My Own Better Late Than Never

I am going to steal a page from the AV Club, and write about my Better-Late-Than-Never movie: Highlander.

I never considered myself a big sci-fi fan. I grew up watching Star Wars and E.T. But I never actively sought out sci-fi movies or books. In fact, I generally avoided them. Horror movies I loved. The visceral thrill of watching somebody claw their way througha life-or-death situation was always enticing to me, but the heady nature of sci-fi held no appeal. Aliens were silly, and I was not someone easily impressed with rocket ships or lasers. Also, I couldn’t stand Arnold Schwarzenegger. I didn’t follow The X-Files or Star Trek. I didn’t care for The Matrix. But a creeping realization dawned on me over the last decade. I found myself drawn more and more to sci-fi. My first clue appeared while I was waiting in line to see Episode One. It wasn’t unusual for me to sit in a line to see a movie. I see at least two movies every weekend, and rarely skip big event movies. What alarmed me was the fact that I was reading 1984 while waiting in line. Reading a sci-fi book while waiting to see a sci-fi movie screams nerd – despite the fact that I shrugged it off as funny timing.

But over the last decade, I became more and more attracted to sci-fi movies and television. A.I. and Minority Report. The Iron Giant. Children of Men. The Prestige. Battlestar Galactica. And most notable of all, Lost. I went back and re-evaluated Blade Runner and Brazil. I never fully caught up with The X-Files, but I’ve seen more now than I had before the show ended. Eventually, I embraced my love for sci-fi. Both sci-fi and horror are inherently allegorical genres – even when the filmmakers don’t intend them to be. That’s the nature of the beast. And I can watch monsters ghosts, robots and aliens rape, kill and pillage without feeling any of the heaviness and weight of watching a historical holocaust film. Death and disaster in these movies are harmless, exciting, and guilt-free.

There’s a lot of sci-fi I haven’t yet caught up on, but I feel like I’ve hit most of the heavy hitters. But my attention was brought to a gaping hole in my sci-fi canon when one particular movie was referenced on an episode of The Venture Brothers. Highlander. How had Highlander escaped my eyes for so long? Well, part of the reason is because I remember seeing the trailer for Highlander 2 when it first came out. My thoughts at the time: What the fuck is Highlander? And wow, that looks terrible. Thusly, I avoided anything Highlander for well over a decade.

Well, that’s been remedied. Unfortunately, Highlander turns out to be a fantasy, which is a genre I have not warmed to yet.

Highlander is a creature of the eighties, through and through. From its cheesy rock score to its gritty artificiality, everything about this movie reveals its age. The sets are punctuated with steamy warehouses and rain-washed streets. The hair is high. The special effects are “charming”. And the studio apartments are oversized (complete with giant fish tanks!). It was released two years after The Terminator, and the movie is clearly inspired by Cameron’s thriller. Both are low budget movies about other worldly warriors, and the woman caught up in their fight. But while The Terminator is a taut economical thriller with hardly a wasted moment, Highlander meanders and shuffles toward its end. There is little sense of urgency, robots are nowhere to be seen, and the stakes are spoken of in the vaguest of terms. So what does highlander have that The Terminator doesn’t? Swords! But movie sword fighting choreography has come a long way in the last twenty years. Watching two people cautiously poke their swords at each other just isn’t as thrilling as it once was.

Christopher Lambert plays the lead character. He speaks in an accent that falls somewhere between William Wallace and Dracula. When he smiles, his face forms a freakish Cro-Magnon mask. His charisma is nil. Clancy Brown plays the hunter – tracking Lambert with a cackling laugh and hulking frame. Brown brings his best game and creates a character that is all id and clear out a church with just his over-ripe dialogue and evil laughter. Not even Sean Connery’s glorified cameo brings as much class to this mess. 4,00 year-old Connery shows up in Lambert’s flashbacks and barks a bunch of ambiguous exposition while finding increasingly extreme locations to hold their training montage at - the most shameful of which is the race at the beach.

As someone who sees connections to Lost everywhere he looks, I nearly outdid myself watching Highlander (especially in light of the recent season finale). The structure of Highlander very closely resembles any given episode of Lost. The storiy oscillates between Christopher Lambert in the present, and Christopher Lambert in the past. Deep in the past. Over a hundred years ago. In the flashbacks, we see Lambert get murdered, only to come back from death. Connery mysteriously shows and reveals that Lambert is immortal – unless of course his head is severed from his neck. He raves about quickenings and gatherings. And repeats that there can only be one. As the centuries pass, Lambert dies in a gay duel and saves a little girl from Nazis.

In the present, a big-haired female professional slowly learns the truth about Lambert who woos her in his creepy, macho eighties way. As they date, there are mysterious killings, excessive eye lights, grainy blue-tinged cinematography and a silhouetted love scene. Eventually, there is a sword fight, animated lightning, and visible wires. When there is only one, that one receives the quickening, which is “complete universal knowledge.” What does the winner do with complete universal knowledge? He apparently goes shopping at JC Penny and finds a pink sweater and white slacks to wear around the house.

And so, Highlander proves not to be the essential bit of eighties sci-fi I expected. It falls into that eighties abyss of wizards-and-shit-fantasy that portends sci-fi elements, but delivers only a mangled supernatural mythology (I’m looking at you, Ladyhawke!). I’m glad I can scratch it off of my list of movies to see, but I’m disappointed it wasn’t more engaging or eye-opening. It’s not referenced that much in popular culture, but if The Venture Brothers is going to give it a shout out, the least can do is sit down and watch it. And I’ll be damned if somebody didn’t make a Highlander reference just a few days later. Not a great or trailblazing movie, but seen widely enough to be recognizable and mocked. I have been advised to see Highlander 2: The Quickening – the ORIGINAL VERSION before the director attempted to edit/wrestle it into something more cohesive. Sadly the original batshit cut is hard to come by. It could only improve upon the experience of a merely serviceable first film.

There can only be one.