The Notorious Highlander 2: The Renegade Version Offers a, Shall We Say, Unique Look at Life in the Year 2024
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When I am feeling sad, I find comfort in the unspeakably awful. So when my beloved dog Ghostie died I deliberately sought out something soothingly abysmal, something that I knew would not make me think but rather immerse me in a familiar realm of pure trash.
I’m talking, friends, about Highlander 2: The Renegade Version, Russell Mulcahy’s poignantly failed attempt to “fix” the theatrical version of Highlander II: The Quickening by removing the most egregiously insane elements so that it’s merely utterly, completely and transcendently bonkers and not the craziest fucking thing you’ve ever seen in your goddamn life.
The big change is that in Mulcahy’s Badass Cut, his Maverick Edit, his Rebel Edition, heroes Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert) and Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez (Sean Connery) are no longer aliens from the planet Zeist.
Instead, Lambert and Connery’s heroes are from the distant past, where magic and advanced technology co-exist, and time travel to various points in the past and future, most notably New York in the year 2024.
That’s now! And I gotta say they NAILED IT. Got everything right. It’s uncanny.
Most of what people loved about Highlander was its mythology involving a race of immortals who cannot die unless they are beheaded. Yet Highlander II: The Quickening and its alternate director’s cut both take insane liberties with the material that suggest that they not only don’t understand what people loved about the original but are actively contemptuous of Highlander’s world-building.
Making Connor a space alien is like Disney deciding that the old Mickey Mouse wasn’t really cutting it anymore so he’s now canonically bisexual, a member of the Alt-Right and an android. Also, he’s really into EDM now. If kids didn’t like it, fuck em. The Glenn Beck Loving, Dude-Banging, Android Mickey Mouse wasn’t for them anymore and if the public couldn’t roll with these minor changes, they didn’t care.
Highlander 2: Renegade Version opens in 2024 by re-introducing Connor MacLeod not as the rugged, sexy hero of the first film but rather as a sad old man in layers upon layers of unconvincing make-up just waiting to die.
At the turn of the millennium Connor, who is apparently now also the world’s greatest scientist, in addition to being a space alien and/or a time traveler from the distant past, helped design a massive shield to save our planet by protecting it from radiation and the sun.
Connor saved this worthless planet and its jackass inhabitants but do they appreciate it? They do not. Instead they insult him at bars where he goes to drink himself to death. That’s because in this wacky world Connor, one of the most famous immortals in all of pop culture, is no longer immortal.
We open at an opera house where Connor is nodding off and remembering moments from his past involving relevant exposition involving himself and Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez (who I will be referring to as Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez from here on out) bonding through the magical spiritual energy of the Quickening and waging a war across time but apparently not space with the evil Katana (Michael Ironside).
Ironside is essentially a wild-eyed, frothing at the mouth samurai Darth Vader with Tommy Wiseau hair because that’s right, motherfuckers: Highlander is Star Wars now.
Thought Highlander was still Highlander? Wrong! Some time between the making of 1986’s Highlander and 1991’s Highlander II they decided that all that “There can be only one” bullshit was boring and lame and not commercial enough so they decided that they’d rather be Star Wars instead.
Ah, but Highlander: The Renegade Version did not have the money, resources or talent to rip off Star Wars so they give the material a gleefully vulgar, half-assed Cannon spin. Highlander 2: The Renegade Version is consequently the most Cannon movie Cannon never made. It feels more like a pure product of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus’ legendary schlock factory than 98 percent of the films Cannon actually put out.
If Highlander II were made a decade later it would be lousy with CGI as well as just plain lousy. But Highlander II predates the rise of CGI so it is filled with massive sets shot in darkness in an unsuccessful attempt to hide the cheapness of the whole operation.
Before he directed Highlander and its sequel Russel Mulcahy made his fortune directing music videos, including “Video Killed the Radio Star”, the first video ever to air on MTV. That background informs every frame of the film.
Before settling up each shot, Mulcahy seems to have asked himself how he would handle it if he were working for Kajagoogoo or The Power Station.
Connor is a sad old man with a curious accent that suggests Triumph the Insult Comic Dog being strangled to death but Katana isn’t taking any chances. He dispatches a pair of assassins on flying skateboards whose vibe is “Post-Apocalyptic New Wave Porcupine Men from Beyond” to kill the tired old man.
The Post-Apocalyptic New Wave Porcupine Men from Beyond spend much of their time onscreen cackling menacingly in what I can only imagine is a tribute to the Giggler from Death Wish 3. “Tribute to the Giggler” is also my favorite Guided by Voices b-side, incidentally.
Instead of dying, Connor defeats the goons and becomes young again by sucking up their sweet, sweet Quickening magic juice. He’s back in fighting shape, wearing some seriously unflattering jeans and wooing a beautiful environmental activist played by Virginia Madsen.
If I might give Madsen some faint but appropriate praise, she emerges from this historic disaster wholly unscathed, largely because she’s barely in the film.
Despite being prominently billed as the female lead, Madsen is probably in the movie for about twenty minutes, disappears for long stretches and doesn’t seem particularly important to the plot.
In another context I’d say Madsen was screwed but this is such a boondoggle that Madsen is lucky she’s not in it more. All the movie really calls for her to do is look great and be confused, both of which come naturally given the material she’s reduced to working with.
Connery similarly emerges from this glorious idiocy with his dignity intact. Connery brings a light comic touch that’s perfect for the role and the film. Connery is forever enjoying a hearty chuckle at the film’s expense. He stops just short of turning to the camera and winking to the audience to further drive home his complete disinterest in anything beyond amusing himself and picking up a three million dollar check for nine days work.
The Academy Award winning tough guy icon spends much of the movie on a kooky side mission rooted in broad culture clash comedy in the style of Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles.
This includes the heroic mentor arriving in 2024 in a production of Hamlet. The actor playing the title character improvises badly in the moment by angrily asking, “What’s your game, shithead?”
This leads Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez, the Obi-Wan Kenobi of the Highlander franchise, to impishly inquire, “What’s a shithead?” and then later, “Farewell, shithead!”
i could be wrong, but I don’t recall Obi-Wan uttering the word “shithead” even a single time in any of the movies.
This speaks to the movie’s violently erratic tone, which lurches bizarrely between the somber, moody reflection of a broken man in a broken world trying to stave off an apocalypse and zany comedy involving subway trains becoming unstoppable engines of death and a dude getting grabbed by the dick and then hurled angrily out of a window to a violent death.
John C. McGinley plays the aforementioned dude, an evil corporate shark who speaks in a deep voice based on Orson Welles that’s cartoonish in its over-the-top evil. He made a crazy-ass choice then committed to it with lunatic conviction. That’s Highlander: Renegade Version in a nutshell. It goes there.
Highlander II: The Quickening and Highlander II: Renegade Version are many things but they’re not boring and they’re not predictable. They may not be for everybody, or anybody, for that matter but Highlander 2: The Renegade Version was just what I needed at this sad, fragile stage of my life. Watching this dog helped me forget about my dog, so it served its purpose beautifully.
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