If there’s one thing that we’ve learned about Henry Cavill in recent years, it’s that the man loves to have long hair, and that he loves to hold a sword while having it. Cavill has already proven his dedication to tonsorial broadsword-holding with his role on Netflix’s The Witcher (currently gearing up for its second season) and now he might be ready to take on the part of one of entertainment’s great sword-hair combos: Highlander.
This is per Deadline, which reports that Cavill is apparently in talks to star in a reboot of the Highlander film franchise, which is being masterminded by John Wick director Chad Stahelski. The original 1986 Highlander, directed by Russel Mulcahy and starring Christopher Lambert, quickly established itself as a cult film for the claymore/big hair set, spawning a number of film sequels in which some extremely silly things happen, and also a long-running TV series starring Adrian Paul. (Both Lambert and Paul had long hair and carried swords, we feel moved to note.) The series concerns itself with a series of secret Immortals living among us, who can only be killed by having their heavily haired heads chopped off with long, sharpish-pieces of metal. (Note to editor: Please look up what these objects might be called.)
And, honestly, we’re here for it: Stahelski’s Wick movies have been some of the most exciting refinements in action film-making in recent memory, and Cavill has proven himself to be game at pretty much every genre topic he’s set his mind to in recent years. Bring on the hair! Bring on the swords! Please do not bring on the second-film explanations that everyone involved are aliens, because boy howdy, does that one suck.
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A Brit pretending to be a Scotsman is a less silly than a Frenchman pretending to be Scotsman…Also, is anyone else confused by this part of the article:The original 1986 Highlander, directed by Russel Mulcahy and starring Christopher Lambert, quickly established itself as a cult film for the claymore/big hair set, spawning a number of film sequels in which some extremely silly things happen, and also a long-running TV series starring Adrian Paul.Because I’m pretty we all collectively agreed there was only the one Highlander movie. There were no Highlander sequels.
Let’s not pretend that the original Highlander was some great achievement in cinema sullied by cash-ins that should only be whispered if named; it was Fine. I’d take at least half of the Adrian Paul series over it.
Make no mistake Highlander is a good movie but it definitely has its flaws. Like how The Kurgan rapes Connor’s wife and it has so little impact on the movie that one could easily edit it out of the movie and nothing would change. She doesn’t tell Connor that it happened, The Kurgan thought she was with Ramirez, and Connor already has plenty of other reasons to hate the guy that don’t involve the rape.
There’s also some icky ‘80s-style homophobia in the police interrogation scenes, if memory serves.
Yeah one of the cops calls Connor a homophobic slur.
“You know what you are? You’re a homophobic slur!”
I think it adequately shows how much of a shitcunt the Kurgan is.Plus, if you include Scottish rape in it, you can capture the Outlander audience, which is all about dat rape.
He already killed Ramirez and Connor’s other friend and abducted the love interest. Raping Connor’s wife adds nothing because we already know by that point the character is evil.
“Ahh, I see… Ramirez lied! She wasn’t his wo-mannn… she was your wo-mannnn…”Come to think of it, that might be a big part of why it was such a cult smash, for all it’s flaws. Sure, the concept – exaggerated sword fights in a modern day big city – wasn’t well tread at the time. And it had that romantic core (that teenage boys wouldn’t admit to, but was a major part of the appeal) in the idea of an immortal who just wants to grow old with the one he loves. And it had a killer soundtrack. But it was also eminently quotable.I’m scrolling through the IMDB quotes section and trying to find a single line my friends and I didn’t parrot a dozen times a week when we were teenagers.I’m a man, not a fish!No glove, no love! You have the manners of a goat, and you smell like a dung-heap! You’re the master race, Jack!Father forgive me, I am a worm! I have something to say… It’s better to burn out, than to fade away!
It’s not Citizen Kane or anything, but I think it’s pretty damned good. Lambert, Connery, and Brown all give memorable performances, but the writing is pretty good too, full of clever touches: see the Colonial-era dueling scene, or the newsstand guy reading the article about the unsolved murders and asking the cop what “incompetent” means.
That’s why it’s so perfect for a remake. The first movie is okay, but the rest are either terrible or forgettable. The show was all right in that I’ll-binge-this-while-hungover sort of way.But the premise is fun. Immortals! Swords! Beheadings! I’m shocked it took this long to reboot Highlander. It’s the perfect candidate for a remake.
The first Highlander benefits from having an original story, some romanticism flashbacks, Christopher Lamberts indiscernible accent(perfect for a man who’s been everywhere throughout the ages), Clancy Brown and a rocking Queen soundtrack.The sequels just felt like cheap, straight to video, cash-ins.The series was fun but Adrien Paul was kind of a dud for me.
Yes. The TV show was my introduction to Highlander, and still consider the movies secondary to it.
Highlander may be not be the greatest film ever, but its sequels genuinely are still “credible contenders for worst films ever” bad. Pretending they don’t exist is a perfectly fair thing to do.
I’m pretty we all collectively agreed there was only the one Highlander movie. There were no Highlander sequels. I believe you are trying to say that “there can be only one.”
If this is anyone other than Steve Allen, you’re stealing my bit.
I watch the original Highlander at least once a year. Since it first came out. There are no sequels in my mind, and it amazes me that my dad watched the TV series religiously. Um, I’m thinking of a phrase…There can be only one?!?The side note here is that I loved how the Venture Bros made callbacks to Highlander repeatedly throughout the series run.
What about a Scotsman pretending to be an Egyptian pretending to be a Spaniard?
No wonder his accent didn’t make any sense.
Or in The Hunt for Red October a Scotsman pretending to be a Soviet Lithuanian. Which is particularly weird because at one point Alec Baldwin’s Jack Ryan mocks Connery’s character by imitating his accent — his Scottish accent, implying that even in-universe he doesn’t sound like a Lithuanian.
Agreed. The first Highlander was the only Highlander. The series was…..fine.
A Brit pretending to be a Scotsman is a less silly than a Frenchman pretending to be Scotsman…Er, excuse me, Karen McKaren of the Clan McKaren of Doublewide? I think you meant to say “An Englishman pretending to be a Scotsman”. I know that facts and learning isn’t all that hot in your wee burb, but allow me to point out: Brit refers to a person born in Great Britain (that refers to anyone born in England, Wales and Scotland). It’s a legal term as well. It means any single person holding a British passport who is resident in any of the four nations that make up my country, the United Kingdom – that’s England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.yours, an actual bitchy cunting gay Scotsman, born of an English father and a Scottish mother, who holds a British passport and who will call out anti-English bullshit from ignorant Yanks as and when he sees fit.
I don’t think it’s really anti-English to call an Englishman a “Brit” since they technically are a Brit, it just doesn’t make any sense in the context of the statement because a Brit could already be a Scotsman.This is more “anti-geography” or “anti-demonym,” if anything.
I’m all for either labelling someone an undereducated fuckwit or a racist fuckwit when it comes to the automatic labelling of English people “Brits”. “Brits” – especially when utilised by Americans (who, let’s face it, are generally clueless at the best of times) – is a racially-charged pejorative, fuelled by ye olde cliches and tropes favoured by misty-eyed American filmmakers desperate to create a villain for the audience to boo and hiss at. And frequently those villains? Are English. How many villains can you name from American films and television who were Scottish, Irish or Welsh? You’d struggle. It’s far, far easier (and more culturally acceptable) for Americans to see English people as villains.As for Scots = Brits – you’re correct. Anyone – anyone – from the island of Great Britain is automatically a British person. The term “Brit” doesn’t just fucking end a few miles north of Carlisle and west of Bristol.
Thanks for the correction
But will there be a Scotsman playing a Spaniard? I nominate Sam Heughan.
No, it was a Scotsman playing an Egyptian pretending to be a Spaniard.
And lest we forget, the lead character in the movie was a Scotsman played by a Frenchman pretending to be able to speak English.
I’m convinced to this day that the casting director to this movie was some kind of insane genius.
Actually it gets even better; he’s a Scotsman playing an Egyptian pretending to be a Spaniard by way of Feudal Japan.
What about a man playing a bear playing a pig?
Hologram Sean Connery as Inigo Montoya
Emma Stone as Sean Connery
Tilda Swinton as Mr. Miyagi
and
Stephen Stills as Crosby
Christopher Lambert…trying to convince anyone his fingers still smell like Diane Lane
THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE…good Highlander movie.So, Demian Bichir for Ramirez?
If that many. Which I’ve always disputed.
It was a documentary, which was filmed in real time.
Javier Bardem if you can afford it.
Only if he has the Anton Chigurgh haircut. And wields a ham, not a sword.
His accent isn’t nearly inappropriate enough.
No, the alien angle didn’t really work, but what were they supposed to do? Christianity was still young when McCleod became an immortal. It would be a long, long time before Jesus Christ became a Superstar/Badass.
1600 years is young, now? MacLeod discovered he was an immortal in the 16th Century.
The planet Earth is estimated at over 4 billion years old (human years) and Hinduism is over 4 thousand years old. Yes, Christianity is still a young religion, but what exactly was your point, Ace?
Well if we’re going planetary age scale, both religions are barely out of the birth canal
ugh no, bad, not good
If you haven’t seen The Witcher on Netflix, it is a very silly show which spared many expenses and is incomprehensibly edited, but Cavill is fantastic in it. I’ve been re-watching it this week. He has several deadpan line readings of “Fuck” that are the stuff of legend. And although the show is light on action (for budget reasons, I assume), there is an extended sword fight sequence in the first episode that absolutely slams. It sets expectations that the show kind of fails to live up to in the subsequent episodes that focus mostly on romantic and comedic subplots, but it gives me a lot of hope for Season 2, and makes me think Cavill would be absolutely fantastic in a Highlander movie.
I don’t get the “incomprehensibly edited” part, really. If my 56 year-old Ma who’s not into the fantasy genre at all could follow the plot and figure out halfway through that the storylines took place in different timeframes, people more familiar with pop culture should, too.
My take is not a hot one, the show does almost nothing to tell you when it is switching timelines (or even that there are different timelines), and not a single person visibly ages in between the two timelines (or so much as changes their hair style). They also cast someone as Ciri’s mother who looks so much like Ciri (with matching hair and makeup) that I was stunned to discover it was a different actress.
The plot is not exceptionally dense, nor especially important to enjoying the show, because it is pretty episodic. I am here to promote the show, after all, which I have said I am watching again because I enjoyed it so much. But the fact that you don’t realize until after you’ve watched episodes that they took place in a different timeline is not a testament to the editing.
And perhaps I shouldn’t entirely blame the editing, the makeup and costume departments are just as much to blame, I’m not sure anyone told them about the different timelines.
That’s because Witches glamour themselves to look young forever and Witchers age really slowly.
It’s not just Cavill’s character, there are half a dozen other characters that appear in both timelines, who are ordinary humans.
You’re not supposed to know right away, but they do drop clues here and there until at some point you’re supposed to realize they’re taking place at different times.
Exactly, the Yennifer plot takes place before the Geralt plot up until they actually meet at which point they happen concurrently and the Ciri plot takes place after Geralt and Yennifer’s plots. It’s not that complicated.
I’m glad this came up, actually. I’ve been wanting to talk about Highlander since the last time I saw it. I noticed that there are some kind of weird sexual metaphors going on in that movie that went right over my head when I was a kid, but now I cannot stop thinking about them whenever it comes up. Here, look at the first “quickening”:I mean, that man had a supernatural orgasm, right? All of the visual metaphors (oil plopping down from revving engines, arcs of electricity slithering around everywhere, cars humping back and forth, exploding lighbulbs and circuit breakers, etc) are almost comically suggestive. Not to mention the sight of him lifted aloft, eyes rolling around in his head as he writhes and screams in rapturous pleasure. So, what’s up with that? He cuts a guy’s head off, then has a crazy sci-fi climax? What’s the metaphor?‘Death = Sex = Power’?I guess? Hard to say, really. But why? It feels weirdly unrelated to the rest of the story. And it’s such a strange story, in general, that it’s kind of hard to pin down what they’re actually trying to do with it. It’s so all over the place. The Connery scenes basically feel like they’re flown in from a completely different film and it leaves the movie feeling tonally schizo with all the the cutting back and forth between the steamy, noir-ish grimdark of “modern” 80’s NY and the playful, fanciful romps with an immortal Spanish-Scottish Prince through history. And somewhere in there, they find time for two full love stories, two villains, a scene where Conner drunkenly refuses to die during a duel with an aristocrat, an origin story, a revenge story, two scenes of Kurgen driving a car crazily to frighten women passengers, another origin story, more revenge, and several rad swordfights. I love it, but I feel like it’s even weirder than we usually acknowledge. And even if I’m right about the metaphor, the question still remains, why? Does it even relate to the love story? Uh… either of the love stories? And why do you become psychic if you win all of the swordfights and collect all of the death-orgasms? What’s that about? I dunno. I have no clear answers. This isn’t even the most cohesive collection of my thoughts on the subject, but I feel like that’s appropriate for the material.
mmm Quickening
How are they going to do a bitchin’ soundtrack w/o Queen?
Calm down, dear, unclutch your pearls and understand that Queen are still around.
They’re really not, Brian May.
Calm down, Limp Cookie – Queen are still very much active. They were more than just Freddie Mercury’s backing band.
Name three things they did of note after Freddie died. I’ll give you a freebie: ruining their own rock biopic.
They very much aren’t.
They could get Muse instead.
This is the kind of remake/reboot I can get behind. Highlander had enough cool ideas that it had franchise legs (FIVE movies, two live action shows and one weird kids cartoon), but even its best outings (the original film and some of the Adrian Paul tv show) are far from perfect and could easily be refined or reimagined in cool new ways. Oh shit, I also just remembered they did a kick-ass anime movie over a decade ago from the guy who directed Ninja Scroll. Nothing as singularly memorable as Clancy Brown’s Kurgen from the original movie, but the freedom of animation let them go crazy with the scenes in period settings, the “modern” setting was a dystopian future, and I do believe I remember a sword fight on top of a plane in flight:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highlander:_The_Search_for_Vengeance
If this ever gets made, I want to see the highlander(s) consistently be interrupted from finishing the famous catch phrase.“There can be only… [car crash]”“There can be only… [loud washing machine noise]”Etc
“There can be only -”“Wonderbread?”“What?”“I’m making sandwiches. Just wanted to know if you’re okay with wonderbread.”
If they want to win a few more fans over here in Scotland, they could set the final battle here in Scotland. Hell, they could drop the Yank aspect entirely (and no one would miss it) and have the entire story set in Scotland. One thing I would say is that camera technology has come on light-years since the first film, so they could really go to town with the Rural Scottish visual pornography this time…And just because it doesn’t get enough love from Hollywood, my wee home city of Glasgow could be the location for the inevitable final showdown. And if they want a dramatic locale for the final showdown, I’m going to say “Titan Clydebank”. It’s one of the massive blue cranes in that video. If they really want to upset the Karens and Generation Doublewide, they could cast Sam Heughan as the bad guy…
This casting makes sense. These days it is next to impossible to find a Scottish actor that can both use a sword and has long hair. It is always one or the other.
“Toss a coin to your Highlander…”
“There can only be one”. And if it doesn’t have Sean Connery, I’m out of here😎
Kind of weird to reboot a documentary that was shot in real time
Who’s taking bets on Ian McShane as Ramirez?
Fuck, Really , I loved the movie (not squeals of tv shows should exists) but remember that it was a box office flop. I saw it in a nearly empty theater. WE DO NOT need a reboot. The reboot will suck!. It will be another revenge porn movie full of dumb-ass tropes.
Is it just me or is Henry Cavill generally much better than the stuff he’s in?