I caught this movie on USA once and wasn’t that impressed. Sure, Sean Connery was funny (“Let’s go, haggus!”) and I suppose the effects were good for the time, but I was left pretty cold. I’m a guy who loved the TV show and can totally get into sci-fi/fantasy stuff like that. Am I missing something?
I don’t know what you’re missing…perhaps the era in which the picture was released helped. But I certainly liked it quite a bit when I saw it in the theater.
It’s not that it was particularly good. It’s that the subsequent ones were progressively worse.
I did like the TV show though. Campy but fun. Although, the curly headed blonde kid bugged the crap out of me.
Personally, I didn’t like it much, and some of the series I really did like, especially in the later seasons with Amanda and Methos.
To be fair, I didn’t see it until a couple of years ago on t.v. and maybe it just didn’t age well, as many movies don’t. Or maybe it was just one of those “you had to be there” movies. All in all, I found Sean Connery an odd casting choice in his character and, really, the same for Christopher Lambert. Overall, I wasn’t very impressed with Christopher Lambert. I’ve never watched the sequels, though I gather from others that the sequels did not compare favourably to the first. So, I don’t think I’ll ever be watching them.
I think a big part of the movie’s appeal was that the basic concept was pretty original and interesting. It was the execution (heh) of that concept that was a little lacking. The television series was quite good at exploring many of the different scenarios and possibilities for which the original movie laid the groundwork.
A few of my favorite things about Highlander:
The wipe from the parking garage of Madison Square Garden to the bonny fields of Scotland that left you going, “WTF just happened?” the first time you saw it.
The Queen soundtrack. If I ever see dudes running around with swords in a parking garage, I’m going to run, and run fast, lest I get trapped in The Highlander and hear nothing but Queen for the rest of my life. I keeeeed, I joke. (“Who Wants to Live Forever” tears me up every time I hear it.)
That skateboard shot in the final fight scene . . . That’s literally how the did it, I hear . . . put the camera on a skateboard and rolled it across the warehouse floor. Lovely.
The Quickening the first time I saw it. Even by the second time, I was thinking, “Hmmm, those effects didn’t age well.”
A young, svelte Christopher Lambert in a trench coat. (Speaking of things that didn’t age well. Cite: Highlander 3.)
And as others have said, it’s an intriguing, original concept. Because it’s been so often parodied and sequeled and exploited, it’s become a bit cliche, but if you saw it for the first time in the 80s, there was absolutely nothing like it out there. And who doesn’t enjoy a couple hours of macho, sword-weilding bad-assery? Aw yeah.
Anyway, it’s part of the geek cannon with which we should all be familiar in order to consider ourselves culturally literate. After all, if you haven’t seen Highlander, the motorcycle duel in the “Take My Wife Sleaze” episode of the Simpsons makes . . . uh . . . less sense . . .
It’s fun watching the detonators go off in the windows after the Final Battle.
The Kurgan’s take-down sword was kinda cool, too.
It’ on my list as one of my favorites of all time.
To me anything after that totaly sucked (the sequils and the tv series.)
I liked it because it was originial AND it left you still wondering “How the fuck did they get that way? or why did there have to be just one?”
The sequil totaly blew that mytsique for me. Which might not have been so bad, except;- DAMN! if they didn’t come up with the LAMEST reasons why they were the way that they were… Jeesh!
What, you didn’t think a Scot playing an Egyptian/Spainard and a Belgian playing Scot was appropriate casting?
The movie was more “cult” than good. You have to realize, this was back in the mid-Eighties when Schwartzenegger and Stallone were duking it out for title of King of the Blow Shit Up movies, Eddie Murphy was using foul language, and John Carpenter and Kurt Russell were turning out popular films on a budget smaller than the caterer’s bill on a current film. None of these films has aged particularly well (relative to, say, some of the films of the Sixties and early Seventies), but it it had a following due to the (then) originality of its material, particularly the mystical hero aspect, and made good use of the music video style of the day, i.e. rain, trenchcoats, mist, et cetera. Go back and watch the original Terminator and see how cheezy it looked.
A great film? Not hardly. But good use of flashbacks, some nice camera work, a great villian, and the clash of swords, anachronistic in the modern New York. It’s on part with, say, Big Trouble In Little China or Buckaroo Bonzai, and better than a lot of the garbage that was flying out of studios at the time. (Does anyone even remember Krull or Dragonslayer?) It’s not Blade Runner or Brazil, but then again, what is?
Stranger
THERE WERE NO OTHER ONES
THERE ESPECIALY WAS NOT A SECOND ONE
He bugged me even more after he (an immortal) started losing that curly hair.
Hey! I remember Krull. Krull was cool. I want a magic spinny blade thing.
C’mon the dialogue was hilarious.
Hotdog stall owner talking to cops, “What does in-com-pe-tent mean?”
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Big Trouble In Little China IS a great film! It stands the test of time. I’m not so sure of Highlander. I remember seeing it in the theater as a teenager with a bunch of friends and we thought it was the greatest thing ever. Saw it again a week or two later and found it boring. It was good 80’s style fun. Different, somewhat exotic and had lots of swordplay. Everything a teenage boy growing up in an Republican era could want.
I remember hearing it was very big in Europe which is why the sequels were made.
After all the ass-kicking and *“There can be only-one”*ing, I always found “The Prize” I can tell what other people are thinking to be lacking. That’s it? After killing off all the other immortals, that’s the big prize? I mean, it’s cool and all, but worth almost getting yourself killed time and time again? I thought it be more like shooting lightning bolts from your hands or being able to have sex with any babe you wanted.
Highlander is no cinematic masterpiece, but it’s one of those movies that I’ll happily rewatch every now and again, and feel pleasantly nostalgic about.
The guys at Blizzard remember Krull too. Night Elf Huntresses in Warcraft III use glaives (the magic spinny blade thing). I don’t know if PCs in World of Warcraft can get them, but the Night Elf guards have glaives too.
Also, all you need to know about Highlander is this: There can be only one.
Hmmm… John Carpenter’s The Thing is a pretty damned good movie (even if it is a remake). I saw it recently and thought it held up pretty well.
First date movie for Lady Chance and I, Spring Break 1986.
Beyond that I always thought the appeal of it was twofold.
First, the ‘There can be only one.’ thing remains an astonishing tagline that appears to have somewhat entered the wider (non-fanboy) consciousness. That alone demonstrates its power.
Second, the concept that these immortals are given a special power or ability in order that, down the line, God can see whether humans are worth saving. There’s a clear messiah element at work in the movie.
That, to extend, is why the prize is so important. The Highlander can go out and begin bringing differing groups together to promote peace and justice and brotherhood (and so on…). If the Kurgan had won he’d have the same prize and use it to self-promote until he ran everything. I’m sure God would have been very disappointed.
Oh, and the wipes between past and present were great in theater.
It for some reason reminded me of Zelazny’s Amber series. The idea that there are people who look like us, have the same physiology, but have just been around forever, seen major historical events, and are engaged in a match on an entirely different level.
The Prize was a bit more than that. He knows everything. He sees everything. IIRC, he says he knows what people are thinking, and can influence them. That’s some heavy duty stuff there.
Yes, back in the day, he had debates about this sort of thing.