Highlander (1 Viewer)

[joshEH]

Well put, and what makes it even worse for me is the fact that David Abramowitz -- arguably the heart and soul of the TV series, and the same person who just recently also managed to write the excellent Highlander: Search for Vengeance animé film -- was rewritten by an unproduced, scabbed-out, non-WGA hack right before production on The Source started.

Abramowitz's involvement was largely due to Adrian Paul's pressure upon the producers, and he reportedly turned in an absolutely amazing script (rewriting or reusing parts of Peter Briggs's earlier drafts, which were also great)...and then, Davis and Panzer absolutely freaked out and threw in all this "planetary alignment" bullshit, which never even gets explained at the movie's conclusion, and had this Watkins guy completely buttfuck the earlier scripts' character arcs and subtle textures.

And they then reportedly hacked the cut to within an inch of its life, to boot (no surprise, there -- any Highlander flick running over 100 minutes sends them into a mad panic). "Quiet character moments? What're those?"

Though, to be fair, parts of the movie were good, such as the cabin scenes right before the cannibal-orgy, and I quite liked the character of Reggie...and who was, sadly, probably more of an actual, fleshed-out, three-dimensional human being than DUNCAN in this flick.

Thekla Reuten also made a fan out of me, and her quiet gravitas brought some much-needed weight to the film. Good casting, those two roles.

Still, what could've been...

 

[Chris Roberts]

As big a fan as I am of the original and as much as I tend to dislike remakes... I honestly look forward to someday when someone remakes Highlander as a movie trilogy with all new actors and a consistent story. It may never happen, but it would almost have to be better than the follow-ups to the original (save a few of the better tv episodes) and even the original is showing its age.

 

[Chris]

The original is brilliant because it ENDS. It has a definitive ending. It is surprisingly epic. The story is fitting. Connery's speech "why does the sun shine" is the most fitting of any speech I've heard anywhere, and it effectively answers questions that bothers most questions in SciFi by saying "who knows.. not everything needs explained".

That's what made the follow up movies so bad.. they were mired in trying to explain something the audience doesn't give a crap about. Who cares about why.. it just is.