Highlander II: The Quickening is possibly the worst conceived idea since the invention of cholera. It's often called the worst film ever made and it really isn't (for me, at least, that remains Deathstalker (and yes, I will keep going on about that). Whereas Deathstalker was just utter exploitation garbage that went nowhere and was going to go nowhere, Highlander II just boggles the mind when you give it any sort of thought.
To recap, and sorry for the spoilers here, but at the end of the first movie: Connor Macleod defeated the Kurgan, won the Prize, and got to live out a mortal existence with Brenda Wyatt as his new hotness while bringing peace and understanding to humanity or something along those lines. There really doesn't seem like there's much room for a sequel at least not one that is so ridiculous in its premise that it loops around, passes infinity, and becomes awesome...before quickly going in reverse back to its original position and you realize that what you had on your hands is a steaming pile of hot garbage.
This is basically the point where everyone should have seen what was happening and jumped ship. It's honestly an absolute shock that anyone gave any film or the TV series the time of day after this (although the series was generally pretty good, especially when it got out of the early seasons, maybe more on that another time). The proof is in the pudding, however, let's have a look at Highlander II: The Quickening.
The film kicks off with the ozone layer of the Earth being depleted. Connor (Christopher Lambert), having won the Prize in the last film, has managed to gather a team of scientists to build a shield around the Earth in order to-huh? What? What do you mean this is a movie about an immortal man from ancient Scotland who fights his fellow immortals, cuts their head off, and takes their power? This is clearly the next logical step in the progression of the story, adding in sci-fi elements that definitely were not foreshadowed or set up before.
...those of you who have seen this movie are laughing now, I'm sure. Those who haven't, just wait: it gets worse.
So, Connor and his team build the shield and everything's hunky dory...at least until 2024, where the Earth is stuck in perpetual night and humanity is going through a pretty sucky time. Also terrorists led by one Louise Marcus (Virginia Madsen) are trying to take down the shield, which is controlled by the Shield Corporation. Sadly, we don't have Samuel L. Jackson leading them, but Dr. Cox from Scrubs...sure.
However, the stupid has not yet begun. Connor, one night, attends an opera and begins what is probably the worst flashback in cinematic history. So, here it comes: Connor is not a Scotsman from the 16th century, but an alien from a planet called Zeist. Ramirez (Sean Connery) is not obviously Scottish man pretending to be an Egyptian pretending to be a Spaniard...but an alien Scotsman pretending to be an Egyptian pretending to be a Spaniard. The two led a rebellion on their home planet against the wicked General Katana (Michael Ironside) and were defeated and punished with exile to Earth.
This, for some reason, rendered them as immortal and started off the Game. The Prize apparently being the ability to come home, something which I imagine Connor would have done somewhere in that gap between 1986 and 2024 if he'd really wanted to. Connor even lampshades this later in the film to Katana...who is kind of a complete moron.
Yeah, Michael Ironside is known for playing villains who have cunning and menace...General Katana is definitely not cunning or menacing. He's a complete and utter moron.
So, some Zeistians come to Earth (with hoverboard because it's the future!) and Connor kills them, meaning that the Game has begun again (somehow) and also de-aging him so that it won't be weird when he and Louise bang later. Also, Ramirez comes back because of some mystical alien bull crap but shows up in Scotland rather than where Connor is because comedic fish out of temporal water elements.
But yes, Katana sends people to Earth to kill Connor (which fails) and Connor does, in fact, point out to him that he was ready to just grow old and die until Katana did. So Katana literally could have waited a few more years and Connor would have been actually dead, but no...no...he decided that then was the time to strike. Wonderful.
Also, Ramirez dies again. He uses the power of bagpipes to allow Connor and Louise to escape a death trap, which he is then killed by.
Sure.
I know it's not going to shock you all that much after all that, but in the end Connor defeats Katana and wins the Prize for the second time in one film. The explosion from the Quickening is so powerful that it destroys the entire planetary shield (with no damage to, y'know, the entire planet I'm sure) since the ozone layer had apparently repaired itself in the twenty five years since the shield had been put into place. The ending that follows depends on which version of the movie you have.
The theatrical cut has Connor returning to Zeist by magic and taking Louise along with him. Other cuts have them staying on Earth, because who in their right mind wants to go back to a war-torn planet of assholes?
This film also has several different cuts of it, most famously the so-called "Renegade Version" done by director Russell Mulachy. He was apparently so upset with what happened to the film that he left the world premiere within the first fifteen minutes. I don't blame him. However, the "Renegade Version" has some new sequences, some new voice over work from Christopher Lambert, and a new origin for the Immortals in which they were not aliens from another planet, but people banished from the past on Earth.
A lot of people have said that the Renegade Version is better. I wouldn't know, I've never seen it. I was stuck with what we originally got.
And what we originally got is just...really bad.
Audiences in 1991 seem to have agreed with that assessment some 29 years before I made it, being that Highlander II made only $15.6 million on a budget of $34 million. I know the joke gets used way, way too often, but there really should have been only one. Bad acting, a terrible plot with holes you could drive a truck through (some of which actually get acknowledged by the movie itself), set design choices that were so blatantly ripped off from Blade Runner for no other reason than dark sci-fi look with any regard for feeling or tone, and just a complete and utter disregard for the franchise they were making a movie for.
Russell Mulcahy even directed the first movie, so he knew what should have been going on. In short, this film is a complete and utter dumpster fire. Nobody who worked on it has good things to say about it, to the point where one of them made up his own version of it just to make some kind of pass at making it watchable.
My advice: don't decapitate this movie, you'll absorb its suck.
Highlander II: The Quickening is brought to us from Davis/Panzer Productions and Interstar.
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