An open letter to the producers of Highlander: The source.

William Panzer and Peter Davis are two names that have been associated with Highlander for as long as I can remember; as long as I have been aware of such things as producers and executive producers and directors and the like. As long as I have known what these people do… These guys have been doing it, with my favourite franchise. They were there from the start, they had the vision to see what Gregory Widen saw, to hook the script up with Russel Mulcahy. And from this pairing a beautiful film was made. Of course in its initial release in the US it was cut to hell and probably made very little sense. But when I saw it in Aussieland… well it made complete sense to me: An immortal who lives and loves, with friends from many eras who has come to New York to end the conflict that has dominated his life. He is a loner and a strange almost alien lead character who you grew to like as the film progressed. The film ends and he wins The Prize, to live as a mortal to love and to be the conduit for human understanding… what else needs to be said? Nothing.

Sadly, this is where things start the slide down a slope that has gotten steeper and steeper as the years progress.

Highlander 2. I don’t know what went wrong here. All the elements are in the right place. But one decision sends it spiralling down into stupidity. One simple misunderstanding which I can only attribute to the initial misreading of the first film. Highlander is not a science fiction film. It is a fanstasy.

Highlander 3: A brave attempt at resurrecting a series that was almost irrevocably damaged by the second film. However a worrying trend appears here. The bad guy is becoming formulaic. The Kurgan was a ONE OFF. And each time he is re-hashed his memory is weakened. Exploring different concepts is important. Why not set the film in the past, meaning this is not the prize, but simply a powerful quickening… The Mongol bad guy is a good idea, yet badly implemented and overacted. Sorry Mario. Yet respect must go to those people who remember the fantasy aspect and bring the film back to its fantasy roots.

Highlander: The series. Here is where the ball is back in your court and is played well. For Six seasons writers, directors and actors are given a chance to explore the mythos of the Immortals and it is done well. Introducing the series with Christopher Lambert indicates a desire to tie it in to the original mythology, yet the date stamping tells us that we have taken a side step, we will accept that the gathering is still occurring but now the ending has been set sometime in the future… we’re still good.

Watchers: Good plan. Works well.
New immortals: longevity in a series, good plan
Long term storylines: excellent! Something to sink our teeth into.
Supernatural elements: Would have liked to have seen more, vampires, ghosts, werewolves…. Bring em on!
Methos: nice introduction.

Season 5 degenerated slightly into some slightly ridiculous stories, but the series was generally strong. And Duncan is a worthy successor to Connor, and we live in hope of the eventual re match of those two friends…
Highlander: The Raven. A brave attempt at continuing a story that is worth telling, but in the end, the highlander name should be attached to a Highlander.

Highlander: The Animated Series. SCI FI, kids show. No beheadings. Weak quickenings. A cobbling together of ideas. Best forgotten.

Highlander - Endgame: Finally we are treated to The Rematch we have been waiting for, we want to know why he gets “all of the fun, and most of the good women” we want the brotherly fun and bickering we have seen before, and we might finally get to see these two kick some butt and take some names. But now we find Connor sporting the worst hair of his career, looking a little too old to play an immortal convincingly and written to be a bit of a whiner. Kudos goes to the writers for attempting to tie back in the history of the series, secondary characters we had loved are returned, but then sadly killed off. The film is a brave attempt. But we are marred by again something that needs to be addressed THE BAD GUY.
I am sure he is a bloody top bloke, possibly a great actor, and I’m sure he is very talented normally but FOR CHRIST SAKE, Bruce Payne stinks up this film like I have never seen before!!!! He overacts, breathes heavily and scenery chews through each scene. But worse even than him is the inglorious ending of Connor Macleod. I guess I’ve always known that if ever there was going to be a second match up with connor and Duncan, it would be the end for Connor. But when the time finally came I found myself totally disappointed, not by the final goodbye, not even by the silly beheading move. I am annoyed, because afterwards in the final confrontation the face morphing reduced the whole thing to a bad joke. This was a sad and embarrassing ending to a great character. He was reduced to a pathetic loser who was unable to cope with the world and gave up, not the hero we have known since the beginning. This was A massive mistake, compounded by an appalling final fight sequence and some incredibly bad special effects.

However this is not the point of this letter, because all of this is in the past. It cannot be changed and cannot be fixed. Each step along the path has had some good elements and some bad, but for better or worse they are what they are. Highlander the source is not in the past. It is still nominally in the future.

Highlander: The source

I am hoping that you the producers may have read this far, that you have taken the criticisms offered so far, not as outright insults but as a catalogue of issues that have, up to now, plagued my mind. But now all I can hope is that you will read the following suggestions and criticisms with the understanding that I write them not to denigrate a series of films, but to hopefully improve a film that could so easily be the embarrassing ending to a series that I have loved.

I will now synopsise the film as I saw it, so that perhaps you can see the slightly ridiculous nature of the film from a viewers perspective.

The source starts interestingly, the world has gone to hell in a hand basket and the immortals continue to live, Macleod seems to have lost his grip somewhat. He’s taken to hanging around on rooftops… in Europe. Somewhere. And almost immediately we are introduced to The Guardian, who is hunting down an immortal we have never met. Ok, I’m still with ya. But then The Guardian starts moving like “The Flash” and we know we are in trouble. We are also introduced to Anna after a fashion; She too seems to be wandering aimlessly around Eastern Europe giving bread to random kids and generally being a nice person. It is through a series of flashbacks set in an indeterminate time and place that we learn that she and Macleod were married. Though for how long and why is not really clear.

Through Methos, and two other new immortals we are introduced to the concept of The Source; a mystical holy grail which will do something wonderful and apparently has something to do with the alignment of heavenly bodies. And the new immortal we have just met runs afoul of the Guardian and we are treated to our first and ONLY quickening of the film. At this point I still hold some hope for the Guardian as he defeats this immortal without using his own weapon (in fact appearing to be unarmed!) this character could be cool! Also so far he hasn’t said much… He reminds me most so far of Pyramid Head from Silent Hill and this is a good thing

Macleod finds his way to the rubble caused by the quickening and has his first encounter with The Guardian who has since lost all vestiges of a good costume design. In fact losing the single smartest piece of costuming in all five films: An armoured Neck-piece or gorget! Macleod Fights him and it appears is getting an old style ass handing, when from virtually nowhere come Joe Dawson!!! One of best characters from the series and someone I was happy to see in this film. And here is the first moment where I laughed out loud at the film and not in an even remotely good way. Joe hits The Guardian with his jeep and as he is fluing backwards he yells “Hello Joe!!!!”…. HELLO JOE!? I’ll come back to this.

Macleod and Joe run and argue, as per usual and we learn that the Watchers are gone, we must assume that the world has really gone to the dogs at this point, though Joes bar still seems to be doing ok. They meet up with the rest of the cast and the search for The Source, begins in earnest. The party is eclectic, Methos having taken the role of leather clad bad boy, the geeky computer lad providing witty asides, and Giovani providing enough bad hair and overacting to give the bird creatures from Highlander 2 a good run for their money.

The Search takes them to a monastery in the middle of nowhere where we are re-united with anna. Who we still know bugger all about and don’t much care about either. She heads on in, there is a fight and we meet the reject from Blade, a blue black skinned freak who was apparently there the last time The Source was hunted down. He talks a lot and it is all a bit ho-hum. He has a silly voice and that doesn’t help.

The Guardian rocks up again and causes some grief, but not before SINGING SOME LYRICS FROM A SONG FROM THE FIRST FILM… Oh and then a little while after that he kills Joe Dawson. I will say that this was actually a very emotional bit and some of the lines spoken here were very well conceived. Oh yes and Duncans sword is broken and buried with Joe! But, sadly we must keep moving…

The stars apparently have some message in them and following them and Anna’s intuition the crew make their way to an island on which The Source resides. We ride the boat and seemingly instantly we are at the island. Though I couldn’t tell the difference between it and the port they just left…. Oh well. It is a place of death and so our intrepid band has a fight on the dock with some folks who are about to kill a business man. Dunno why. Don’t care by this point. And all of a sudden our intrepid heroes are sustaining injuries and not bouncing back, due to the proximity to the source. The Guardian again appears and whilst Duncan is out having a quickie in the woods, he takes out Our geeky mate who has just let us in on the secret that he’s not actually as annoying as he seems. The immortals now realise that the Guardian doesn’t appear on their immortal radar, and that now normal wounds can kill, them. As such. Geek boy gets no quickening scene. Poor bugger.

The party gets closer to the source and is captured by pikies, or gypsies… whatever. Giovanni escapes and proves himself to be a bit of a toolbag by not letting the others out too. Anna heads along to the Source and Eventually Mac and Methos escape too. Methos however chooses to let macleod do the hero thing, and The words oldest living Immortal disappears to we assume, die. Offscreen. Without a Quickening.

Giovanni is taken out unceremoniously by The Guardian, but by this point I was struggling to give a crap about anyone, so hey. Bye bye Giovanni! I’m just glad I don’t ever have to see your hair again. Macleod finally makes his way to The Source, which appears to be some kind of mysterious crater thingy with a stairway to heaven. RIIIIGHT. Anna is half way to disappearing into the universe, and seems unsure as to whether it’s the right thing to do or not. And of course, our old mate The Guardian appears to give us some grief.

Macleod and The Guardian scuffle for a bit and Macleod I think becomes infused with the Guardians powers. He is possibly becoming a new Guardian, but this is not all that clear. They fight some more and eventually go all speedy style and start just being silly. Spinning around at super speeds and going all blurry, until eventually the old Guardian is buried neck deep and macleod chooses not to take his head, breaking the spell and allowing us all to live happily ever after. Macleod wanders up the stairs to see Anna, who has also joined in the super speed spinning club and is having an encounter with the universe. They embrace and she tells Macleod something that I won’t write here because it’s too big a spoiler even for me.

So, as you can see, we are dealing with a messy and potentially confusing plot which is not made any easier to deal with by the style of editing and storytelling employed. Characters are thinly drawn and little more than caricatures in many cases. The Love story is hampered by having almost no backstory and characters who are either so mysterious or so uncommunicative as to be all but impenetrable. And perhaps worst of all, Our macguffin: The Source, is so vague a concept that “The Prize” from Highlander seems positively set in stone by comparison! What it is, what it does, why we want to get to it… God alone knows! Old characters seem to act thoroughly OUT of character, and any new character we do identify with is given little to do.

The criticisms could continue on for some time but that is not the point of this letter. I did not intend to make this little more than a litany of complaints, it is my sincere hope that what follows can be taken seriously as a list of suggestions that I feel will serve only to improve the movie. You have a rare opportunity with the early release of the film to a small audience. You can fix the problems, or at least attempt to do some damage control. You claim that there is still a large amount of sound post to be completed, take this time to create a film that will not hammer the last nail into a coffin.

Suggested changes are as follows:

Re-dub the entirety of The Guardian, removing his singing, his “hello Joe”s his stupid mockeries of characters lines. If you keep him silent, or at the least very quiet he can perhaps make a decent villain. As such he is a poor joke, and in all honesty, an embarrassment to the actor involved. As an actor myself, I would be horrified to see a performance like this on the screen. Give him some dignity. There is little that can be done about his costuming and fight scenes which are both terrible, but at the least you can make him less jarring by either re writing him heavily, or making him a more mysterious SILENT character. Oh and any way that you can add back in the neck guards, and the dreads… do it. Also, any re-cutting you can do in the fights to remove his sword would be cool. An immortal who only kills with his opponents weapon is a lot more interesting than one who (from what I can tell) keeps a sword embedded in himself.

Re-dub the voice of the blue black monster immortal, the accent simply does not gel with the image presented. This is also a chance to add more exposition and increase the perceived “value” of the source. He is your main exposition character. Use him well.

Re edit some of the dialogue in Joes death scene. There are some lovely lines there, don’t lose them. Especially the “the ony father who didn’t send me away” that to me is the line to end it on.

If possible re-shoot the flashbacks for Duncan and Anna. As they stand their stylised imagery is so abstract as to be meaningless. If they are set SOMEWHERE, at least we may have something more to cling to. We need to see much more of this history for us to really buy into the love story. If they have a time period and a location at least we can make up some back story ourself.

Cut around Giovanni as much as humanly possible. His hair is SO ridiculous that it draws focus away from anyone else on screen. His story is a very weak side plot which should either be cut back further, or boosted and strengthened considerably. Possibly he could hear voices in his head, or anything to give him a more believable motivation. It is simply a shame that he looks so silly.

Any aspects of Methos that have been left on the cutting room floor, please re-insert them. He is one of the only long running characters in the film and he currently feels less important than half of the new characters. He is a good actor and has a well liked character. Play to your strengths.

Spend some more money on your ONLY quickening. The initial sparks look awful! Go back and look at highlander one, the growing tension is so palpable. In this one the final explosion is good. Build it up better please.

Look at all of the Guardian’s Super speed stuff. Can it be cut entirely? It looks ridiculous.
For that matter, what can be done in the final fight sequence with Mac and the Guardian? All the super speed fighting simply looks cheap and tacky. The Fight choreography is not showcased at all and I am sure that both the actors must be aware of how utterly ridiculous they look. Adrian Paul has shown us how good a martial artist he is and in this scene he looks like a joke! Remove the superspeed entirely and recut please! A good well choreographed fight is always going to be a more fitting ending than a special effects battle.

Let us know what happened to Methos, unless that’s due to be dealt with in a different film.

I know this is a major one, but what happened to the flashbacks? A part of the highlander style has always been the connection to the past and in this one it is completely gone.

Anna needs to be developed more. As it stands she is bland. As she is only being introduced in this film then we need to understand why Mac loves her so that we can choose to give a shit.

Look at changing the colour grading on the scene out the front of the monastery. It seems oddly warm, and possibly by darkening and cooling it down you might hide the “set” like nature of the shots there. It feels like a sound stage. Possibly some good sound post might help there too. Add some wind or something. Help us believe its not a stage.

Look at recutting your opening fifteen minutes. They jump around so much that as an audience we have no clue as to what story we are following. And so many of the scenes in the ruined city look similar, it is easy to lose track of which character is which.

To help with the through-line of the film, I would almost suggest adding in a voiceover by Macleod. I know it is a cheesy move, but I think it could possibly get us through that first difficult fifteen minutes. And it gives us a chance to understand who Anna is, and also to understand what had brought Mac to this point. If it subtly underscores the other scenes… I think it could really help.

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As an audience we are always more drawn to the human drama, Highlander has always been at its strongest when dealing with true human emotions, grief, loss, love. Throughout these characters, these immortals who have the chance to live every life possible, we can explore different aspects of emotions. When the films fail is when the plot take precedence to the emotion. The Human conflict is what’s central. Not the science fiction, not the fantasy, but the human drama of people trying to love each other in different ways; As brothers, as lovers, as father and son. And the excitement comes from the obstacles to these goals. Highlander employs special effects to serve a story, yet in this film I feel like they are there simply for their own sake. By cutting them back, by doing less, this film will improve markedly.

The Source has already been seen by many and critically disembowelled; you claim that it is not the final version; Prove it! Make the changes that this film needs to survive. Give the series a chance. Because if this film is widely released as it stands you can guarantee that the franchise will do something its characters can supposedly not. Die. And none of us really want that. People have said for many years now that the catch cry “there can be only one” could be adapted to the films as well, as “there should have been only one” Prove them wrong.

I would also like to offer you the opportunity to defend your film in a public forum, on our Podcast (cool) shite on the tube. Please check us out at
www.coolshite.net
We would love to give you the chance to defend your film.

David Quinn

Film reviewer, Actor, Filmmaker.

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