There can (still) be only one: Highlander is 40 - Ars Technica

Overview

Sure, it’s cheesy in many respects, but its central mythology still resonates even decades later.

The 1980s brought us so many terrific films, including director Russell Mulcahy’s sword-and-sorcery fantasy action film Highlander, starring Christopher Lambert as an immortal Scotsman who must battle others like him to the death until just one remains. The film spawned two direct sequels and two TV series (one live action, one animated), and a planned reboot has been kicking around Hollywood since 2008. But the original still stands tall as the best of the bunch, 40 years later.

Details

Screenwriter Gregory Widen was a college student at UCLA when he wrote the first draft of what would become Highlander for a screenwriting class. It was originally entitled Shadow Clan and partially inspired by Ridley Scott’s 1977 film about two swordsmen engaged in a longstanding feud (The Duelists). Combine that with Widen’s visits to Scotland and the Tower of London, with its impressive display of historical armor, and Widen had all he needed for his tale of dueling Immortals secretly living among us. He sold that first draft for $200,000—a princely sum for a college student—and a few revisions later, Highlander was ready for filming.

The film opens mid-wrestling match at Madison Square Garden, as Connor Mac Leod (Lambert) senses the presence of a dangerous adversary. The two men face off with swords in the parking garage and when Mac Leod chops off his opponent’s head, the tremendous release of magical energy does some serious damage to the structure and the surrounding vehicles. Naturally the police take notice, although they can’t yet prove Mac Leod has anything to do with the decapitated body. We are then treated to Mac Leod’s early backstory through a series of flashbacks, interspersed between scenes in the present as detectives try to crack the case with the help of forensic metallurgy expert Brenda Wyatt (Roxanne Hart).

We go back to the Scottish Highlands in 1536, when Mac Leod rides into battle with his clan and is fatally stabbed by a mysterious black-clad knight (Clancy Brown)—except Mac Leod doesn’t die. He makes a full recovery and is driven out of his village because everything thinks it’s witchcraft. But he rebounds, living a quietly isolated pastoral life with wife Heather (Beatie Edney), when a a wandering swordsman (Sean Connery) named Juan Sanchez-Villalobos Ramirez shows up one day.

It’s Ramirez who clues Mac Leod in on what he really is: one of a number of Immortals who can only be killed via beheading and must battle one another until just one remains. They can’t father children, but they do possess a sixth sense known as the “Quickening,” and when one Immortal kills another, the victor absorbs the fallen Immortal’s power. The survivors will eventually congregate in “a distant land” for a final confrontation, and the one who emerges victorious will have the power to save humanity, or destroy it. That time is the present and the place is New York City.

The evil knight who wounded Mac Leod in battle is a powerful Immortal called the Kurgan. Ramirez has sought out Mac Leod to train him, since it is vitally important to humankind that such a vicious brute as the Kurgan not end up as the sole survivor. Alas, Ramirez is beheaded by the Kurgan while Mac Leod is away from home one day. The fate of humanity now lies with Mac Leod—and soon he is facing off against the Kurgan in a battle to the death. Spoiler alert: Mac Leod is victorious, because this is a 1980s fantasy action film where the good guy always wins. He becomes mortal, just with the ability to read the thoughts and feelings of everyone on Earth. And he can finally settle down and start a family with Brenda.

I’m not going to argue that Highlander is a cinematic masterpiece. The critical response was mixed to harsh, and the film wasn’t a box office success either, grossing just

Relatively unknown as an actor at the time, Lambert was cast in the lead role after Mulcahy noticed a still from Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan (1984) and decided Lambert (who played Tarzan) had the look he wanted for Mac Leod. The French actor didn’t even speak English but learned it quickly; it does account for Lambert’s odd accent in the film—Brenda actually comments on it—and his rather stilted performance, although how much can an actor do with that clunky dialogue? Yet Lambert was able to bring a wry humor to the character and a lingering optimism despite everything he’s suffered, which was a marked departure from the original draft script.

The Kurgan also changed significantly as a character, essentially becoming a one-dimensional “cackling psychopath,” as Widen once described him. Both Brown and Widen wanted a more complex villain. “I envisaged him as a guy who loses everything over time,” Widen told The Daily Telegraph in 2016. “The only thing he could hold onto, to give him a reason to get up in the morning, was to finish this thing with our guy [Mac Leod]. Otherwise, what is the point? Everything is impermanent, everything is lost. That made him much more serious—in a weird way, a sympathetic bad guy.”

Than said, as is often the case when a box office disappointment becomes a cult classic, the pros ultimately outweigh the cons. The sword fighting choreography is well done, there are some visually arresting shots, and Mulcahy deftly adapted the fast-cut style of music videos for his story. Plus there is that incredible soundtrack featuring songs by Queen, most notably “Princes of the Universe” and the haunting “Who Wants To Live Forever” (which plays when Mac Leod sits by the deathbed of the now aged Heather). Heck, even  the scenery-chewing Connery’s ridiculous getup and Scottish accent—he’s supposed to be a Spaniard, although Ramirez hints at being significantly older than that—is more entertaining than annoying.

Above all, Highlander has a compelling mythology that captures the imagination and offsets the cheesier aspects. “I think its appeal is the uniqueness of how the story was told and the fact it had a heart and a point of view about immortality,” Widen said in a 2006 interview. That’s a theme that is timeless and can’t help but resonate with audiences through the decades.

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Key Takeaways

• Sure, it’s cheesy in many respects, but its central mythology still resonates even decades later
• The 1980s brought us so many terrific films, including director Russell Mulcahy’s sword-and-sorcery fantasy action film Highlander, starring Christopher Lambert as an immortal Scotsman who must battle others like him to the death until just one remains
• Screenwriter Gregory Widen was a college student at UCLA when he wrote the first draft of what would become Highlander for a screenwriting class
• The film opens mid-wrestling match at Madison Square Garden, as Connor Mac Leod (Lambert) senses the presence of a dangerous adversary
• We go back to the Scottish Highlands in 1536, when Mac Leod rides into battle with his clan and is fatally stabbed by a mysterious black-clad knight (Clancy Brown)—except Mac Leod doesn’t die