus (Tom Hardy) and Liara (Alicia Vikander) in a bar. They are initially wary and don't fully trust him, especially after seeing him in Cerberus uniform. They even entertain the idea he might be a clone, an idea that later leads Shepard into an identity crisis. Aware of the danger that the Reapers might pose, they nonetheless agree to help him with this mission. As they leave, Garrus jokes that he didn't even get to finish his drink.
Before leaving the Citadel, Shepard meets with the local authorities who have intel of a possible assassination attempt against Joram Talid, an anti-human turian politician. Talid has run on an anti-human platform, furious that the Attack on the Citadel and Shepard's sacrifice was enough for humans to earn a place in the Council, whereas turians had to win the decades old war against the krogan to secure a place and an embassy on the Citadel.
Shepard stops the assassination attempt, but to everyone's surprise, the assassin is not human. It is actually a professional assassin named Thane Krios (Mads Mikkelsen) who was employed by The Illusive Man, in exchange for information regarding his wife's murderer. Since the mission was not successful, The Illusive Man agrees to give him a second chance if he joins Shepard's team. He agrees.
Meanwhile, Liara has intel that the IFF (an important starship component that will allow them to travel through the Omega-4 Relay) can be retrieved from the Migrant Fleet, a massive collection of starships that became home to the quarians after they were driven from their home world by the geth. Shepard also receives a distress call from an old friend, Wrex (Dominic Purcell), but the message is distorted.
On the Migrant Fleet, they meet with Liara's contact - a quarian named Tali'Zorah (Lupita Nyong'o) who is on her Pilgrimage - a rite of passage in which quarians prove their worth by bringing something of value to the colony. She agrees to add the IFF to the starship and act as the crew's engineer, only if Shepard helps her with her Pilgrimage in turn.
Before leaving for the Omega-4 Relay, Shepard decides to locate the signal of Wrex's call. They find it originates from Taetrus - a turian colony in the Mactare system. Moments later, they see in the news that Taetrus has been the target of a group of krogan rebels employing guerilla tactics such as remote-controlled freighters packed with explosive warheads and government building bombings. Shepard is afraid Wrex might be connected to those attacks.
While traveling to Taetrus, Shepard joins Tali in the crew chambers and they talk about their past. Tali recounts how she began hearing reports of geth, who had never ventured beyond the Perseus Veil since driving her people into exile, and became curious. She tracked a patrol of geth to an uncharted planet, waited until one was separated from its unit, then disabled it and removed its memory core. By hacking the memory core, she managed to develop a geth virus that would allow her to control the geth and drive them out of the quarian homeworld. However, this attracted the attention of the Shadow Broker, a mysterious figure - head of a criminal organization that extends throughout the entire Milky Way. The Shadow Broker sent his thugs to retrieve the geth virus and they succeeded, although what Tali doesn't know is that they were later intercepted by a Cerberus operative (Paul Grayson).
She clarifies this is what she meant when she said she needed help. This is what she wants to do in her Pilgrimage - to get back their homeworld from the geth. By retrieving the virus from the Shadow Broker, she wants to use it to deactivate the geth. Shepard debates her plan with her and asks if it is not basically a genocide against another sentient species and what difference it makes if the species is artificial or not. He brings up similarities to the genophage - a biological weapon developed by the turians against the krogan to severely reduce their number. She is visibly annoyed by his comparison and brings up the suffering her species have went through after losing their homeworld.
After arriving on Taetrus, the team is surprised to find that not only Wrex is not behind the attacks on the turians, but is actually actively fighting against his own kind. He is sick of the bloodshed perpetuated by his species in the name of revenge for the genophage. Being inspired by how Shepard's act of bravery brought humanity a seat at the Council, he believes that by making peace with the turians, the krogan will prove their goodwill and earn a seat at the council as well. Suddenly, they are attacked by the krogan extremists lead by Omeka - a genetically modified krogan with biotic powers. Liara is hurt in the gunfire and is bleeding. Shepard and Garrus attack the krogan henchman but are thrown into the air by Omeka's biotic blast. Thane manages a sneak attack and pierces through Omeka's armour with his special blade, but is then also thrown into a wall. Tali uses her wrist computer to hack into the henchmen's weapons rendering them useless. However, Omeka punches her, cracking the visor in her helmet, leaving her exposed. As a result of their weak immune system, compounded by centuries of living in sterile environments, all quarians by necessity dress in highly sophisticated enviro-suits, to protect them from disease or infection if they are injured.
Once again inspired by Shepard, Wrex decides to sacrifice himself for his friends while they escape. After an intense fight with Omeka, he comes off victorious. Some nearby turians, after seeing his courageous act, try to rush him to a hospital, but it is too late.
Meanwhile, the Illusive Man helps Shepard and his team by guiding him to a contact he has on Taetrus - a salarian doctor named Mordin Solus (Simon Pegg). Mordin gives Tali an immunization shot and tends to Liara's wounds. Shepard holds Liara, relieved that she is safe. She stares into his eyes with an assuring smile - She is now convinced he is the real Shepard and not a clone. They share a passionate embrace. Later, Mordin reveals that Omeka was actually the result of a failed experiment he attempted with someone from the Ascension Project - Dr. Jiro Toshiwa. They wanted to see if they could suppress the aggressive gene from the krogans.
On their way to the Omega 4 Relay, the team debate the ethical ramifications of Mordin's plan. Garrus and Tali think such a method is preferable to bloodshed and could have saved the millions of lives taken by the krogans. Shepard and Liara are against it and consider that it is not their place to decide which traits one species should or should not have. Thane does not pick any side.
The team finally goes through the Omega 4 Relay. It leads them to an uncharted planet, where they find a derelict reaper spaceship. In the central chamber, Shepard discovers that the Collectors have been making Human-Reaper hybrids from the genetic material of the abducted colonists, who are kept in life pods in the ship. One of the persons in the pods shares a resemblance to Ashley which prompts Shepard to free her from the pod, but the strange husk has no humanity left in it and attacks them. Other husks escape from their pods gradually and the team must now fight them off. The Illusive Man tells Shepard to preserve the collector technology used to create the hybrids in order for them to study it, but Shepard cuts him off and decides to destroy it. The Collectors arrive on the ship and attempt to stop Shepard from destroying everything, but they fail. The team's mission is a success, they board their spaceship and travel towards the Omega 4 Relay to return home.
Mere moments after, the Reaper reactivates and blasts off into space. Shepard uses the Normandy weapons system to attack, but it is a futile attempt. With a single blast, the Reaper destroys the entire planet behind it, as a show of force. The team decides that their only option is to travel through the Relay and destroy it on the other side so that the Reaper can't follow them. They succeed, but after having witnessed the power of just one Reaper ship, and knowing that there is an entire fleet of hundreds of thousands of such ships approaching their galaxy, no one sees it as a cause for celebration.
In the epilogue, Shepard gives up the Cerberus uniform and rejoins the Alliance. He once again warns the Council of the Reaper threat and some of the representatives, namely the Asari and the Turians, pledge to help. In order to honour his friend Wrex's wishes, Shepard tries to convince the Council to offer the krogans a seat among them, but they decline and instead they build a statue of Wrex in Taetrus. The team meets for one final time in the crew chambers, before they each must go on their separate paths. They agree to meet on the Citadel once the Reaper threat is imminent and to fight together against it. For now, Shepard must convince the other species to join the war. Having received the information he needed from the Illusive Man, Thane must embark on his mission to avenge the death of his wife. Also, as promised, Liara must arrange a meeting between Tali and The Shadow Broker to retrieve the geth virus. And Garrus - Garrus just wants to finish his drink.
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