I'm a nerd, in case you haven't noticed by reading this utter rambling crap. That's why it's odd that I've never seen the movie "Highlander" until recently. I knew next to nothing going into this movie other than the long sad list of crappy sequels, usually bitched about by The Spoony One. I'll admit, his bitching about the shitty sequels are what inspired me to watch the original and you know what? It's a damn good movie. Now I wish I had taken part in the Highlander battles while I was still participating in Dagorhir.
Anyway, the tagline for the first movie was "In the end, there can be only one." How does one make a sequel to that? It's built into the movie that there can't be a sequel without some serious retconning or ad-libbing. It could be done, and much better than how they did it, which I'll get to later.
For those of you who haven't seen Highlander, I'll give you the skinny: it follows Conner Macleod, played by Christopher Lambert. Is it weird that a Frenchman is playing a Scotsman? Yep. And yes, I've heard the complaints that Lambert doesn't do a Scottish accent, but he does during the flashbacks to Conner's past. It's not great but the dude tries. It makes sense for him not to do an accent during the present day segments; seriously, if I'm an immortal I'm going to try to lose my accent asap to try and be inconspicuous. Anyway, we see Conner hack some dude's head off in Madison Square Gardens. Yes, that's the opening to the movie. We don't know who the fuck this dude is, or the guy he's fighting with a katana or why they're fighting. Pretty badass scene to be honest, but after Macleod takes the guy's head, he experiences the quickening. We don't know what that is, for all we know, Macleod just blew up. Then we flash back to Conner's past. Get used to this. We flash back quite a lot to important events in his life.
The first flashback we see how Macleod became immortal. Pretty simple. He was a Scottish highlander (hence the title) and his clan went to war in 1536. He was killed by another immortal, The Kurrgan and comes back as an immortal himself. Then we see another odd casting choice in Ramirez. Sean Connery is always awesome, but let's face it. He's a Scotsman, playing an Egyptian masquerading as a Spaniard. Weird. Ramirez is Obi-wan to Macleod's Skywalker. He's the older trainer that explains everything to not only Conner, but to us. Immortals cannot die, except by severing their heads, they cannot have children, they do not fight on holy ground and when the time comes, they compete for the mysterious Prize. All the immortals duke it out until only one remains and that one is the winner.
The rest of the movie shows The Kurgan killing lots of immortals and flashbacks to more of Conner's life. Then we get the obligatory ginormous battle between Macleod and The Kurgan ending in The Kurgan's beheading and Conner winning the Prize, which turns out to be unlimited knowledge and power, as well as a normal mortal life and the ability to bear children. All in all, a good movie, well shot and including characters that we actually care about, which is rare among today's movies.
I'm not going to touch on the sequels here, if you want to know about those abominations visit The Spoony Experiment. I will voice my opinions on how a sequel should have been done. Sure, the first movie's favorite line was there can be only one. But a sequel could have been done if they put a bit of brain power into it. First we have to inject a bit of bullshit though. Show Conner on his death bed. He's recounting the events of the first movie to a friend of his, who we focus on more than normal, establishing that he's our new hero. Hell you could use Adrian Paul as the new guy; he's a swordsman, attractive, and hell, they used him in the later sequels as well as the series. He doesn't need to be a Macleod; although it could be possible if we establish him as Conner's son. After Conner dies, our new guy, who we'll go ahead and call Duncan since I've already got Adrian Paul in my head for this, leaves the funeral bummed out by the loss of his friend/possible father. On the way home he is killed in a car accident and we witness the quickening of a new immortal.
We witness his utter shock at waking up in a morgue and his starting out as an immortal, meeting other new immortals and explaining what he learned from Conner and eventually we see the game begin anew and the immortals coming together to battle for the Prize.
Sure, it's not a great movie, but by God it's better than Highlander 2: The Quickening isn't it?
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