Highlander 1986
Suppose, for a second, you’re a Trans-Am-driving gun nut who happens upon a dark alley in which two complete strangers are sword fighting. Do you A) drive to the nearest payphone and call the cops or B) get out and shoot at these people who you don’t even know? If you chose B, you belong in this movie.
You know Highlander’s tagline even if you don’t know the franchise: There can be only one. But why must there only be one? When the French Christopher Lambert (playing a Scot) asks questions like that, the Scottish Sean Connery (playing an Egypt-born Spaniard) replies with another question: “Why does the sun rise?” That’s a cheat because even grade school children know why the sun rises, but no one seems to know why Immortals “must” fight. Considering how cool it is, I suppose it doesn’t matter. I mean, who doesn’t like sword fights that produce roughly as many sparks as a bumper car grid?
I’m getting ahead of myself. The year is 1985. Connor MacLeod (Lambert) is spectating a wrestling match at Madison Square Garden that gives him intense flashbacks to his life as a Scottish highlander in the 1500s. When he ducks out early to head to the parking lot, Connor is attacked by another Immortal. Connor beheads the mysterious attacker and absorbs his essence in a supernatural light show known as a quickening. Beheading is the only way to kill an Immortal and the quickening is the process which allows the victor to absorb the defeated party’s strengths and abilities.
Meanwhile, the “seven-foot tall” Kurgan (Clancy Brown) arrives in New York City. The Kurgan is Connor’s arch nemesis, having killed his mentor Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez (Connery). Don’t worry—through the magic of questionable screenwriting, Ramírez will return for a more significant role in the sequel. At any rate, the Kurgan has spent the last four hundred years quickening as many Immortals as he can. According to Ramírez, if someone like the Kurgan wins this ancient contest, the world will be plunged into eternal darkness.
The pacing is a little rough. The acting is good enough. You will be forgiven for scratching your head or making MST3K-style quips here and there. My mother tells me this was one of the first movies I ever fell in love with and that she would often hear me, from the other room, popping it into the VCR to watch it again and again. I was so young I don’t remember, but it certainly is up my alley.
When the movie was over I slipped Westworld into the Blu-Ray player and all but forgot about Highlander. But when I went to bed later that night, distant memories of the infamous sequel began to haunt me. When I was eight or nine years old, I had rented it on Pay-Per-View and recorded it to VHS. I still have the tape to this day.
I remembered Sean Connery was in it and just had to know what kind of movie magic they spun to bring his character back to life. I had frequently read how awful the movie was, which was at odds with how much I enjoyed it as a kid. So I bit the bullet and decided to watch Highlander 2 for the first time as an adult.
I may never be able to enjoy another movie again.
Highlander 2 (1991)
Forty years after the conclusion of the last film, Connor MacLeod is not just mortal, but an elderly and extraordinarily wealthy individual, as immortality no doubt reaps some great compound interest. He’s devoted himself to science-based philanthropy. One of the projects he helped fund was an artificially generated shield around the planet after corporate greed destroyed the ozone layer. Unfortunately, the shield has permanently blocked sunlight and created a runaway greenhouse effect. It’s also controlled by the very corporation that helped destroy the atmosphere in the first place. As it turns out, the ozone layer has recovered since the shield went up and the project’s executives will stop at nothing to keep this inconvenient (for them) truth suppressed.
Enter Louise Marcus (Virgina Madsen) who seeks to expose the truth by bringing the shield down. Within minutes of meeting Connor, two Immortals from the distant past (or another planet, depending on which version you’re watching) arrive on bitchin’ hover technology to assassinate the former contest winner. Despite his advanced age, Connor manages to decapitate one and quickens, restoring his youth and immortality. Shortly after hopping on a hover board to dispatch the other assassin, Connor and Louise have passionate sex, right there on the grimy streets.
If you’re wondering how they contrive to resurrect Sean Connery’s Ramírez, it doesn’t make any sense… nor does it matter. All that matters is he’s back, he gets a lot more screen time, and the actor seems to be having the time of his life elevating an otherwise standard fish-out-of-water role. Connery alone is worth the price of admission. Ramírez reunites with Connor and helps him and Louise take on the corporate powers that be.
Siskel & Ebert said only brain-dead moviegoers could enjoy Highlander 2. Some regard it as the worst film ever made (those people have yet to see Now you See Me). If you find the utterly ambitious and genuinely creative Highlander 2 more offensive than the plethora of soulless cash grabs coming out of Hollywood nearly every month, I ask you to reexamine your standards. You cannot call this film boring. You cannot call it passionless. Insane? Well, I’ll give you that one.
Highlander 2 is set in a dystopian cyberpunk future. For the most part, it’s a visually convincing setting. Somehow director Russell Mulcahy managed to squeeze better world-building out of his budget than Freejack, Johnny Mnemonic, and Cyborg combined. The theatrical cut of the film (which is what I initially saw on Pay-Per-View twenty years ago) even visited another planet, but the infamous alien subplot has since been reworked and retconned in subsequent editions.
Granted, the theatrical cut of Highlander 2 ruined the mythology of the original film within the first few minutes. It asserts the Immortals were (surprise!) aliens all along. Luckily, this revelatory dialogue had been filmed with characters who spoke telepathically; the obvious fix was to simply rerecord the voice-over dialogue. In the subsequent versions, all verbal references to the alien planet Zeist are edited out of the dialogue even though the visual references more or less remain, albeit visually altered. This way audiences are led to believe (if they’re still paying attention) that it’s not an alien planet, but in fact Earth a long time ago.
These changes don’t really help the film, though, as it still suggests that Connor and Ramírez knew each other prior to their meeting in the original film. If anything, the changes made the movie more confusing. For instance, when the past assassins are given their orders to kill Connor, they say, “But he’s an old man now.” “Now,” even though the scene is set far in the past?
And you know what? Who cares? Just keep slathering on the 90s cyberpunk aesthetic and sparky sword fights. Highlander 2 is incapable of demonstrating restraint in its crusade for awesomeness. You get hover boards. You get bad guys who look like they’re straight out of a Hellraiser film. And you will never see a hero have sex with the heroine so quickly after they meet… and, uh, I do stress the word “quickly.” (Perhaps that’s the quickening.)
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