Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Accountant 2The Accountant 2, the long-awaited sequel to Ben Affleck’s 2016 action thriller The Accountant, has been met with positive reviews from both critics and audiences, but it’s worth investigating whether the sequel surpᴀsses its predecessor. Both movies focus on Affleck’s protagonist Christian Wolff, an autistic certified public accountant whose savant-level mathematical and analytical skills, military training, and alexithymia (difficulty identifying, understanding, and displaying socially appropriate emotions) allow him to work as fixer for criminal organizations across the globe. He’s able to both untangle complex financial records and eliminate those who embezzle from organizations with extreme prejudice.
The original movie focused on a specific case for Wolff in which he discovered fraud within a major robotics company, which was first flagged by Anna Kendrick’s character Dana. He spends the movie protecting Dana while also eliminating the more nefarious threats both to her and his client. The Accountant 2 shifted the tone in a lighter direction; it was almost a buddy comedy starring Affleck’s Wolff and his brother Braxton, portrayed by Jon Bernthal. There are many stark differences between the two movies, which naturally invite comparison.
The Accountant vs. The Accountant 2: Which Has A Better Story
The Accountant 2 Ratchets Up The Stakes From The Accountant
The Accountant introduces Christian Wolff’s backstory, but by and large focuses on the fallout from the case he works for Living Robotics, a tech company that hires him to unearth how tens of millions of dollars disappeared once it was flagged by a junior accountant. At the same time, it follows Agent Medina as she draws closer and closer to discovering Wolff’s true idenтιтy. The dual-detective work is intriguing, if not exactly ground-breaking, but the narrative really gets going once ᴀssᴀssins are sent to eliminate both Wolff and Dan Cummings, the junior accountant, because they know too much.
It’s an entertaining enough movie, but the stakes are fairly low. The Accountant 2 elevates the scope of the story by focusing on Medina’s recruitment of Wolff, and subsequently his brother, to help track down the murderers of her former boss. Their pursuit yields the discovery of a human trafficking ring between the United States and Central/Southern American that forces women to sell their bodies by kidnapping and detaining their children at a compound in Juarez, Mexico. While The Accountant 2 is lighter in tone, the stakes become far higher with the lives of children at stake.
Ultimately the increased scope and drama of The Accountant 2‘s story is what makes it more engrossing than the original. Unmasking an embezzler for a multi-billion-dollar company and fighting off ᴀssᴀssins is entertaining, but its simplicity means that it doesn’t get a chance to truly build out the world around Christian Wolff. While teased at the end of The Accountant, the sequel’s inclusion of Allison Robertson’s Justine and her small crew of ultra-talented children at Harbor Neuroscience makes the world so much richer, and provides far more material for a potential The Accountant 3.
The Accountant vs. The Accountant 2: Which Cast Is Better
The Number Of Key Characters Increased For The Sequel
Along with Affleck, Bernthal, and Kendrick’s characters, The Accountant introduces J.K. Simmons’ Treasury Director Ray King and Cynthia Addai-Robinson’s Marybeth Medina, the young Treasury agent charged with tracking down “The Accountant”, the faceless amalgam of Wolff’s various aliases. While Anna Kendrick’s character doesn’t return for the sequel, the others do, with only one major addition: Daniella Pineda as the mysterious ᴀssᴀssin Anaïs. Both movies have one-off characters as well, like John Lithgow’s Lamar Blackburn in the original or Grant Harvey’s sniper Cobb in the sequel, but the core cast carries over.
The key difference between the two movies is the extended screentime for Affleck and Bernthal together. While they only met briefly at the end of The Accountant, The Accountant 2 is basically a buddy comedy in which both actors thrive. Their highly-different performances balance incredibly well together, with Affleck’s quiet and reserved Christian acting as the perfect comedic foil for the boisterous and talkative Braxton. Cynthia Addai-Robinson is excellent in both movies, but she feels like she has a firmer grasp on her character in the sequel, and gets a real action sequence to play in as well.
The Accountant vs. The Accountant 2: Which Has Better Action Scenes
Both Movies Ended With A High-Intensity Shootout
There are plenty of one-off skirmishes in both movies, in which Christian and/or Braxton take on a single adversary, or a few. The Accountant 2 opens up with a shocking ᴀssᴀssination and keeps rolling with ᴀssᴀssin/special forces-level combat, while the original movie focused on Christian as a solo specialist in hand-to-hand combat and firearms. Both end with larger-scale ᴀssaults on a fixed position; the original features Christian killing everyone protecting Lamar Blackburn’s home fortress, at first alone and then with his brother’s help, while the sequel sees the brothers take on the small army protecting the Juarez compound.
Ben Affleck actually mastered the Indonesian martial arts style pencak silat, which is the distinct combat style featured in the action sequences in The Accountant.
The Accountant 2‘s action is better once again because of the inclusion of both Christian and Braxton. It’s showcased in the Juarez compound ᴀssault, which sees the brothers acting as a cohesive unit throughout the action en route to killing all the thugs intending to kill the children at the compound. While both movies are comparable in the balance of story and action, The Accountant 2 would get the edge based on its opening and closing action sequences alone.
The Accountant vs. The Accountant 2: Which Has Better Reviews On Rotten Tomatoes
There isn’t much of a comparison between the two movies’ Rotten Tomatoes scores, as The Accountant 2’s scores are clearly higher in both the critic and audience measures. The Accountant really didn’t secure a pᴀssionate fanbase until it was discovered on streaming platforms well after its initial release, and its scores reflect that. It boasts a Rotten score of 53% on the Tomatometer, while its Popcornmeter (audience-based) score is a more respectable 77%.
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The Accountant vs. The Accountant 2 – Key Review Scores |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Movie |
RT Tomatometer Score |
RT Popcornmeter Score |
IMDB Rating |
Metascore |
Metacritic User Score |
|
The Accountant |
53% |
77% |
7.3/10 |
51 |
7.4 |
|
The Accountant 2 |
78% |
93% |
7.3/10 |
58 |
6.9 |
The Accountant 2 has been far more celebrated on the popular review website, as it currently holds a Certified Fresh Tomatometer score of 78%. The sequel is also Verified H๏τ with a stunning 93% Popcornmeter score, indicating near-universal acclaim from verified audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. The movie is still in its opening weekend of course, and there is time for those ratings to shift. However, The Accountant 2 already has 148 critic reviews logged and over 1,000 verified user ratings, so those scores are genuine representations of each group’s sentiments.
The Accountant 2 Is Better Than The Accountant
It Improves Upon The Original In Almost Every Way
By almost any measure, The Accountant 2 is superior to The Accountant. While it’s true that it had less of a heavy lift in providing background and exposition than the original, the sequel did so much to open up the world that it doesn’t really matter. The lighter tone generated by the brotherly banter between Affleck and Bernthal makes the movie more enjoyable, while the action and internal mystery of the narrative is also far more engaging. ᴀssuming The Accountant 2 performs well enough at the box office, director Gavin O’Conner’s reported plans for a trilogy should come to fruition.
Source: Rotten Tomatoes
