Weirdhouse Cinema: Highlander II, Part 2

In this special two-part episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the original theatrical cut of Russell Mulcahy’s “Highlander II: The Quickening,” starring Christopher Lambert, Sean Connery and Michael Ironside. Long live the Zeist cut! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and
we are back today with part two of our discussion
of the nineteen ninety one sci fi fantasy action movie
Highlander to the Quickening, starring Christoph Lambert, Sean Connery, Virginia Madsen,
and Michael Ironside. Highlander two is a movie that is

(00:35):
infamous for its awfulness and positively anathematized by most Highlander fans.
Highlander fans, a lot of them will say, don't watch
this movie at all if they If they do tell
you to watch it, they'll usually say, you know, prefer
one of the like recut versions, such as the Renegade
cut or whatever. We'll get into those in just a moment.

(00:56):
But Highlander two the Quickening in its original theatric release
is a film that I love, and I have loved
for years. I have watched it so many times, more
times than I can count, really, and I'm actually worried
for the physical integrity of my legacy VHS tape. I
fear that one day the tape may snap.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, Yeah, they've got to put it back out. They've
got to make the theatrical cut, the seist cut, available
for everyone so they can experience the true broken, weirdness
and an awesomeness of this picture because you know, like
a lot of like awesome flawed films, Yeah, there is this,
there is this nagging question what could have been? How

(01:37):
could you make this better? And it's often i mean
the legacy of even great films that get a lot
of recuts. You know, I'm thinking about Ridley Scott getting
in there and tinkering a lot with some of his pictures.
You know, it's I feel like, I mean, there are cases, yeah,
where a fan seem to have a consensus about, Okay,
this is the best cut, this is the best way

(01:58):
to watch particular film, certainly, but a lot of times
you just end up with this kind of ambiguity, like
there is no key picture. So I really admire some
of those filmmakers out there who are like, no, no,
there's just one cut that is the director's cut, and
of course there are a lot of moving parts there.
You know, you have to have a position where the
director has enough to say that they feel like that

(02:19):
is their cut. But anyway I digress.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
Well, maybe we should start. But because in the last
episode we did a significant segment talking about the different
cuts of the film available, because that will come up
again in today's episode, maybe we should do it, just
a really fast rundown of what they are again. So
you've got the original American theatrical release. This is the
one we're watching, the one we're talking about today. This

(02:44):
is the one that is most generally hated by Highlander fans.
It's like eighty something minutes long, and it preserves the
big plot innovation from the script, which is that the
immortals from the original Highlander are actually aliens from the
planet Zeist. So it takes something that was originally mysterious
fantasy just kind of magic with an unknown source, and

(03:08):
makes it concrete science fiction. Then there's also the British version,
which preserves these main details, but it's also longer. It
includes some extra character development scenes and rearranges the edit.
It also has the so called fairy tale ending, which
we'll talk about at the end of this episode. Then
there is the home video release known as the Renegade version.

(03:32):
This is even longer. It includes more scenes and some
different takes. I believe also includes some additional footage that
was shot after the production, like I think they actually
got Christoph Lambert, Virginia Madsen, and Michael Ironside to come
back to shoot like an action scene that was supposed
to be a big set piece in the movie but
was never completed during filming. This version, the Renegade version,

(03:56):
has a totally different edit. Most notably, it removed moves
all references to the immortals being aliens, and removes all
references to the planet Zeist, and also, in a rather
confusing move, removes all references to the Quickening, which is
in the title of the movie Highland or two the Quickening.
But it's largely thought that the removal of the immortals

(04:21):
being aliens and the planet Zeist and all that is
due to fan backlash. Fans did not like that, you know,
they were probably getting a lot of angry questions about
it at the conventions. So that that's just gone.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
And I would love to hear from many Highlander fans
out there, of varying degrees, for for your take on
the franchise as a whole, because I think by and large,
fans of anything Highlander have at this point been presented
with numerous things to find lackluster, but also, you know,
some things to genuinely enjoy and find awesome. And they're

(04:54):
eventually going to get a reboot, so potentially even more
stuff to be perturbed or excited about. So yeah, write in,
We'd love to know your thoughts on it. Me. I'm
very much you know H one, H two, and I
enjoyed H three for what it is, And then I
have seen many, but not all, of the episodes of
the TV series, and I thought that could be quite

(05:15):
good at times.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
Well, I'm the kind of person who thinks there's a
lot to love and enjoy in The Highlander two, as
is especially in the most hated version, the American theatrical release,
which has lots of stuff that is immensely pleasurable because
it's good, and probably even more stuff that's immensely pleasurable
because of how bad it is. It's just a mix

(05:39):
of the best of both worlds. Oh. But then also
I think there is actually I alluded to this in
part one, but I wasn't sure. I think there is
another home video release after the Renegade version. It's called
like the Ultimate Version or something. I don't know much
about that one, but I think possibly it includes some
updated and supposedly improved visual effect. So, as we've said,

(06:02):
in defiance of conventional wisdom, we are watching the original
American theatrical release, which we will hereafter refer to as
the Zeist cut because it's where the Zeist stuff is
left in. Now, another thing I wanted to address is
that we don't normally split weird house cinema episodes into
two parts, but we've done it a couple of times

(06:22):
recently for deservingly massive and to us at least fascinating movies.
First of all, we did it for David Lynch's adaptation
of Done, and now we're doing it again for Highlander
two The Quickening. And one thing I don't think we
pointed out last time is that while these movies are
in many ways quite different, they have some things in common.

(06:46):
They are both troubled, big budget English language sci fi
productions filmed in Latin American countries, and in both cases
there were bitter struggles for creative control over the film's
contents and the final edit. So in the case of
David Lynch's Dune, this was a big budget sci fi
production shot largely in Mexico, and it was well known

(07:10):
that David Lynch was extremely unhappy with the theatrical release
of the film, which was strongly influenced to buy the
producers and the moneymen, and David Lynch has said that
his experience with Dune taught him that he would rather
not make a movie at all than make one without
having full creative control or full control over the final cut. Well,

(07:32):
last night I learned some interesting resonances between this story
and the story of the making of Highlander two because
I watched a making of documentary called I Think This
was a strange choice for the title, it's called Seduced
by Argentina. This is a featurette that's included on one
of the home video releases of the movie. This has

(07:54):
interviews with the director, Russell mulcahe with the producers, with
Christoff Lambert, and with many of the crew, and it
explores the strange, wonderful and also somewhat cursed process of
making Highlander two. So the film's production was moved to
the country of Argentina for a number of reasons. One

(08:15):
of the major reasons just being financial. It was a
lot cheaper to make it there, and there are a
lot of stories about how the production sort of turned
into a big party. Like a lot of the cast
and crew got to Argentina, we're spending time in Buenos Aires,
and they sort of fell in love with the city
and with the culture, and we're spending a lot of

(08:36):
time like going out to nightclubs and just hanging out
and partying and drinking and doing whatever. And that this
created some kind of problems with like staying on task
with the making of the film. But also the movie
was this was a big production. This is a big
budget movie involving major talent in terms of set design,

(09:00):
costume design, visual effects, and so forth. And though there
was a lot of talent working on this film and
they put in a great effort in any ways, and
some of the sets and stuff, you can really see
that this is a a lavish production with with you know,
great intentions behind it. But a lot of these teams
also ended up working with weird logistical constraints and limitations.

(09:24):
And this included all kinds of different things like lack
of certain materials they needed, lack of access to crew
with certain kinds of industry know how to the fact
that I think they had. I could be wrong about this,
but I think they had a very tight window in
which to shoot all of Sean Connery's scenes. Like I
think he was only going to be in town for

(09:46):
like six days or something, and he is not a
cameo in Highlander two. He's a major character.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yeah, yeah, I think they might have shot some of
his scenes in Scotland, like the initial Scotland scenes.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
Oh okay, yeah, but still.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff with him in the
futuristic setting. So that's a lot ultimately to pack into
six days, especially in a big production like this.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
Also sounds like this was not the safest set anyone
ever worked on, just like some of the footage you see,
like some of the crew they interview allude to this,
that they were kind of moving fast and cutting corners
and you know, doing things that were not would not
be considered, I don't know, taking optimal safety precautions that

(10:29):
you would and in a regular production. And by the way,
I love movies, and I can get really precious about
preserving a filmmaker's vision at many costs, but not at
any cost. Nobody needs to die or get injured making
a film, you know, that's just you know, keep it
safe on set.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
Yeah, I've read that. One particular detail of all this
is that both Michael Ironside and Christoph Lambert apparently sustained
injuries in their sword fighting sequences, which you know is
always a risk if you have actors doing their own
action scenes and fight choreography and so forth. But you know,
looking back at like assuming for a minute, I don't

(11:07):
know if this is correct, but assuming that they shot
the final epic sword fight between General Katana and Connor
MacLeod in sequence, by the end of it it looked
really looks like they're not able to do much. And
I've also read that like the General Katana ironically fights
with a broad sword, which was apparently difficult to wield

(11:30):
as well. So like, by the end of this big
epic fight scene with an amazing set, everything feels a
little clunky and kind of tired, Like they just look
like maybe they're out of steam, and if they're working
through injuries, you can understand that.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
Yeah. I don't know what the source of this information
is because I didn't see this mentioned in any of
the interviews that I recall, but I know I've read
that like that. I think it was Christoph Limbert wanted
to work with real swords. He was like, I don't
want this plastic crop, you know, I want to I
want to have like a real sword, and so they
were doing that. But apparently Limbert's eyesight is not great

(12:07):
and he you know, couldn't wear glasses for filming the scenes,
and so yeah, they were just Oh and also he
did a lot of his own stunts in the movie,
including us the scenes we'll talk about later with like
an elevator falling down an elevator shaft and flying around
on rocket boots and stuff. So like in some ways
it's kind of exciting, you know, stories of Bravado from

(12:29):
from the film Star. But also yeah, it sounds like
it was. It was not the safest set ever, but anyway,
all working with all these limitations, things keep happening. Also,
I think in the background here, uh, there is a
major inflation problem in Argentina while they're shooting it. So
like the money, the value of the money they're using

(12:51):
to make the movie is like all over the place,
and that's causing production problems as well. So they were
just like basic logistical problems and production financing problems and
the movie was apparently taking way too long and going
over budget. So, in a move that absolutely always goes
well more than halfway through production, creative control was taken

(13:13):
over by an insurance company.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
Oh yeah, that does not bode well.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
So for those of you who not familiar with the
film bonding process, there's a thing in the film industry
called a completion bond, which is essentially an insurance policy
for the film's investors. So if a movie is not
coming in on time or not staying within budget, the
bonding company that has been contracted can step in, supposedly

(13:41):
to protect the interests of the investors of the film,
to take over production and guarantee a completed film within
a certain budget and by a certain time. And this
is what happened with Highlander two. So things are not
going well, they're spending too much money, it's taking too long.
The insurance company steps in and says we're in charge. Now.

(14:02):
You can kind of imagine how cool that would be.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
I mean, especially if you're dealing with with filmmakers they
want to take big swings that they want to you know,
go big or you know, or go home, and you
have the insurance people coming in and say, actually, it
is time to go home, It is time to wrap
this up.

Speaker 3 (14:21):
So I think I think a lot of the deficiencies
of highland Er two, a lot of the things that
are very funny and bad about it can be chalked
up to the this thing that had the takeover of
the movie by the insurance company. But not all of
the funny stuff or the stuff that fans consider bad

(14:44):
can be can be chalked up to that. For example,
many fans apparently you know, the fans who thought it
was weird to introduce the sci fi elements and make
the immortals aliens. They would end up blaming that choice
on the creative takeover by the bonding company. But that
is not the case. The suits from the insurance company

(15:05):
did not make up the planet Zeist that's in the script.
From what I can tell, it seems like the choices
made by the Bonding company consists more of like wrapping
production without filming major scenes and then trying to paper
over those holes with a bizarre Frankenstein edit, and also
just like lots of choices of I guess like bad

(15:27):
takes and terrible looking visual effects shots and just you know,
late stage script rewrits to change things up to just
finish it faster, and so I think this is one reason.
Like in the documentary they show some examples of how
this is a movie that has some great looking visual

(15:47):
effects shots and some great looking effects and sets in
certain scenes, and those will be contrasted almost immediately, like
you'll cut back and forth between stuff that looks great
and stuff that looks terrible. And apparently the at least
some of the crew involved in, people who were working
on the visual effects for the movie, chalk this up
to the Bonding company. They say, like that they came

(16:09):
in and they commissioned the you know, completion of the
film with these terrible looking visual effects and put those in,
so you've got those right next to stuff that looks
really good, and that would explain a lot of that
weird contrast when you're watching the movie. Apparently they also
cut out a lot of stuff that would have made
sense of the plot holes created by making the immortals aliens.

(16:32):
So you know, this movie it's like Swiss cheese. You
could poke a million holes and be like, none of
this makes sense with these plot innovations. Apparently it would
make more sense if we had a full film based
on the original script, because some of the differences are
actually explained, some of the gaps are actually explained, but

(16:53):
we just don't get that.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
M Yeah, and like you've been saying, like ultimately the
filmmakers themselves run from the Zeist concept. So yeah, we
just get even further and further away from some sort
of like concrete vision of what this film was meant
to be.

Speaker 3 (17:10):
But anyway, the fact that the planet Zeist stuff does
not come from the bonding company that is originally there,
it's just more proof to me that to take out
the Planet Zeist is to excise the beating heart from
this film. So Highland or two people, the people who
are behind making all these cuts, you've already made like
four or five of them, or however many there are,

(17:31):
give us the ultimate Zeist cut, you know, give us
the edit that the release that looks great, has the
updated picture and sound and all that, but keeps all
the Zeist content and has the nice looking, the better
selected visual effects shots. Give us the ultimate cut that
still has Zeist, unless you've already done that and I'm

(17:52):
simply not aware of it, in which case I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
I don't think they have, because I feel like we've
wasted a lot of time looking for it. But but yeah,
and I'm up into open to whatever. Like put it
out as a single disc, I'll buy it. Put it
out as like the third disc in a multi disc
release like Ultimate release of Highlander two. You know, I'm
fine with that. You can even have an optional commentary

(18:15):
track where you you know, rip into it and talk
about everything that went wrong, as long as I have
like just one version of this that I can watch
and you know, in inacceptable quality, and like you know,
you know, we we've already touched on some of the
problems with some of the effects. But yeah, just just
give me a solid ice cut, that's all I Askay.

Speaker 3 (18:40):
All right, Rob, Now we just started talking about the plot.
In the previous episode, we talked about the prologue with
the shield. Do you want to jump back into the
plot or do you have anything to address first?

Speaker 2 (18:53):
No, I think we just jumped right back into it.
We established the zeis well or did we What did
we establish? You established just the building of the shield, right, yeah?

Speaker 3 (19:01):
Yeah, yeah, So we'll do a real fast recap of that.
So the opening of the film is in the year
nineteen ninety nine, when the human race is in dire
peril due to the depletion of the ozone layer and
the resulting exposure of the Earth's surface to deadly radiation
from the Sun. Connor McLoud, the main character of Highlander one,
the victorious age old warrior who won the game of

(19:24):
Immortal Combat and achieved human mortality and the ability to
have children at the end of the first movie. He
uses his centuries of wisdom and presumably also his magical
ability to read minds, though the movie doesn't really address this,
to organize a team of scientists to create the Shield,
which is a giant geoengineering project that forms a sort

(19:47):
of laser net over the Earth's atmosphere and protects the
surface of the planet from the Sun. It looks kind
of like a gigantic lightsaber blade blasting out of a
huge concrete pyramid and then forms a laser net in
the sky, sort of connects with a satellite somehow, and
it shields us from the Sun, and Connor and his

(20:08):
scientist friend Alan Nayman they celebrate their accomplishment they have
saved the world. This surely was a good use of
the prize.

Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yeah, what morchy do you ask for? Seemingly save the
world and to some degree helped in sure peace.

Speaker 3 (20:25):
Yeah, happy ending, right at the beginning, But then we
cut to twenty five years later, two eight year twenty four.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
That's right, I mean, this is this was the perfect
time to really jump in and discuss Islander two on
Weird House.

Speaker 3 (20:43):
So we see Christophe Limbert driving a car. He's driving
a convertible down a dark, wet street in what looks
is not great makeup and terrible old man makeup. His
face looks like a bowl of porridge. It's not great.
But we hear his voice over McLeod says, the shield

(21:03):
twenty five years ago it was our savior. But now
no sun, no stars, only heat and humidity. It drains
the energy from the whole world. We're falling apart, going backward,
old cars, old planes, old dreams. The cure is worse
than the disease.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
Now already we have so much unpack like, well, why
are they using old cars, old planes and old dreams
because of some sort of energy shortage? I mean the
real answer is it lets them do this, this kind
of neo noir look for the film, which I do
quite like, but it doesn't really make any sense where
it's like, we can't use a car that was made
post nineteen fifty three.

Speaker 3 (21:45):
Now. I think they wanted to use some of these
beautiful old building facades from Buenos Aires, and they were like,
let's see what everything looks old. Now we'll say for
some reason, yeah, we're using old cars and planes. What
would that have to do with anything?

Speaker 2 (22:02):
We also, when we're panning past, does some statue or something.
There's a plaque that commemorates the shield and it has
the dates nineteen ninety nine through twenty twenty four on there,
and I was wondering, do they just update it every year,
like it's like, okay, it's a new year, twenty twenty four,
let's add that, like it's say, you know, no work
injuries for X number of days sort of a thing.

(22:23):
I don't know. Yeah, because there's no indication that there
are no plans to bring the shield down in twenty
twenty four, as well, as we'll discuss and as we'll see.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
Okay, so we see Connor driving as convertible through this
dark city, and we gathered that the world here is
now squalid, polluted and dark. The sky is always covered
with this shimmering, burnt orange aurora, in which shadowy triangles
and pyramid shapes appear. There are also in this world

(22:54):
just future punks everywhere. I love good future punk and
here there they're like on the sidewalks getting up to
no good. Connor is driving past them and like glancing
nervously out the windows of his car looking at them
as he drives by. We can hear them yelling. Then
when we actually see them, they're crowded around some kind

(23:14):
of machine that distributes gas through a face mask attached
to a hose, and they're like kicking and beating on
the machine to make it work and then taking turns
huffing out of the mask. Is this supposed to be
a vending machine for inhalance?

Speaker 2 (23:29):
I don't know es your neighborhood huffing station. I'm not sure,
but yeah, there are a lot of wild boys in
this future for sure.

Speaker 3 (23:36):
Yeah, yeah, wild boys. Yeah. Then in the car, the
TV comes on. Great, this is one of those futuristic
old cars from twenty twenty four. It's an old car,
but it has a TV in the dashboard. They have
those now, Yeah, oo, it's exactly what cars need. Yeah,
So Connor is watching the news while driving, and the

(23:58):
news anchor says that the Shield Corporation, which is the
world's largest company, was today accused of monopoly and price fixing.
I was just thinking, how do you do price fixing
if your product is the shield? Like who are the
market competitors of the Shield Corporation that they would be colluding.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
With the Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
And other shield companies, and they're making an agreement to
fix prices.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
And it does seem like it's the same shield for
the entire planet, Like you can't you know, pick and
choose like how much shield different regions are getting, or
there's no indication or even a hint of how that
would be possible.

Speaker 3 (24:36):
Yeah, maybe they make other products too, Maybe the price
fixing is on whatever these these huffing stations. They also
say that the president of the Shield Corporation, Alan Naman,
remember that was Connor's partner in creating the Shield twenty
five years ago, He could not be reached for comment.
And then they say that the Shield Corporation just posted

(24:56):
record profits. Oh and also there's a weather report. Tomorrow's
high is going to be ninety seven degrees fahrenheit. Sounds
like the low is also ninety seven degrees fahrenheit with
a humidity of ninety seven percent, same as every other day.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
I mean, it's predictable, you know, yeah, you know, you
know what to wear. There's not a lot of questions
about what you're gonna wear tomorrow. So we can say
that for it.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
At least, now here is a question I do have.
So Connor is like driving past these future punks and
he's like checking to see if his car doors are locked,
and the future punks are dancing aggressively at his car
as he goes past, next to their flaming steel garbage cans,
And I'm like, why would you have a flaming garbage
can in a world where there's like it's ninety seven

(25:41):
degrees And maybe they need it for light, I don't know,
but you don't need it for heat.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
I mean, this is always the question of any kind
of apocalyptic hellscape or or urban hell setting. It's why
are the garbage cans on fire? Maybe just because they
can be on fire?

Speaker 3 (25:59):
Right? They're cooking with it?

Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah, yeah, cooking up some assuming rat, some.

Speaker 3 (26:05):
Charproiled rat in the garbage can. Yeah. Okay, So where
is Connor headed he's going to the opera, of course.
And here's one of these cases where we were talking
about the contrast of like you'll have these bad looking
scenes and then great looking scenes. I feel like the
whole opera scene from the outside and the inside, the
set within a set, on the stage, the interior of

(26:27):
the opera, it's all beautiful. It has a it does
have a somewhat derivative kind of blade runneriness about the
sci fi style, but it also it has a style
of its own, like the opera has this red blinking
neon sign like an all night diner. It's a very
weird choice, but I think it looks really cool and

(26:48):
inside it's it's beautiful. So Connor is going to see
this Vagnerian production. I think it's actually he's watching Twilight
with gods and we hear this, you know, the sweet
and tortured melodies of a dying world. As the name
John C. McGinley pops up on the credits, by the way,
which is funny.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
The set for this opera does look amazing. I haven't
seen a lot of operas, maybe only ever one opera
live and in full, and I have to say, give
me an opera with a set like this, I'll show up.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
So we pan around the audience at the opera and
we see all the fancy people in the balconies sporting
their evening attire, and eventually we land on a private
box where Connor MacLeod sits sad and alone, dozing off
with his chin on his chest, until he is startled
awake by a voice echoing inside his head. It is

(27:41):
the voice of Sean Connery, and here, basically, right at
this moment in the American theatrical release, begins a truly
remarkable several minutes of film, one that I have essentially memorized.
Highlander two was one of the I've said this earlier,
but it was one of the first movie in this
sort of glorious failure genre that I ever came to appreciate.

(28:04):
And after I got my hands on my first VHS copy,
of course I watched it with my friends lots of times.
But on top of watching the movie as a whole
lots of times, we've probably rewound the next few minutes
of the movie several times every time we watched it,
So this is kind of like a religious catechism to me.
Sean Connery says, remember Highlander, Remember your home another galaxy,

(28:30):
you were chosen Remember, And then the Wagner music swells
and the camera zooms in on Connor's face in a
weirdly unflattering off center shot. His eyes are sort of
half closed, his fake gray hair is lit up in
a peculiar way by off camera lights, and we hear
his thoughts as he says, yes, yes, I remember the

(28:54):
beginning five hundred years ago on the planet Zeist.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yeah, and this is this is a moment where you know,
you can you can definitely feel fans dropping out because yeah,
I'm tuning in, because I mean, either this is something
that Connor McLeod conveniently forgot his entire time on Earth
throughout the first film, or he knew the whole time

(29:22):
and just it didn't factor into any of his thoughts
or actions or anything. And like either either version, yeah,
I can see that being interpreted is kind of like
a cheap shot of the experience of the first film,
you know, and could even be seen as like cheapening, yeah,
the experience of the first film, But I don't know.

(29:43):
It's also one of the things to love about Highlander too.

Speaker 3 (29:46):
It's so beautiful and then so there, like we were
saying about the differing, you know, quality of the textures
of the movie, the next thing they show us is
the planet Zeist, and what we get is a beautiful
matte painting of a big desert with mountains in the
background and a crescent moon in the sky and some

(30:08):
kind of giant crashed airship in the desert. You know,
it looks like some kind of airship the size of
a skyscraper, and it's just plowed into the sand of
the desert. Looks like almost like a relic, like it
could have been crashed there for a long time. And
the context is hilarious. But I think the matte painting
looks so good. The fact that it looks so good

(30:32):
makes it even funnier, and like it's got a good
contrast in the shot with characters in the foreground as
these silhouettes covered up in desert clothing, you know, moving
down the hills into the airship. But it's a great
looking moment.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah, I mean, the film has just made a very
wacky choice. And initially here at least, you know, it's like,
all right, this looks awesome. Let's give it a try.
Let's see let's see how it fits.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
This is one moment where I can point out that,
like the Renegade cut, I think I've seen this, they
like change this to it's not the planet Zeist, of course,
because they cut that out entirely. This is supposed to
be sometime in the ancient past, right, so.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
We get an ancient city escape instead of that crash
spaceship or airship or whatever it is.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
And I think it doesn't look as good.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I thought it looked good,
but it's not as interesting. And it just raises all
these questions because again you're about to see some sequences
where guys are clearly fighting with gas masks and modern
looking weapons and explosions. So to take it away from
an alien planet and put it into the ancient past
actually just creates more problems, yes, more logical problems for

(31:39):
the film.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
Okay, Connor McLeod's voiceover goes on. He says, we planned rebellion,
we met in secret, always careful to avoid our deadly enemy,
General Katana. This is not a character that was mentioned
in the first movie, so this is brand new. So
we see a bunch of sweaty guys with like head
wrappings and desert cloaks, gathering in the ruins of the airship.

(32:03):
And then Sean Connery walks out on a platform to
address them, and his speech goes as follows. He says,
free men of the planet Zeist, hear me. We gather
together in secret for the last time. You suffer under
the yoke of General Katana's rule for the last time,
and you stand without a leader for the last time.

(32:26):
And the people call out for Sean Connery to lead them.
You know Ramirez well, by the way, this character on Zeist,
his name is Ramirez on Zeist, and Connor MacLeod's name
is Connor MacLeod on Zeist. Okay, yeah, So Ramirez says
he's not going to lead them, but he says, because
he sees with eyes different from theirs, he knows that

(32:46):
one among them has a great destiny. And the people
call out, who is he? Show him to us? And then,
in what I think is probably one of the funniest
single shots and lined deliveries in like all of cinema history,
Sean Connery draws his sword and he says, let him
show himself, let him feel the quickening. He waggles his

(33:08):
sword and lightning flashes, and then Ramirez there's like a
folly of sort of electricity arcing, and then somehow everybody
turns and looks, and among them in the crowd is
Christoph Limbert. He's standing there with wind blowing in his
hair like he's in a Creed music video, and he
looks very grave and heavy with the burden of this

(33:29):
new responsibility. And Sean Connery says, yes.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
You, this is how the leaders of all great rebellions
are chosen, by the way. Yeah, just just sort of
randomly picked out of the crowd, and like you, Yep,
you're the one. You're gonna leave the rebellion. That's just
how it works, yes, you.

Speaker 3 (33:47):
And then it doesn't stop, like it just goes so
fast straight into I guess we're about to see what
the quickening is as realized by this movie. Now rob
quickly no pun intended. What was the quickening in the
First Highlander?

Speaker 2 (34:02):
The quickening in the First Highlander also it felt a
little vague. It was something magical about connection between immortals,
and we basically hear about it the most in that
scene where where it really a nice scene where Ramirez
and Connor during the midst of all their training, run
on the beach, maybe while a horse is running, I think,

(34:23):
but you know, it's like I think about it whenever
I run on a beach. I'm like, yeah, the quickening.
You know, it's like it was more of a feeling
than a codified lower thing.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
You know.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
It's about it's about their relationship, it's about their bond,
and this is I guess, trying to channel that as
well into some sort of like magical thing that connects
them across time and space as we'll see.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
Yes, So what happens next is Ramirez and McLeod sit
across from each other and dip their fingers into like
it's like a fund pot for glowing magical energy. They
like dip their fingers in and they get some of
the magic on their fingertips, and then they touch their
hands together and then there's like light that shoots out

(35:07):
of their hands, and Connor looks very again. He looks
very grave. He's like, oh no, what's happening. But Ramirez
is just grinning wildly, and he says, the ancient power
of the quickening has joined us. We are now as one.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
Okay, I don't know how this is going to result
in a successful rebellion. But you know, all right, fine,
we've done the quickening and now it's time to go
ahead and win this thing, right.

Speaker 3 (35:30):
That's right, So they got to go beat General Katana.
So right then, immediately explosions start popping off outside Ramire,
says Connor McLoud. He has to go defeat the general.
So we cut to a few fleeting shots of a
battlefield charge, a disastrous battlefield charge by the rebels. Connor

(35:51):
tries to rally them to coordinate the attack, but it
ultimately fails. This is where we're about to meet General Katana.
But I did just want to say about this scene.
It seems like this is one of the scenes that
was supposed to be a big, weird, beautiful, fascinating action scene,
like a massive action scene in this sci fi landscape.

(36:12):
I think in the documentary they referred to it as
like the Battle of the Valley of the Moon or something,
and they show these concept sketches for it that have
all these strange rock formations and these aliens fighting in
weird costumes and all that. We don't really get to
see any of that. Instead, we just sort of see
some guys running in the sand and some things blow

(36:34):
up and then it's over.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah. Nothing you really haven't seen in other post apocalyptic
battle movies. They're just war movies in general.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
Yeah, it's a shame because just based on the concept
sketches in the documentary, it looks like this could have
been a really beautiful, awesome looking sequence. But this is
where we first meet the villain of the movie, Michael Ironside,
playing General Katana. Now he stands over the battlefield. He
looks very pleased about all of his enemy being annihilated.

(37:01):
He says he wants Connor McLeod and Ramirez captured as
for everybody else, he wants their heads.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
And Katana does look pretty awesome here. You know, he's
a little bit industrial metal but with a stylish dueling scar,
and he has this like long he has long, dark hair,
but he has the streak of gray or white through it,
so it's a solid look. And you know it's Ironside,
so he can definitely sell the menace.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
So now Michael Ironside, who we just met seconds ago,
he has Connor McLoud captured and held prisoner in this
kind of some kind of like office slash dungeon. It's
it's I guess Rob, I think you brought this up
in the last episode that this is a cool looking interior.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
Yeah, yeah, this is a really cool look, Concett, This
is definitely a scene that I recommend going back and
watching in like the highest picture quality possible. Like I
went back and watched this scene in the Renegade cut
just because it's it's it's just shot so well. It
looks great.

Speaker 3 (37:58):
Yeah. Yeah. This is one of the examples of how
in the Renegade Cut, a lot of scenes that you
do get a glimpse of in the theatrical release do
look better in that version. But also the content of
what's happening in the scene is that, like General Katana
is giving a speech to an eel. He grabs an
eel out of the tank and he starts giving it

(38:20):
a you know, a good old like we're not so
different you and I, and then he says, so deadly
in their own environment, so tame and servile in mine.
I think he means out of the water. And then
Connor says, maybe they're just waiting, and then Katana says
waiting for what And then Connor says, for you to

(38:41):
get careless. I get what he's saying, But how would
that apply to an eel?

Speaker 2 (38:49):
Yeah, I don't know. It's wait, he looks good. It
looks good.

Speaker 3 (38:53):
Okay, wait for you to fall asleep in the tank
where they can get you anyway. So General Katana dim
straits his power by like squeezing the eel in his
fist until it basically he like cuts it in half
and it splats on the floor. Uh. And then it
just seems that General Katana is going to execute Connor MacLeod,

(39:13):
a resident of the planet Zeist, for his crimes against
the planet Zeist. But instead we cut straight from this
to Connor and Ramirez standing in a dark hall with
some kind of priest of Zeist reading out their sentencing.
And so this priest there's like several bald priests in
robes standing up on these huge pedestals like way above them,

(39:37):
and the priest says, leaders of the Rebellion, you have
been found guilty of treason. We hereby sentence you to
exile from Zeist. You will be sent to the planet Earth.
Once there you will be immortal. You can only die
when your head is cut from your body. When one
of you becomes the last of us on Earth, he

(39:57):
will claim the prize. He can return to Zeist or
choose to grow old and die on Earth.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
Okay, so yeah, certainly a liberal and overly complex exile
process that also kind of functions like a loser's bracket
right in a tournament. So it's like all the people
that were enemies of our planet, they're sent away, but
then you compete against each other and then like the
most powerful of you can then come back and I
don't know, have another go at ruining the planet or whatever.

Speaker 3 (40:28):
Yeah, exactly, I don't quite get it, but.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
I don't know. Maybe it's just codified in their religious
thinking and their traditions. I don't know. Fine enough, they've
explained what's going on in the first Highlander film. They've
read cond it Yeah, we'll make do it, dear.

Speaker 3 (40:43):
But I love how also they're literally they're getting their
you know, life in exile sentence read out, and they
just start talking to Connor and Ramirez start like talking
in class, like Connor's like, will we be together on Earth?
And Ramirez says not at first, but we're joined in
a way that can never be broken, not even by death.

(41:03):
And then he says, when you need me, you'll only
have to call my name.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
Oh it's like the friends in Labyrinth, you know at
the end where Sarah can just call on them and
they come.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
But why did we know this in the first movie.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
No, when Ramirez his dad in the first movie, he's
dead for centuries and there's no indication that he could
ever call out to his old friend, though he clearly
missed him. That's the thing, like, if he could have
done this, there would have been opportunities to do it.
But oh well.

Speaker 3 (41:31):
Oh and also Connor gives a solemn vow. He promises
that if he wins the prize, he'll be back back
to the planet Zeist. So remember that. That's a vow,
that's a promise.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (41:42):
Oh also another thing to remember, Sean Connery just kind
of leans over at the end and he says, just
remember the quickening. Okay, okay, Oh god, no, wait, it's
not even over yet, because Connor then says it sounds
like magic, and then Ramirez says, well, it is a
kind of here's our first of many many references to

(42:05):
the Queen song. A kind of magic or some kind
of magic. Which is it?

Speaker 2 (42:09):
It's a kind of magic.

Speaker 3 (42:10):
Yeah, it's a kind of magic. How many times do
they bring this up in the movie.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
Oh, way too many. I mean, it's a great song,
we all love it, but they go to the well
a little too often on this.

Speaker 3 (42:21):
I think they wanted to put a bunch of references
in there in case you didn't get some of them,
you could still get the others.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
They should have referenced the other songs, though I don't
think they directly reference Princes of the Universe at all.
He could have said that he could just remember Highlander
with Princes of the Universe.

Speaker 3 (42:36):
Here, we are born to be kings.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
Exactly till your mother down, Highlander.

Speaker 3 (42:43):
We will not let you go.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
I want to break free.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
So the priests say, prepare yourself. There can only be one.
And then the priests like lower swords, like they're knighting
them sort of, but they're standing way above them m hm.
And then Connor and Ramirez get zapped by a big
machine that's like a like an exxystraator, and General Katana

(43:09):
looks on angrily. I guess he did not get his
way at the sentencing here.

Speaker 2 (43:13):
Yeah, he's not down with his culture's very forgiving system
of exile.

Speaker 3 (43:26):
So next Connor wakes up in twenty twenty four on
Earth in the opera house. I guess all that was
a dream, a memory, you know, of his of his past.
The show is over and an usher is asking him
to leave the theater, and he's so old and weak
and feeble he can barely croak out a friendly response
to the usher.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
In Michael Weldon's little review for this in The Psychotronic
Film Guides, he points out that he it's a review
where he says, like, there's definitely some awesome stuff in
this in this film, but he's like, oh, it spends
way too much time with Lambert convincingly playing an old
Connor McCloud yes and yeah, quibbles about the makeup aside, Like,

(44:07):
he does really sell this idea of here's your hero
from the first film, old and feeble. But there's gonna
be payoff for that. There's gonna be payoff.

Speaker 3 (44:14):
It takes a third of the movie for him to
get hot again.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (44:19):
Also, there's a scene here where we see like, meanwhile
at the headquarters of the Shield Corporation. I remember, this
is a giant concrete pyramid surrounded by like rushing canals
of water and armed guards. I think this is another
thing that gets mixed up between the different cuts of
the film, because I believe originally more of the like

(44:40):
different Shield Corporation locations were separate, discrete locations with different
kinds of buildings, But this cut just makes it look
like everything Shield related is taking place in the pyramid.
So at this pyramid we see a group of operatives
sneaking past security guards with grappling hooks and zip lines.
Is their purpose? Well, inside the facility, the infiltrators remove

(45:05):
their helmets and it's revealed that their leader is Virginia Madsen. Hey,
there she is, So what are they here for? It
is to hack the shield, specifically to get into the
computer and find out what the readings above the shield are.
And it turns out they are normal, which is a
funny reveal. It's like a gasp moment, but just because

(45:27):
it says normal, So Virginia Madsen says impossible, radiation levels
can't be normal. Then the infiltrators trigger the alarm and
security comes running, so Virginia Madson's crew has to They
flee and we see some very again some very nice
sets and matte paintings as they run away. There's like
one shot you only see for a second, but it's

(45:47):
like a walkway running over this deep, you know, column
shaped chasm with like beams running up and down the sides,
and you know, the actors are running across this walkway
way up above the pit in the foreground, and it
looks great, but it's just like a moment and then
it's gone, and then you see some other stuff that

(46:08):
looks not so good.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
Yeah, I mean, this makes you look like they're on
the industrial Death Star sort of a set. It looks good,
but yeah, then we're through with it.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
So they split up. As they're running away, they're being
pursued by Shield Corporation mercenaries. Meanwhile, back in the city,
we follow Connor as he goes out to a bar
after the opera, and the city set here is so gross.
They did a great job of making this look like
just a disgusting place to live here under the Shield,
Like the streets look like they're made out of wet

(46:38):
newspaper and they're like no colors apart from the neon
signs over businesses, which I think is also a nice touch.
It almost feels like kind of thematically meaningful that like
all of the buildings and the streets and the sky
and everything is like the same kind of gray brown
mud kind of color. And then the only other colors

(47:01):
are just like lights and say like a bar or
opera or you know, or show like advertisements.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
Yeah, I keep expecting Deran Duran Simon Labon to walk
into frame here and start belding out some lyrics or
you know, to rotate into frame strap to a windmill
or something.

Speaker 3 (47:17):
Wild boys indeed.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
Yeah, but we are about to get some music though.

Speaker 3 (47:21):
That's right. So in a restaurant, Connor puts a quarter
in a jukebox and he cues up a kind of
magic or it's a kind of magic by queen. So
like we get a needle drop in the movie. Here
the song about Highlander two, I guess, or is it
about Highlander or Highlander two?

Speaker 2 (47:38):
Oh it's from Highlander one.

Speaker 3 (47:39):
Yeah, oh that's right. Okay, So it's a callback.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
Yeah, it's a callback. It's a great track. It's great
to hear it again and does kind of like remind
us like, yeah, this is a Highlander movie, Gosh darn it.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
But it's nice to know that within the story of
the movie, like it is diegetically the case that Queen
exists in Connor is a fan of It's a kind
of magic. Yes, that's his like, don't stop believing it's
his jukebox tune. So this is a bar where Connor
is a regular. He sits down for a drink. He
knows the bartender. He watches the news on TV and

(48:10):
it's a report that there has been a terrorist attack
on Shield headquarters by an eco terrorist group called Cobalt,
led by a woman named Louise Marcus. That's Virginia Madsen.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
Yeah, we see COBALT's call sign is essentially the Zodiac
killer symbol for some reason.

Speaker 3 (48:25):
Yeah, nice selection there. And then the news interviews John
c McGinley, who was playing. They said earlier that Alan
Naman was the president of the Shield Corporation, but here
they say John c McGinley is the president of the
Shield Corporation. So I don't know what the deal is.
He says that any attempt to undermine the Shield is insane.

(48:45):
Without it, every single human being on the planet would
instantly die. Connor's main reaction to the news is to
comment that the terrorist lady is pretty that's Virginia Madson
and Also, I think we learned, either here or maybe later,
that she used to work for the Shield Corporation before
she became the eco terrorist.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
I'm increasingly struck by the fact that her character is
essentially Gracie Law, the Kim Cattrell character from Big Trouble
in Little China. You know, she's there. She's a spunky,
go getter, you know, a little bit of a hoxy
and female, you know, trope character, but also is just
ultimately there to be the love interest in the long run.
Gracie Law, to be clear, is a much better defined character.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
Gracie Law is a lot funnier. Yeah, Virginia Madsen has
some moments in this, but they're mostly like, as we
said in the last episode, she is sort of the
human character who's here to process the mythology. So we
see her like working through, like she's getting all the
zised stuff explained to her and she's like, am I

(49:48):
understanding this right?

Speaker 2 (49:50):
Yeah? Yeah. She's basically also there to be like like
wake up and get excited about the B plot and
he's like, well, let me tell you about the A plot,
and then we have conversations about that.

Speaker 3 (50:00):
There you go, that's exactly right. Also, meanwhile, while like
Connor's inside looking at her on TV, she happens to
be changing out of her terrorist clothes into street wear
in an alley outside the bar. And then she like
unfolds a piece of paper and the paper just says,
McLoud twenty third Street bar. Huh, how does she have

(50:20):
that information?

Speaker 2 (50:21):
Informants? I guess?

Speaker 3 (50:23):
And then a drunk lady tries to pick a fight
with Connor. She recognizes him by sight and tells him
that her life is bad and it's his fault, as
she says, you covered the sky with that puke, and
then she bashes him with a glass bottle. And so
in the world of this movie, like Connor is recognizable
by sight to just random members of the public and

(50:45):
they all hate him. So, as Connor is leaving the barge,
having just been bashed with a bottle, he's clutching his
wounded arm, Virginia Madson just walks up to him in
the street and she says, Connor, McLoud, I am the
terrorist woman you just saw on TV. Except I'm I'm
not a terrorist. I've got business with you, and he
tries to brush her off and get in his car.

(51:05):
He seems to he has lost his passion for peace
and harmony and doing good in the world. He just
he seems to just want to, you know, mind his
own business and be old and lonely. But she says,
you know, I used to read about you. You had
such great passion for the world. I admired you. I
can see that's all gone. Now you're nothing but a
tired old man. And he tries to get in his

(51:27):
car and drive away, but she just jumps in the
car with him, and then he drives away anyway, Like
why is she hounding him? I don't know, But they
drive off and she says, the world is dying, McLeod,
I need your help. Then suddenly a highly WTF cut,
So we go straight from that conversation in the car
to crazy rock formations in the desert and a title

(51:49):
says the planet Zeist, And then we see Michael Ironside
and he's just like Hinchminton. And a couple of guys
walk up and these are a pair of pale bird
like men wearing welding goggles with porcupine quills for hair.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
Yes, major wild boy energy to these two. I mean,
these two really could have just walked right out of
the Wild Boy's music video.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
General Katana says to them, you leave for the planet Earth,
immediately find McLoud and kill him. The Benjaman says, but
I thought you said McLeod was mortal and could never return.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
And this is actually an excellent and unaddressed point. So
on Planet Zeis, everyone here seems to be a mortal
as well, because Katana has not seemingly aged at all,
these guys presumably are part of the Zeistian order from
centuries prior as well. And yeah, it's like for some reason,
Katana's saying, okay, go find the guy that won the

(52:47):
prize and is doing all this stuff and hasn't hasn't
come back to Zeist is not in any way seemingly
planning to or or working on interfering with our stuff. Here,
go back and him and and they're like, but why
why now? Why are we doing this? And he just
like slaps him around a little and like, go do it,
you dummies. But why, there's no reason for this to happen.

(53:12):
There's never a reason for this to happen in the movie.

Speaker 3 (53:15):
That's exactly right, Like why now why why?

Speaker 2 (53:20):
Yeah, like I was thinking about this, Okay, assuming Katana
wanted to interfere with the exile system and the you know,
the game towards the prize, he would have done it
ages ago. And maybe the idea here is like, I
know they wanted to get consequency Brown in here to
reprise the role of the Kurgan to some degree. So

(53:41):
maybe the idea is like, at some level, the Kurgan
was like their dude that they sent back. It's like, Okay,
go win this prize thing, so we don't have to
worry about Connor. And he fails, But even then it's
like that was the time to interfere at this point.
Connor won the prize and ended up not doing the
thing you were afraid he was gonna do. No reason
to go back.

Speaker 3 (53:59):
And get Yes, that is what I've read that they
wanted Clancy Brown to come back and play the Kurgan again,
to establish that the Kurgan, the villain of the first movie,
was another Hinchman of General Katanas, who had been sent
there to kill Connor. But he was defeated. But still
I wonder, like, why why is it now in like

(54:21):
twenty twenty four on Earth where he's like, Okay, I'm
ready to send two more guys.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
Yeah, you've about outlived Connor McLeod. He is mortal. He's
going to die of mortal death. What does it matter, desist.

Speaker 3 (54:34):
But Katana, like you said, he just kind of like
slaps these guys around and says find him, kill him,
and they nod, and then one of them cackles like
one of those motions sensing Halloween decorations, you know, the
witch that cackles when you walk by. It sounds exactly
like that. Then they beam themselves to Earth, which is
apparently instantaneous. So back on Earth, McLeod and Virginia Madson

(54:55):
they're still driving around and suddenly McLeod gasps for bread.
Then again it's as if he can sense in his
guts whenever someone arrives from Zeist and Connor pulls over,
gets out of the car, and then the two porcupine
bird henchmen are here, and they've got rocket boots or
like a floating rocket skateboard that allows them to fly,

(55:19):
and one of them has wings on his back, and
they sort of like they at the beginning, they like
loaf around in an alley way, arguing over who gets
to cut off McLeod's head. Again, Connor McLeod is his
Zeist name, that's the name they know him from there,
and then this fight kicks off, and man, I have

(55:39):
so like, I think that the edit that is available
does not give the best does not show the best
sides of this fight very well. But actually, if you
look at the individual shots, this is a pretty great
looking fight scene and a lot of these stunts and
effects are quite impressive and do look good.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
Yeah, it's very ambitious. In my opinion, this is the
best part of the film, a truly awesome sci fi
action set piece and sequence that really gives you everything
you want. Like, this is the part of the film
where you really feel like everyone's heart was in it.
The vision was on point, the execution is mostly pitch perfect,
and I can quibble about one or two of the
effects towards the end. I'll come back to that, But

(56:22):
otherwise this is Highlander two at its best. This is
the thing in the trailers that pulled me in to
Highlander films in general.

Speaker 3 (56:31):
Yeah, they actually talk about this in the documentary where
they show how they achieved, specifically the effect of Connor
McLeod riding the sort of I don't know rocket skateboard
or whatever, the hoverboard, and it's a really cool effect
because it really does look like he's floating in the
air and kind of riding it, like it's bouncing up
and down. And the way they achieved that was, you know,

(56:51):
they had him on a wire system, of course, but
the board was strapped to his feet and they had
it suspended from an elastics system, so the board would
actually sort of bounce up and down with the weight
of his body as it was adjusting and moving through
the air, and it creates a really cool looking effect.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
It's great, yeah, yeah, if anyone listening is not familiar
with it. Essentially, this is like the little hoverboard that
the Green Goblin uses in Spider Man and in the
snider Man movies.

Speaker 3 (57:19):
And it's almost entirely like in camera effects. It's not
post production stuff. It looks great because they what they
were able to achieve on set looked great. But anyway,
so during this fight the two aliens from Zeist attack him,
Connor seems to defend himself pretty well for a guy
who just seemed almost too weak to talk earlier this evening.

(57:39):
But I don't know, maybe the arrival of the guys
from Zeist has sort of partially reinvigorated him, given him
back some of that immortal strength, and they like fight.
They go up with fire escape and they start fighting
on these catwalks that go over the city streets. The
guy from Zeist has a sword, and at first Connor
is defending himself with just like a steel rod, like

(58:00):
a metal bar. Uh. And I love the like these
henchmen are super weird, but they're very expressive. They keep
doing the witch cackling thing. They like stick their tongues
out grotesquely and they try to mock McLoud and these
weird high pitched voices.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
It's it's great, yeah, yeah, yeah there. They are a
lot of fun. I mean they're just completely over the top. Uh.
And and again I love the action and these sequences
with old man Connor, uh, you know, mustering up and
just enough energy to fight them off using a pipe
against swords.

Speaker 3 (58:32):
Now, what comes next I think is also a quite
inspired action staging choice. You know, action choreography here is smart.

Speaker 1 (58:41):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (58:41):
They fall from the catwalk onto a passing train and
Connor the fight on the train. Then Connor manages to
knock one of the bird warriors off the train. And
his body falls in just the right way so that
the wheels of the train remove his head.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
Yeah, he really lucked out on that one. But it's
a cool, cool moment.

Speaker 3 (59:03):
And then the quickening. There's like the snakes of lightning
jumping out of the severed Zeistian head and then they
wrap around Connor and he screams and everything starts exploding.
Nearby storefronts explode, paint cans and other garbage in the street.
It all explodes. A passing gasoline truck as like a

(59:26):
you know, his gas transport tankers. It explodes, and then
the fireball envelopes Connor and you're like, oh no, oh, no,
Connor must have been destroyed by this explosion. And the
remaining zeist henchman clearly thinks that because he sees it happen,
and he giggles triumphantly. But uh oh, Connor McLeod walks
out of the fireball from the gas truck and we're

(59:50):
back friends. I think we are back in business. Christoph
Lambert is hot again. He looks like he's young again,
and he is ready to fight.

Speaker 2 (59:59):
This is the eg Zach moment in the film at
which Princes of the Universe should have played. My number
one criticism of the film is that the is that
Princes of the Universe does not play at this moment.
I would also settle for some off album choices. They
could have gone with, keep Yourself Alive, or if they
wanted to be a little cheeky, don't stop me now.

(01:00:21):
But it needed it needed that, it needed that oomph.
And it's still it's still a very dramatic and nice
moment because yeah, he's back, he's young again, he's hot again,
he's powerful enough to take on this other assassin, this
remaining assassin from the planet's heist. And oh and I
want to add the whole destructive quickening thing. I kind
of forgot that they also call that the quickening, like
the quickening is, to my understanding, simultaneously both the transfer

(01:00:46):
of energy between a slain immortal and the immortal slayer
and also running on the beach with your best friend.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

Speaker 3 (01:00:54):
Highly I can't correct you. Oh yeah, but fans maybe, Okay,
I trust you, Rob, I think you're right about that.
But can I go with another, maybe more oblique kind
of queen song choice I think they could have done.
I'm in Love with my car. You know, it's the
right feeling.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
Yeah, I mean, the feeling is key. It's I think
you'd want to go with the like a nice building,
heavier track. Another one buys the dust I think could
also work. Yeah, I mean, there are a number of
great queen songs.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
Oh. Also, Virginia Madsen is peaking out of a dumpster
that I guess she hid in. I don't think we
see how she gets in the dumpster, but she like
looks out at Connor McLeod and she's obviously like, oh,
he looks good now. And the second seceed Henchman starts
flying around on his wings, like swooping at Connor and
shooting at him with a blaster from Star Wars. But wait,

(01:01:42):
shouldn't the zeice Tinchman know that the blaster won't do
anything because Connor is once again immortal.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
Well, he can't kill him with the blaster, probably, but
he could wound him enough to have a better chance
of cutting his head off.

Speaker 3 (01:01:53):
I guess that. Okay, actually that does make sense. I
withdraw my criticism there, you're right. But conn gets into
the fight by putting on the other Birdman's rocket boots,
so he's zooming around on the rocket boots the other
guy's got the wings and it becomes an air joust
and it's great.

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
Yeah, I legitimately love this whole sequence here. It's good.

Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
But there are also, like just some weird in this scene.
There are these weird little dialogue moments that I don't
know if they're quite firing on all cylinders. Like the
henchman yells say goodbye a highlander. But why does he
call him a highlander? That's just like random Earth topography.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
I mean his name's McLeod too. Yeah, it makes no sense.

Speaker 3 (01:02:36):
He says, say goodbye highlander, and then Connor replies, why
you going somewhere?

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
Yeah? I think I think they could workshop that a
little Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
And then also the bird henchman randomly incinerates. Just there's
a guy on the sidewalk who asks this alien if
he has a light, and then he just blows him up.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
Okay, this is a great moment, This is perfect.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
No notes on that, but anyway, Connor manages to decapitate
the second Zeist fighter here with a clothes line trap
made out of electrical wire.

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
Yeah, this moment is still awesome. But this is the
moment where I feel like the effects could have been
a little bit tighter, it could have moved a little faster.
Still great, but I see where like maybe they didn't
hit exactly where they envisioned.

Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
I agree, But okay, so Connor, he's defeated the two
aliens from zeis. Now he gets quickening once again. He
gets all the lightning coming up on him and things
blowing up, and he's just like flowing with that immortal energy.
And when he does, he drops to his knees in
the middle of the street and screams into the sky.
Rem next thing, we're on stage at a play in

(01:03:47):
a theater in Scotland. It's a performance of Hamlet, and
Sean Connery zaps into existence in the middle of the actors.
This descends into what I think is a fairly cramy
comedy scene where Sean Connery starts talking to the actors
mischievously while they're trying to perform, and they're like running

(01:04:07):
around the stage trying to escape him while reciting their lines.
And I think the joke is like, oh, Ramirez has
no idea what's going on. He doesn't know what a
play is. But like hundreds of years ago, when Ramirez
was alive, there were plays. Plays existed then.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
Yeah, Ramirez, who we know traversed multiple cultures, absorbing their
cultures and sometimes their accents at every turn. Yeah, he
knows what a play is. Just this is just beyond ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (01:04:38):
Also, the audience loves Ramirez. He's here disrupting this play
and like making fun of the actors, and the audience
is eating him up. They're like, get off of here, Hamlet,
I want more Ramirez ridiculous, So we will continue to

(01:05:01):
get some more frankly pretty cringey fish out of time
gags with Sean Connery, like he walks into the street
somewhere in Scotland and they almost gets hit by a
truck and then mutters to himself, so much for the
horse and caught what okay? And then back in wherever
Connor is? Do they say where Connor is in this

(01:05:22):
in the future.

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
I don't know, Shield City.

Speaker 3 (01:05:25):
I'm not sure, ye, shield City. Connor is explaining to
Virginia Madsen the whole thing. You know, I was banished
from the planet's ice five hundred years ago. I cannot die,
et cetera. And then they just kiss passionately. That's absolute
We said this in the last episode, but this has
got to be one of the most unearned romances in

(01:05:45):
movie history. They just met moments ago, and their meeting
was entirely business. There was had nothing like, no initial
connection whatsoever. But he just got quickening and now he's
young and good looking, and now they're just smooth and.

Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
Yeah, yeah, it's ridiculous. I mean, I referenced Gracie Law
Kim Katrall's character from Big Trouble and Little China earlier.
But at least in Big Trouble Little China, which I
still hold up as being pretty great, you do get
development of the relationship, the romantic tension between Jack Burton
and Gracie Law. It is ultimately earned that they fall

(01:06:21):
in love with each other, at least for a little
bit or something like love, you know. But yeah, it's
totally unearned here. But this is not the kind of
movie where you necessarily expected, I guess.

Speaker 3 (01:06:31):
Yeah, there's not a moment of romantic tension at all
between them until like the kissing starts basically anyway, then
they're back at Connor's pad, and by the way, look
at look at the I've got a screenshot of his apartment.
It's full of like these giant marble statues. Inside the apartment.
It looks like a train station.

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):
Yeah yeah, it's kind of like, you know, called back
to the first film in which his home is kind
of like a museum because his life is like this
museum and all these memories.

Speaker 3 (01:06:59):
And so yeah, so she's this is the scene where
Louise is like, Okay, let me just see if I
can get this straight. You come from another planet. You're
mortal there, but you're immortal here until you kill all
the guys from there who have come here, and then
you're mortal here unless you go back there or some
more guys from there came here, in which case you

(01:07:21):
become immortal here again. And then Connor says in his
with his wonderful little voice and chuckle something like that,
and she expresses disbelief. And then Connor love these adding
up here. He says, let's just say it's a kind
of magic.

Speaker 2 (01:07:41):
Just repeat to yourself. It's just a show.

Speaker 3 (01:07:43):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But anyway, so Louise tells Connor that, oh,
you're back to business. We got to remember. The whole
reason we met is She's like, I need your help
with the Shield. We got to save the Earth. She's like,
something's wrong with the shield. The B plot is is
something's going wrong. They're hiding something and you've got to

(01:08:04):
help me expose it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:06):
And again I want to point out that Katana has
zero steak in all of this, Like this would ultimately
everything would make more sense if there was any connection
between A plot and B plot here if Katana for
some reason didn't want like the shield to come down,
but there's there's nothing on that. We would have to
sit here and speculate all day to figure out how
to connect these two plots and again, make it it

(01:08:27):
all sensible for Katana to send goons to Earth to
take out Connor.

Speaker 3 (01:08:32):
Now what if, for all I know, this could have
been in the script at some point, But what if,
for example, the Shield being in place prevented Zeistians on
Earth from leaving and returning.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
Desist they're all dead though there's.

Speaker 3 (01:08:47):
Well, yeah, but if he wanted Connor to not come back,
he would want the shield to stay in place.

Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
Okay, yeah, I guess that could have worked had they
established it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:57):
I'm just saying like, yeah, is out there.

Speaker 2 (01:09:01):
There ways they could have and maybe in some version
of the script. They did address this, but we don't
get it here.

Speaker 3 (01:09:07):
Okay. So here Connor goes to visit his old friend
and partner, Alan Naman. They created the Shield together, and
Alan is shocked at how good Connor looks. He's like,
did you get a facelift? Also, Alan's office here, I'm
a pretty big fan of it. This is one of
the offices where the only light source is moonlight shining
in through a window where there is like a thirty

(01:09:30):
foot fan spinning constantly outside right outside the window, and
the silhouettes of the blades are just going round and round,
so the light in the room is crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
Yeah. Again, this is like total Russell McKay music video style.
You expect to like pan over and there's Simon Labon
in the chair. We're in a fedora and he's gonna
start belding out some Duran Duran tuns. Looks great.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
Also, at this meeting, Alan shares with Connor that the
radiation levels above the shield are normal, but John c McGinley,
the Shield executive, is spying on them from the next room.
So this seems to be a corporation where the CEO
stays late to personally spy on employees rather than having
like software or subordinates do it for him. McGinley then

(01:10:14):
comes into the room and Connor starts like needling him
about how what if one day the Shield doesn't need
it anymore, your profits would dry up. So it's like
he's just Connor seems to be like wrapping out his
friend who just told him about this in confidence. Next

(01:10:34):
we cut to the planet Zeist, and then we see
Michael Ironside just standing in a cave by himself, and
he says, I guess if you want something done right,
you have to do it yourself. So then he goes
to Earth.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
Yeah, he also would get the like his sci fi
techno sword goes shishing to sell this, which I have
to admit looks pretty cool. And I also have to
point out this is also pretty much the exact post
credit Thanos sequence from the Age of Ultron movie. It
would come you know, decades later, except with Thanos grabbing

(01:11:07):
an Infinity Gauntlet instead of making his sword ghoshashing.

Speaker 3 (01:11:10):
Oh that's funny. I wonder if they got it from this.

Speaker 2 (01:11:13):
Maybe so yeah, because it's like I had to go
back and look at it. It's pretty much the exact
same thing, like Thanos is, like you want something done,
you got to do it yourself, and then that sets
up him doing it himself.

Speaker 3 (01:11:23):
But speaking of so, you brought up a way in
which General Katana's motivations don't make a lot of sense
when he gets like all wrapped up in the Shield
Corporation drama, which matters to him in no way whatsoever.
But he gets tied up in that he is just
off task in lots of ways. Because the first thing
General Katana does when he arrives on Earth is hijack

(01:11:43):
a subway car to no end whatsoever. It's just like
because he wants to.

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):
Yeah, this guy's not supposed to be like just the
reckless enforcer that the loose cannon. He's supposed to be
the mastermind, Like this is the big bad like Thanos
doesn't come to Earth in the Marvel movies just like
I love recking casinos. No, he's got an agenda, He's
got things he definitely wants to do, and he's gonna
mess with you if you get in the way of

(01:12:08):
those goals. Katana doesn't operate like.

Speaker 3 (01:12:11):
That, right, So he like beams down into a subway car.
He says, this doesn't look like Kansas. Great great reference
for zeist culture.

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
They love Wizard of Us.

Speaker 3 (01:12:21):
Yeah, and then he kills a random passenger on the train.
Then he goes up to a kid and he says,
bet you've always wanted to drive one of these, haven't you.
And the kid's like yeah, and then he goes me too.
Then he goes up to the front of the subway car,
conks out the driver, hijacks the train, and then like
he makes the aphex twin face as he pushes the

(01:12:44):
speed up to hundreds of miles per hour and then
crashes through the side of a building.

Speaker 2 (01:12:50):
More train wrecks center train wreck of the movie.

Speaker 3 (01:12:52):
Right, and then we get these these weird General Katana
Connor interactions. We see Connor going to visit the grave
of his Earth wife, which is in some kind of
urban cathedral, and then General Katana's just there to sarcastically
slow clap after Connor finishes saying a few words and

(01:13:13):
another interesting choice. Ironside is just in full clown mode here.
He's like kissing on a statue of an angel and
he's making these quips. He says to Connor after you
know Connor's talking to his wife's grave, and Katana says,
I always did admire a man who can talk to
the dead. And then he says, the remains of your

(01:13:33):
mortal wife so frail, so earthly, so very dead, And
Connor says, at least she's at peace. Katana says peace
is highly overrated, and then Connor says things don't change. Katana,
I like that, after all these years, you're still a jerk,

(01:13:54):
a jerk. But then they also say they can't They
know they're gonna have to fight, but they say they
can't fight here because of quote the Golden Rule, which
is that we must never fight on holy ground.

Speaker 2 (01:14:05):
Yeah, this is something, of course established in the first
Highlander movie. And they do kind of try to address
one problem that emerges concerning all this in Highlander three,
and that is, okay, it's one thing for Connor and
other like, you know, some degree like chaotic good or
neutral good immortals to honor this rule, I guess. But
why do all these like clearly chaotic evil immortals care

(01:14:27):
about the Golden rule concerning holy spaces? So credit to
Highlander three. I won't spoil anything, but they do at
least address that a little bit in that picture.

Speaker 3 (01:14:37):
Oh okay, you know I have to watch Highlander three someday.
I never made it that far.

Speaker 2 (01:14:42):
I mean, it's it's I remember, it's being fun. It's fun.
It's got Mario vn Peebles place the new villainous Immortal,
which I believe the whole idea is, oh, Connor, you
didn't win the prize after all, because there were three
immortals that were trapped in a cave in somewhere and oh,
they just dug him.

Speaker 3 (01:15:00):
Out perfect completely ignores Islander two, right.

Speaker 2 (01:15:03):
Right, I guess technically occurs before highland Er two, but
also ignores it.

Speaker 3 (01:15:08):
And then meanwhile, back in Scotland with Ramirez, who has
been reincarnated, we get a comedy makeover scene. I love
that they included this in the movie. So Sean Connery
goes into a men's tailor shop and he gets fancy
modern clothes and they're like custom made. He play pays
for them with a pearl ear ring. I guess there's

(01:15:29):
just more use of Ramirez for comic relief, more fish
out of time stuff, Like before he goes in, he
looks at TVs and a shop window and he is
amazed about the concept of airplanes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:15:39):
I seem to recall reading that a lot of this,
the Scotland stuff, was Connery's doing, Like, I'll do it,
but there need to be some scenes that are shot
in Scotland. And I don't know if he had any
influence over the flavor of these sequences, but you can
imagine that as like, all right, if we're gonna we're
gonna shoot these extra days. I want one day where
I'm just getting fitted for a suit while I drink scotch.
That's the whole scene.

Speaker 3 (01:16:00):
I got it. He does look sharp, he looks great
in the suit they give him. Oh yeah, yeah, he does.

Speaker 2 (01:16:06):
Yeah, i'd say. In general, though, Ramirez lacks the authentic
charisma that he had in the first film. Though, you know,
he's more of a comic relief character here except for
some key dramatic moments.

Speaker 3 (01:16:17):
Yeah. So he then gets on an airplane to go
I guess to America to find Connor, and he flirts
with the woman in the seat next to him. There
are some jokes about airplane food that somehow morph into
sex jokes. That's all yuck, yuck. But also in this part,
there is a part that's supposed to be funny and

(01:16:38):
does genuinely work. It's quite hilarious when Ramirez watches an
aviation safety film on the you know, video screen in
front of him. That is quite funny.

Speaker 2 (01:16:49):
I didn't care for it, but no, but it is
kind of like it's very much of the sort of
RoboCop vibe of parity, which I do admire. Isn't there
another sequel it's like this that maybe Katanovius maybe it's
a different cut of the film where it's like a chef,
like Psychic Chef or something. What was the.

Speaker 3 (01:17:09):
Oh, I think that's in another cut of the film.
I think that's not in the American version. But yeah,
there are like these weird media segments that are kind
of robocopy, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:17:17):
Which I admire, and I would say that one's worth
checking out. I just can't remember what it was. It's
something like Psychic Chef or it's dumb but amusing, Yeah,
Psychic Chef.

Speaker 3 (01:17:30):
The joke is that the aviation safety movie that's like
you know where the emergency exits are and stuff on
the plane is like actually incredibly violent and terrifying.

Speaker 2 (01:17:40):
Yeah, at any rate, the successfully flies all the way
to wherever Shield City is. So that and we don't
see the rest of it. We don't see him going
through Custa, we don't see arranging travel figuring out exactly
where Connor is. I mean, he's got the quickening, so
I guess he can zone in on him.

Speaker 3 (01:17:58):
Yeah, I would. Oh, I'd love to see him going
through customs. But oh, speaking of things to declare, there
is a scene where Virginia Madsen's like wandering around Connor's
apartment and goes through all this old stuff and know,
and it's showing, Oh, he's lived for centuries, he played football,
he sailed on the high seas. Here's his nineteen oh
one football team picture, and there's a suit of armor

(01:18:19):
in there, and like old bottles of wine and all that.
Also in this room, is that a Confederate flag in there? Connor?

Speaker 2 (01:18:27):
Well, I bet he took that off of Confederate troops.
I don't remember, but there. I don't remember where all
this lands, but I know there were some deleted scenes
in the for The First Highlander in which he fights
the Nazis, so I'm guessing he fought for the Union
during the Civil War.

Speaker 3 (01:18:44):
There's also a scene in here where General Katana rides
in a cab. He's like, well, so the cab driver
loves General Katana. When he gets in, he's like, whoa,
you're like a heavy metal dude. WHOA, you're so you're
out of control.

Speaker 2 (01:18:59):
You're in them music business, aren't you.

Speaker 3 (01:19:02):
Katana is like, it's quite comfortable back here, like a coffin.

Speaker 2 (01:19:08):
What does Katana even? Like? What is what does this
guy about? It's just bad, that's all he is.

Speaker 3 (01:19:14):
Yeah, it's a he's like, oh yeah. And then when
they arrive at his destination, he just starts destroying the cab,
Like he stabs his sword through the window and he
gets out and he kicks out the headlights and stabs
the tires, and the whole time the driver, the taxi
driver is going like awesome. But anyway, where was the

(01:19:43):
cab taking him? Why? It's Shield Corporation headquarters. So Michael
Ironside walks into a board meeting with John C. McGinley
and he starts just choking people and he says, I'd
like to join your human Corporation? Where do I sign up?
And they try to have like a guy the suit
shoot him, but man, he's a mortal whoops. Also, there

(01:20:05):
are more jokes and references that don't make any sense,
like General Katana gets up after being shot and he says, yes,
you know, guys, this is no way to treat your
number one draft choice. It's like, is that a football metaphor?

Speaker 2 (01:20:19):
I guess they have football on Zeist?

Speaker 3 (01:20:22):
So I think based on this scene, General Katana is
now CEO of the Shield Corporation.

Speaker 2 (01:20:27):
You know, I bet what happened is they had football
on Zeist and who invented football on Earth? But immortals?
Probably Connor did it.

Speaker 3 (01:20:35):
That makes so much sense. Yes, But somehow, like General
Katana getting tangled up with the Shield Corporation and seemingly
becoming John c mcginley's partner like accelerates them in just
doing general badness. So John C McGinley goes into Alan
Nayman's office from naming his Connor's old friend, and he's like,

(01:20:57):
He's like, okay, I know you. You're telling people both
at the radiation levels are normal. I'm gonna throw you
in Shield jail, which exists. Let me get some brief
character moments where like Virginia Madson is asking Connor about
his previous wives and Connor is talking about them, but
then they get interrupted when Connor senses a presence nearby

(01:21:19):
and a shadowy figure emerges, and Connor and this figure
duel with swords, but then it's revealed that it is
Sean Connery and he says, greetings, Highlander, you called so again.
Connor always had the power to resurrect Ramirez from the
dead by yelling his name, and they have known this
since they came from Zeist five hundred years ago, but

(01:21:39):
he just now did it. Ye, So they have, you know,
playful dueling and banter. I think they're trying to get
the old magic back from Highlander one. They're trying to
get that feeling that relationship re established. I think it's
not quite clicking, but they try to do it with
like them making fun of each other, Like Ramirez makes
fun of Connor for having ridiculous art in his apartment,

(01:22:02):
Connor makes fun of Ramirez for being old and for
having been dead.

Speaker 2 (01:22:06):
Yeah, it's almost like what they should have and maybe
even wanted to do. You should have had a flashback
here to show like their relationship in a maybe an
outdoor setting, because here we do have this wonderful but
very grimy, grungy, dark set, and I don't know, it's
not a very lively place to establish a lively relationship.

Speaker 3 (01:22:27):
Yeah, though they do try to spice it up. They
pour drinks and they have a toast and the toast go.
This is a direct quote, Connor says to Magic and
Ramirez says to seyst Also, Ramirez meets Virginia Mattson meets
Louise Marcus, and he says, you know, he's like, wow,

(01:22:49):
you know, I like this eco terrorist and they immediately
start scheming. Ramirez says, hey, Connor, the Shield is ugly
and it sucks, and Connor says, yeah, well it was
necess at the time, and then Ramirez says, so was
Noah's Flood. But they they established that Connor's old friend
Alan is being held in this secret high security Shield

(01:23:11):
prison and they have to go rescue him. Also, they
established that General Katana is here and they have to
go face him. So first of all, they go to
the Shield corpse Slammer. So they go to the security
gate and it's like Connor is driving a car and
Ramirez is in the passenger seat and they just drive
through the barricade into the Shield headquarters. And they get

(01:23:33):
blasted by guards with machine guns. Fortunately they are immortal,
so that when they get inside, they just sort of
like pop up in the shield prison morgue. Also, Louise
is in there. She's like talking to the doctor and
the morgue, and then he sees them, you know, Connor
and Ramirez pop up, and he just faints.

Speaker 2 (01:23:52):
Fun immortal hikks.

Speaker 3 (01:23:54):
Yes. Then they decide to split up, of course, and
start running around in tunnels looking for Alan. I was like,
is this a prison? It looks more like a sewer
full of people living in rags and eating rats. It's
like what the human hideout in Terminator is.

Speaker 1 (01:24:10):
Like.

Speaker 3 (01:24:11):
They go and find Alan, but he does one of
those movie instant deaths where he's just like, oh, Connor,
you know, we tell me we did the right thing
by making the shield, and then he's like you were
my best friend, oh and just falls over dies. Meanwhile,
John c McGinley and General Katana are like watching all
this on closed circuit cameras, and General Katana says, well, well,

(01:24:33):
well like a high school reunion down there.

Speaker 2 (01:24:37):
And so the instantly once more he's got the drop,
and ramiras.

Speaker 3 (01:24:43):
Yeah, and so here's what they're gonna do okay, they
run them into a trap room. So our three heroes
are They go into a cylindrical room all at the
same time. The doors slam and lock behind them, and
then this is one of the greatest moments of the movie.
A whirling fans starts lowering from the ceiling toward the floor,

(01:25:04):
so like, oh no, the fan is descending on them.
It's like the pit and the pendulum, except it's a fan.
And I guess the implication is that the fan will
lower until it hits the floor and just squashes them,
or I suppose the threat to the immortals is that
the fan blades will chop off their heads. But then
I was thinking, like, is that really physically? What would happen?

(01:25:24):
Wouldn't they just kind of get more like like you know,
like they're in a blender.

Speaker 2 (01:25:29):
I don't know, But I also like how this hall
set kind of resembles the fizzy lifting drink scene from
Willy Wonka.

Speaker 3 (01:25:35):
Yes, so the.

Speaker 2 (01:25:36):
Blades didn't lower in that our heroes floated up towards it.
But I still can't help but connect the two.

Speaker 3 (01:25:43):
So, how are our heroes going to get out of
this jam?

Speaker 2 (01:25:46):
You tell me. I've seen it multiple times and I
still don't know what happens.

Speaker 3 (01:25:49):
Here's what happens. So Ramirez says, you stay back. Connor
says I can help. Ramirez says, no, you can't, not
this time. And then Ramirez go a speech. He's like
standing in the middle of the room under the fan.
He lifts his hands up and he says, most people
have a full measure of life, and most people just

(01:26:10):
watch it slowly drip away. But if you can summon
it all up at one time, in one place, you
can accomplish something glorious. And then bagpipes start playing amazing grace,
and Ramirez like light comes out of his hand, and
the fan, I guess, starts lifting back up from where

(01:26:32):
it was and he he turns to Connor and Louise
and he says, my time here is over. It'll take
the power of both of you to destroy General Katana
and the Shield, and Connor says, will I ever see
you again? And Ramirez says, who knows, Hylander, who knows?
So Connor and Louise escape for some reason. The door

(01:26:53):
pops open and Ramirez turns into light and explodes.

Speaker 2 (01:26:57):
Yeah, I have no idea what this is supposed to
be like self quickeningly destroys the fan.

Speaker 3 (01:27:04):
It just feels like it feels like they had to
wrap this thing up.

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):
Just a kind of magic. Can't question it.

Speaker 3 (01:27:11):
There's another quick scene where General Katana and John C
McGinley are talking and the latter is upset for some
reason and Katana reacts by grabbing him by the crotch,
lifting him in the air, and throwing him out a window.
So that's the end of that character.

Speaker 2 (01:27:24):
Yeah, and this character in this relationship that we just
had so little invested in.

Speaker 3 (01:27:29):
Yeah, but now we're here for the final showdown. So
Connor and Louise fight their way to the top of
the Shield pyramid with guns, by the way, which feels
wrong for Highlander.

Speaker 2 (01:27:37):
Yeah, uncivilized weapon. I think he does use a machine
gun against the Nazis and a deleted scene from Highlander one.
But still you didn't You don't sign up to see
Connor McLeod use machine gun.

Speaker 3 (01:27:48):
Right, So Connor like he hands a rifle to Louise
and he's like, Okay, you go fight all the soldiers
and destroy the Shield. I'll go cross swords with General Katana.
I am not worried what will happen to you? And
you know he kisses there a letter, know he means it.
The location of the General Katana Showdown is it's confusing here,
and I think it's because what has happened in this

(01:28:10):
scene in the American cut is that this is actually
two completely separate fight scenes that happen at two different
parts of the movie, and they've been edited together.

Speaker 2 (01:28:20):
That would make a lot of sense.

Speaker 3 (01:28:22):
But it's in a dark, empty warehouse with like that
wet industrial feeling, you know, steam pipes, water is dripping,
chains dangling everywhere, metal grates, catwalks, sparks shooting out of stuff.
It's your basic final showdown sword fight. It's not great,
but I have seen worse.

Speaker 2 (01:28:39):
Yeah yeah, and I can't again, I can't help but
wonder too how injuries and clunky swords and so forth
factored into this, because I don't think that the sword
fights in Highland are one set an incredibly high standard,
like they're not. I wouldn't. I would never hold them
them up as being like the best sword fights in cinema.
But they're really good, and I feel like what we

(01:29:02):
get in this picture, you know, aside from flying space assassins.
What we get in this picture feels mostly sub Highlander one.

Speaker 3 (01:29:12):
Yeah, and there's one part in this fight where McLeod
falls down an elevator shaft and breaks all his bones.

Speaker 2 (01:29:18):
So that's pretty interesting. I did like that.

Speaker 3 (01:29:21):
Yeah, and then he has to manually snap them back
into place and then go up and fight again. I
think that might have been the like break that the
actual conclusion of one of the two original fight scenes.
I'm not positive, but anyway, they start sword fighting right
next to a giant beam. This is the source of
the shield. It's kind of a cool set.

Speaker 2 (01:29:42):
Yeah, yeah, it looks really cool, big sets, you know,
beam of light, very evocative. I love it. Though. Again,
the actual sword fight, especially right here, feels kind of anticlimactic. Again,
like it just didn't have much more gas in the.

Speaker 3 (01:29:56):
Tank that that's exactly right. So Connor wins. He chops
off Katana's head. It does feel kind of anti climactic.
Then he gets some quickening, you know, all the light
shoots into him and he gets the electricity snakes and stuff.
But like, is he mortal again now? I would guess so.
But then he walks into the shield beam huh and

(01:30:18):
Virginia Madison's there looking at him and she's like no.
And then the shield explodes. The satellite controlling the shield explodes,
the sky clears and they can see stars. Wow, the
shield is gone. And then the voice of Ramirez speaks
in their minds and says, remember, highlander, you've both still
got your full measure of life. Use it well and

(01:30:41):
your future will be glorious. End credits.

Speaker 2 (01:30:45):
Wow. So yeah, I guess he uses the power of
this quickening, of this energy absorption of a powerful immortal
to short circuit all of the shield technology here.

Speaker 3 (01:30:57):
And I guess yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:30:58):
And then at the end, is either mortal or is
gonna get to return to.

Speaker 3 (01:31:04):
Zeist doesn't make it, doesn't say, ends incredibly abruptly with
the voiceover by Sean Connery, which is calls back to
the fun one of the funniest moments in the movie
when he's pushing the fan in full measure of life.
I don't know where any of that comes from.

Speaker 2 (01:31:20):
Now, tell me about this fairy tale ending. What is
this return Dezice thing that could have happened?

Speaker 3 (01:31:25):
So there are a couple of different endings. There is
one ending in which after this Connor and Louise are
like walking outside the shield pyramid and they're like, oh,
we did it. You know, I love you. And then
Connor returns to Zeist without her. You know. He's like,
I love you, but I must leave you here on Earth.
I've got it. I made a vow I would return Dezeist,

(01:31:47):
and he does. He like flies away into space. Then
there's another ending where they both go to Seist where
he's like, you know, I love you, Come with me
Dezeised and she's like, but I can't fly through space.
And I think he I think he's essentially like, you know,
it's a kind of magic. Just try it, and so
she does, and then she flies into space and they

(01:32:09):
both fly into space and go to Zeis together.

Speaker 2 (01:32:11):
Okay, I don't know whether they're going to get up
to there. We don't really know much about Zis aside
from conflict, but maybe they're they're good qualities. They have
football apparently, and maybe high schools they don't.

Speaker 3 (01:32:22):
Yeah, we're never shown like what's worth fighting for on Zeised.
We should we should see like the good you know,
the good life on Zeised.

Speaker 2 (01:32:29):
Yeah, or the like the old Zeis that they're going
to restore I'm not sure again, why do we care
about this? Why is it important? Why? Now?

Speaker 3 (01:32:37):
Anyway? That's Highland or two. The Quickening a movie that
is so interesting to me. I mean it just in
terms of a deeply hilarious, flawed movie. It is that,
but it's also really interesting because there's a lot about
it that is mostly buried in the American cut but
is pretty good and just like isn't allowed to cohere

(01:33:01):
into a full film. But if you can like look
at those elements, they're they're really quite admirable in their
own Like we were talking about some of the sets
and some of the staging in the costumes, and like
the actors are great, though I don't think anybody in
this movie is on their a game. Uh, And so
I don't know. It's just such an interesting creative product

(01:33:22):
and whatever you think about it, I think it's undeniable
that it is so funny and so perplexing and it's
something that the people who are interested in filmmaking should see,
I think, and and also learn watch the documentary and
you know, learn learn about how it was made.

Speaker 2 (01:33:40):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Like if you're if you're into that side,
like what went wrong and how is it made and
so forth, Like Highlander two is a great story if
you just want a bad movie, a movie with flaws
that you can you can riff on. Highlander two is
a great choice if you know, if you like to
find that the diamonds in the midst of the raw,
if you want to find the shiny parts of otherwise

(01:34:03):
flawed films, like Highlander two has riches for you to behold.
So yeah, I feel like it's one of those those
weird films, those flawed films, that has a lot to offer,
two different different values, different audiences.

Speaker 3 (01:34:15):
Absolutely agree. Yeah, I love Highlander two.

Speaker 2 (01:34:19):
All right, Well, we're going to go ahead and close
out this our second episode on Highlander two. Second and
final episode isunder two. But we'd love to hear from
everyone out there if you have thoughts on any of
the various cuts of Highlander two, thoughts on the Highlander
franchise in general, or you know other films that you
think meet these standards right in we would love to

(01:34:41):
hear from you. Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow
your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with
core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. A listener mail episode
on Mondays and a short form episode on Wednesdays, But
on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just
talk about a weird film here on Weird House Cinema.
If you want to see a list of all the
movies we've covered the US far, and sometimes a peek
ahead at what comes next, go on over to letterbox

(01:35:04):
dot com. That's L E T T E R B
O x D dot com our user profile there is
weird House, and you will find the list that I
just referenced.

Speaker 3 (01:35:12):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:35:33):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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