R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned is a 2022 supernatural comedy film, a Direct to Video prequel to the 2013 film R.I.P.D.. It was directed by Paul Leyden and written by Andrew Klein and Paul Leyden.
Taking place over 100 years prior to the original film, during the days of The Wild West, Rise of the Damned shows the events of Sheriff Roy Pulsipher's (Jeffrey Donovan) death and his recruitment into the R.I.P.D. afterlife police. Roy is specifically recruited in order to investigate a strange emanation from an old disused gateway to Hell near Roy's hometown, and partnered with a sword-wielding medieval warrior-woman named Jeanne (Penelope Mitchell). The two find themselves on the trail of a gang of Deados led by Otis Clairborne (Richard Brake), an unusually powerful Deado who claims to be more than he seems.
The film also stars Jake Choi as Slim Samuels, a reluctant Deado who teams up with Roy and Jeanne, and Rachel Adedeji and Evlyne Oyedokun as Roy and Jeanne's illusionary human forms.
R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned provides examples of:
- Age Lift: Roy was in his 60's or so in the original film, whereas here he seems to be 40 (confirmed by the date on his tombstone) at the time of his death. Jeanne, who's been dead for 445 years, shows that R.I.P.D. agents don't age, so it's anyone's guess why Roy aged up in the 100 years between films.
- Badass Normal: Deados cannot be killed or even seriously injured by any physical means, and are stronger than normal humans (though not nearly as strong as the Deados like "Fat Elvis" from the first film were). However, a small group of U.S. Marshalls nonetheless manages to capture 3 members of the Deado gang in an Offscreen Moment of Awesome, without even realizing they were up against supernatural opponents.
- Black Like Me: Roy and Jeanne get sent to Earth in the form of two black women. When Roy questions why the Powers That Be would make his job more difficult by doing so (it being much harder to get information out of people or cooperation from the authorities as a black woman rather than a white man in 19th century America), Jeanne replies that they might want it to be a learning experience for Roy, a white authority figure, even if he was relatively tolerant for his time period.
- Boom, Headshot!: Played with. Unlike the first film, the Deados' "real" head is actually a wraith-like skull inside their chest, so now the heroes aim for the chest instead to score a soulkiller headshot.
- Historical Person Punchline: Jeanne is revealed towards the end of the film to have been Joan of Arc, explaining her prowess with a sword and fear of fire.
- Immune to Bullets: Soulkillers don't work on Otis, as when Roy tries to shoot him a damned soul emerges from him and takes the shot for him. This is because Otis is actually Astaroth, one of the leaders of Hell, and his body includes hundreds of absorbed damned souls which he can use to shield himself from soulkiller shots. It takes being shot by the Tears of Christ to finally kill him.
- One-Winged Angel: For most of the film, the heroes only consider Otis a threat because he possesses an R.I.P.D. soulkiller weapon (because his number two was a former R.I.P.D. agent gone rogue), which is the only thing that can kill a Deado or R.I.P.D. agent. In the final battle, he doesn't even bother with it, instead revealing his true form as Astaroth, the Devil's right hand man, a powerful demon seemingly composed of hundreds of evil souls.
- Prequel: The film shows the origins of Roy Pulsipher, the cowboy R.I.P.D. agent played by Jeff Bridges in the first film.
- Retcon: In the original film, Deados were simply people who died but refused to move on to the afterlife, remaining on Earth in physical form. Here, Deados are described as damned souls who escaped midway through their transport to Hell, and came back to Earth by possessing the bodies of innocent humans, and manifest as wraiths made of tendrils of black smoke that come out of an ouroboros symbol branded in their possessed body's chest. The original film does mention that Deados are able to stay on Earth because the human population is too large for the system to handle and some people simply slip through the cracks when they die, so those may simply be a different type of Deado that isn't a problem yet in the much less populated 19th century.
- Self-Offense: For most of the film, Roy believes his killer was a member of the Deado gang that attacked the train he was defending. Turns out Roy was shot in the back by the town mayor, a cowardly jerk who mistook him for one of the robbers.
- Token Heroic Orc: Slim Samuels was only scheduled to be sent to Hell for stealing, and lacks the total disregard for human life most of the other Deados, who were killers and worse, have. He ends up helping Roy and Jeanne in their attempts to stop the Deado gang and Otis.
