Emily Blunt Needed To Be Written Out Of Sicario 2 Because She Was A Moral Compass

Emily Blunt Sicario

The following contains minor spoilers for Sicario: Day of the Soldado.

The original Sicario was a much-celebrated thriller and a large part of the film's success was due to the work of Emily Blunt. This made the fact that Blunt doesn't appear in Sicario: Day of the Soldado a problem for many. However, Soldado director Stefano Sollima explains that there's a very good reason why Blunt had to be written out of the sequel. Blunt's character of FBI agent Kate Macy was the moral center of the first film, and the sequel simply doesn't have a moral center. According to Sollima...

Emily Blunt is an amazing actress, but her role was sort of a moral guidance for the audience. In Soldado, we don't have that. This is closer to my vision of storytelling. I prefer not to have a moral guidance for the audience.

In Sicario, Emily Blunt's character was enlisted by the U.S. government in an attempt to take down the head of a major drug cartel in Mexico. However, it's clear from the beginning that she doesn't know everything about what is happening and the more she learns the more she realizes the characters played by Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro aren't going to let things like morality, or law, stand in the way of completing the mission they've come to do.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado pretty much picks up where these ideas leave off. Josh Brolin's character is sent into Mexico by the U.S. government to start a war between drug cartels and the methods he uses to accomplish the goal are the sorts of things no government would ever admit to. The fact is that you can't have Emily Blunt's character return in a movie like Soldado, because if she was there she would either blow the lid off the entire operation or, based on how the first film ended, get killed trying.

Of course, the other problem is that, as screenwriter Taylor Sheridan had previously explained, Emily Blunt's character went through a complete arc in the first Sicario. There's really no reason to bring her back as there's just nothing the character needs to accomplish. She's also already been through hell once. What audience would want to watch her, and by extension, us, go through that again?

Of course, sometimes the story you have to tell is about amoral people doing amoral things and a moral guidance character simply has no place. Soldado is just that sort of movie. It's hard to argue that any character in the film is a "good" person, and Stefano Sollima tells Business Insider he doesn't think a moral center is necessary, but that doesn't mean the movie doesn't have a story to tell or a point to make. Although, Soldado isn't being embraced by the audience quite as well as the first film, so maybe a moral compass isn't a bad thing.

Dirk Libbey
Content Producer/Theme Park Beat

CinemaBlend’s resident theme park junkie and amateur Disney historian, Dirk began writing for CinemaBlend as a freelancer in 2015 before joining the site full-time in 2018. He has previously held positions as a Staff Writer and Games Editor, but has more recently transformed his true passion into his job as the head of the site's Theme Park section. He has previously done freelance work for various gaming and technology sites. Prior to starting his second career as a writer he worked for 12 years in sales for various companies within the consumer electronics industry. He has a degree in political science from the University of California, Davis.  Is an armchair Imagineer, Epcot Stan, Future Club 33 Member.