Here at Trolling, we’re not alive unless we’re contradicting you. If the geek status quo holds a passionate opinion about something, we will automatically take up the opposite stance. We are the rabble rousers. We are the squashers of dreams. We live to destroy the beloved and venerate the hated. We’re like punk rockers, only way less cool. The topic of this week’s rant will be that most hated of sequels, Russell Mulcahy’s 1991 sequel Highlander II: The Quickening.
Highlander II, despite being made by the same director as the first Highlander, features one of the most dramatic retcons in pretty much all of genre history. The first film – to remind anyone who came in late – was a fantasy epic about a race of immortal humans who could only be killed by decapitation, and who all sought to be the final immortal standing after a millennia-long war. Legend goes that the last immortal standing would, more or less, be granted a single wish. The convoluted ins and outs of the immortal mythology can be browsed in detail in a CraveOnline article all about the entire Highlander series.
But in what many fans consider to be one of the most baffling alterations imaginable, the sequel, Highlander II: The Quickening, offered the newly-minted fact that the magical immortals fighting for magical wishes were in fact interdimensional space aliens! In addition to this bizarro turn of events, the film was also set in the near future, and was more about an environmental conspiracy involving a giant ozone shield than it was about sword-wielding paladins. There are various political reasons for the contradictions and alterations which I will not get into here.
The film is hated, and people make excuses for it all the time. Roger Ebert called it the worst film of 1991. Is it weird? Perhaps. But does the film suck like so many people say it does? I say no. In fact, let us all declare the following: Highlander II RULES! Here are some reasons as to why:
The film was re-edited several times in its life, making it feel occasionally choppy and occasionally hard to follow, and fans rejected it outright. As a sequel, it stands up to its predecessor. As a stand-alone film, it’s a fun piece of fantasy-laced speculative sci-fi.
Until next week, let the hate mail flow.
Witney Seibold is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his weekly articles Trolling, Free Film School and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
Highlander II RULES
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Changed Premises Are No Bad Thing
Yes, changing rules midstream can be a little obnoxious, especially to fans who have personally invested so much emotional stake in the original myth. And while inter-film continuity is considered important by fanboys (especially in this new obnoxious cinematic age of multi-sequel supra-narratives), it is not necessarily holy writ, and it's not necessary to make a good sequel. If one were to watch Highlander II without having seen Highlander I (which, incidentally, is how I saw it for the first time), then none of the changes would matter. You could appreciate the film as a single unit, and a fun, bonkers sci-fi adventure in itself. All films need to work as single units first and foremost. Inter-continuity should always be a secondary concern.
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Why Do These Contradictions Bother You?
Also, why is it that these particular cinematic contradictions bug you so much? I can point to the several contradictions in several very well-loved genre movies that are rarely mentioned. For instance: look at the baffling chronology, double-backs, and “soft reboots” of the seven X-Men movies. Or, heck, how many times will they be able to get away with re-upping James Bond? Movie sequels undo, correct, re-jigger, and contradict their prequels ALL THE TIME. Yet in this instance, a resurrected character gets you up in a huff. Seems to me like it should just be par for the course.
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The Future Setting Makes Sense
If the Highlander movies are all about immortal beings who stay the same age forever, then it only makes sense that the series should eventually round about the near future. The previous film may have been about medieval swordsman, giving it a sort-of fantasy film vibe, but what happens when those immortals continue to live and live? Eventually, the'd have to make it into the future. Enterprising storytellers are merely trying to depict that. Indeed, if the future sequels had continued to extend further and further into the future, the series would have taken on a really cool sci-fi light. What if an immortal lived so long, unchanging, that other humans evolved without him? The futuristic sci-fi conceits are cool.
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It's Nice to See More Ramírez
Easily the most memorable character in the Highlander series, Juan Sánchez Villa-Lobos Ramírez, as played by Sean Connery, is like a cross between Zorro and a peacock. He is confident, flamboyant, skilled at swordplay, and expert in all things immortal. In Highlander II, Ramírez is magically resurrected by an ancient alien oath (the only appropriate way the character could come back, really), and proceeds to haphazardly-yet-unflaggingly navigate the world of the future. Connery is a delight in the role, projecting his usual braggadocio, and it's a delight to see him no matter what movie he's in. And in Highlander II, he has more screen time than in the first. This is no bad thing.
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Cool Villains
In the human world, we have a deep-voiced John C. McGinley as a supremely douchey exec who wants to kill everyone to stay rich. He's cool. In the immortal world, you have the villainous Katana played by Michael Ironside. A modern-day Reaganaut Suit and an evil immortal sword-swinging alien team up to murder people. Sorry, but that's cool.
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It Was Timely Sci-Fi
In the early 1990s, the environmentalist movement began to earnestly explode in the public consciousness, and concerns about the health of the planet finally reached most Americans. As such, environmental disasters became common tropes in feature films. Sometimes the lessons were clumsy (See: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze), but in Highlander II, the messages were actually salient. If radiation from the sun increases too much, we very may well invent some sort of sun-blotting, global shield to protect us. But the result would be an eternal scummy city night. This is something that would have come up in an episode of “The Outer Limits.” It's actually a nice premise.
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The Flying Thugs Were Cool
I want a flying Zeist hoverwing thing. Don't you? Those guys looked awesome.
