Highlander Movies why do they have to suck!

No, they're all in Hollywood making straight-to-video films with Steven Segal and Van Damme these days.

Seriously, the first Highlander just about got away with it because it was so fucking weird the cult fans embraced it (Christopher Lambert as a scot? Sean Connery as a spanish egyptian?) but the idea was never designed to be stretched to a sequel, let alone a franchise. The first film got lucky. Ever since then they've been trying to recapture whatever it was that made the original work, and failing dismally. A better director might make the fight scenes work, but the series is broken beyond repair - and has been since Highlander 2 was shat onto the screen.

This is a franchise that needs to go away.

After part 2 and that junk tv series, anything called "Highlander" is dead to me.

Because all the other Highlander movies as a whole (yes even 1) cant hang with the fight between Donnie Yen and Adrian Paul!

They should have stopped after part 1....

I liked Endgame. Most of it, anyway. You can point out everything wrong with it, and I'd agree, but I don't care. I like it anyway. Endgame, like the series, is romantic.

What second and third movies? There are no second and third movies. Those are just bad dreams we all had.

Fucking Hate Highlander 2-4. The first movie was quite possibly my favorite movie ever. The rest need to be burned, and forgotten.

He got it right. With a better script, and the right characters, Endgame could have been a good movie. The problem was that they tried to incorporate the storyline of H1 into it. I honestly believe they could have made a good Highlander movie out of Endgame, if they would have stuck with the group of immortals fighting a group of immortals. Instead they watered down the script and story with the philosophy of the first movie {they actually said they were ignoring 2 and 3 in the timeline before Endgame came out}. What they should have done, is ignore the entire franchise philosophy and make a good story based in the world where immortals exist, have sword fights, and must cut each other's heads off to kill them.

Or just ignore the whole thing period and make another vampire movie.

I quite liked the cartoon. That would have been a cool movie.

Know what's funny? My French teacher in High School eerily resembled Christopher Lambert and was also very hard to understand.

Did he have a half-stilted and forced laugh like Lambert, too? That would creep me out.

Good call. I actually liked the show quite a bit. The whole thing with the watchers, Methos, and Four Horsemen was bitchin'. And when McCloud went insane? I can't think of another show before this where the main character actually becomes an evil fucker and still continued on. I really can't figure out why there are so many detractors of this show, it took the philosophy of the original flick and expanded on it in ways that the movie series never could. I only wish that Adrian Paul had not decided to quit the series, because that thing had legs...

The films? Well, the fact that Connor was supposed to have killed the only other surviving immortal in the world pretty much insured that it was going to be a one shot deal. Considering that the fan pressure was so high, however, a sequel HAD to be made. Trouble was, there really was no way to do it without cheating a little bit. And they had to somehow stick to the formula they'd created in the first. Because they felt that they had a "sure thing". Movie studios are very afraid of fucking with a successful formula. Instead of trying to expand the series, open it up, let some light in, they tried to keep it exactly the same. And that pretty much always fucks everything up (just look at MIBII--this movie had TONS of potential, could've gone in any direction they wanted, but they tried to stick to the original formula as best they could and fucked it up).

The Highlander series would've worked much better as a series of prequels. This guy was over 400 years old! And we saw very little of that life. How many OTHER enemies did Connor have to face? Probably dozens! They could've made a bunch of nice little period pieces, but instead...

And Endgame? Well, that was just the studio's fault. They didn't have any faith in the flick, and therefore threw as little money as they could at the thing. It was a horrendously rushed shoot with very little production value (rumor has it that it wasn't even ever finished--much like ST:TMP), chopped to hell, than thrown into the theater with hardly any marketing whatsoever. Nevermind that the tv series ended on a high with millions of rabid fans champing at the bit to see Adrian Paul take over the mantle... The ball was dropped on that one, big time. Say what you will about the tv series, but a franchise that continued that particular story arc had legs, was originally planned that way... But they fucked the whole thing up.

Whoever was responsible for that decision should eat a bowl of cock...

Highlander 2 just lost all believability when they made Conner come from another planet.

I'm happy that I've only seen the first movie. I enjoyed the series quite a bit because it explored life as an immortal.

And this wasn't bad:

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What I saw of it. Making an Immortal a thief was a cool idea.

I never cared for this series, including the first. But speaking of whether Hong Kong could make a good one, Yuen Biao made a Highlander rip-off (homage?--you be the judge!) called "Iceman Cometh." He's a soldier chasing a killer and gets frozen in the ice. He and the killer wake up in presen day Hong Kong. The ending is just like the end of Highlander, with Biao holding a broadsword in front of a giant neo sign on top of a building. The difference is they end up ditching the swords and beat the crap out of each other. Not too bad.

I love the idea behind Highlander and I think it had great potential... the story of a race of immortals battling to the last could have been a truly great flick...

Notice my use of the past tense in that sentence. There will never be a good Highlander movie (the first movie is decent and it had some great moments, but calling it anymore than "decent" is pushing it).

Hmm...just a thoughtful question: Does the actress playing the Raven look a bit androgynous to you?

Annie Lennox in "The Matrix: Re-Buxomed"

I think that actress actually made the papers when she admitted to having slept with President Clinton. No joke. Then she had the layout in Playboy, then the Highlander spin-off.

Clearly the hottest wahini in the Clinton harem.

Digging this one up to say that I don't understand the love for the first Highlander. It's terrible. It's not even fun or good in a "it's so bad and cheesy and hammy thats its fun!". It's just absolutely terrible. There's no charm or wit to it or anything. The dialogue, the acting, the editing, the directing... everything is terrible. The basic idea is cool but the execution is majorly flawed. I honestly don't remember the movie being this horrendous but then again, I was a kid when I last saw it.

Highlander was a documentary shot in real-time, not a movie.  

 

 
So...maybe you should see it as an adult? I really like the first film, though it certainly tries one's patience. Here is what really doesn't work: The romance with Roxanne Hart and her whole character in general, the police investigation subplot that vanishes at the end of the second act, the cheap flashback scenes that are not set in Scotland, and the visualization of the prize.

 

For me, everything else works, even Lambert's performance (it's fairly obvious that the chemistry between Lambert and Connery and Lambert and Edney is rock fucking solid. They're all having a lot of fun). Why are people attracted to Highlander? Swordfights. Swordfights in a contemporary urban setting. Swordfights in a contemporary urban setting that result in localized electrical storms when one dude beheads another. It's a cool, simple, and largely original concept. It's romantic. It's urban fantasy and paranormal romance before any of those things either had a name or were widely known and defined. It's relatively brisk, it doesn't fuck about with your time or take itself too seriously. Case in point, Clancy Brown as the Kurgan. He's whacked out, weird and goofy as hell, and he's great at it. He doesn't try to create a real character, he just jumps in and creates a real character. Finally...QUEEN. No band was better suited for the tone of the Flash Gordon film, and no band was better suited for Highlander. This film is before nerd culture really took hold, so it isn't loaded with self-referential winks and shit like that, it's not that self-conscious. It's a recklessly fun film, it rarely hits the right notes, but it's great seeing it go for it.

 

All the rest of the films, the TV show, and the remake, can fuck off.

There isn't a thing in the above statement I don't agree with completely.

I guess I didn't clarify properly. I watched it the other day. The last time I had seen it before the other day was when I was a kid. So it's still fucking terrible. The sword fights are terrible too. Horribly choreographed. They just stand there and clang back and forth, left to right, left to right, left to right. Even when they try and do "fancy" things it still comes across as weak and lazy. I understand what you're saying though, Rain Dog. But it just doesn't do it for me. Normally I'm all for junk like this. Hell, I enjoyed 2 Fast 2 Furious and Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift. It's just the directing and editing for this are horrendous. Clancy Brown, to me, is the only highlight.

As far as the lack of chemistry between Christopher Lambert and Roxanne Hart is concerned, I believe I heard or read somewhere that Christopher Lambert said he and Hart couldn't get along with each other during the making of Highlander. One thing JacknifeJohhny forgot to mention about the brilliance of the first Highlander is the fact that the boys from Badstreet, USA, the Fabulous Freebirds, were in the movie.

Mulcahy came from the world of music videos, so there is a solid, lyrical rhythm to Highlander. It's not poorly edited or directed. He's always chasing that interesting angle, which is clearly important to him in the exposition scenes to keep the audience (and himself) from getting bored. Look at how he directs the goofy investigation stuff, the tracking shots, the blocking, the camera angles, he's always working to keep each frame alive. The style is very 80's, but this is a guy who made his name on Buggles and Duran, Duran videos.

Check the transitions, the fade ins and outs, especially immediately after McCleod is banished. The flow of those images right into the present day of McCleod walking the streets of New York is really, really well done. Then there's the scene which goes from Hart's investigation, to McCleod holding a book her character wrote, which pulls back showing him working a whetstone against his sword, which brings about the memory of the previous owner (Ramirez), leading to another great transition to the past.  

 

The production design, and location shots in Wales and Scotland also give the film a scope that belies the budget (though the Kurgan / Ramirez fight and the receipt of The Prize totally give away just how low budget the film really is). The name of the DP escapes me at the moment, but he's also working overtime creating an expressionistic film instead of a realistic one. The origin of light sources aren't important to him, it's about the mood (though there are at least two small moments where it's distracting).

 

There is more (like the very satisfying, simultaneous conclusion of every plot point, character arc, and theme in a single moment), but I have a job to get to. My main point isn't that Highlander is some underappreciated masterpiece (I don't care if people don't like it or not), it's that I think if someone dismisses a film, any film, it should be for stuff that's actually wrong with it.

I enjoy it, though I admit nostalgia plays a part in that.  It will always hold a special place in my cinematic lexicon for introducing me to Clancy Brown.