Until quite recently, my only knowledge of the Highlander franchise was derived from this cartoon, which made me proud of my rather watered-down McLeod ancestry and taught me to love Power Metal.
Then, last year, my world was blown open as, one hung-over morning, some friends introduced me to the original 1986 Highlander film. This was the film that started it all. For nine years, until Mel Gibson appropriated it for his own ends in Braveheart, Highlander was most of the world's only introduction to Scottish culture outside of whiskey and golf: a film in which the eponymous Scot is played by a Frenchman, and the only Scottish actor plays a Spaniard; a film in which The Villain (The Kurgan) puts the definite article in front of his name; a film in which the songs and additional music were from Queen.
It's just too good to be true, right? It gets better. Watch this incredible clip:
Almost impressively, the sequels really go to town on spoiling it - and Highlander 5: The Source, which just aired on BBC1 this week (catch it on iplayer) put the nail in the coffin. Throughout the sequels there are massive inconsistencies - the third film even pretended the second film hadn't happened because it was so embarrassed by it's mythology. It gets worse because of the tinkering of the TV show that followed. But none of that is an excuse for Highlander 5.
Highlander 5 is basically The Fellowship of the Ring-meets-McGyver: Lost Treasure of Atlantis-meets-the Nativity story, with Mortal Kombat-style computer game fights, set in the underworld from the Blade films, with the motorcycle gang from Mad Max and Jafar from Aladdin (after he's enslaved himself as a genii), with the production budget of a single episode of Stargate SG-1. Which makes it sound a lot better than it is. The writing/plotting/re-use of footage makes The Room look well conceived. If the money had been spent on another episode of the kids' cartoon it would certainly have been better.
The fighting in Mortal Kombat is better than in The Source, so why not just watch this? Actually, go ahead, this really is quite watchable.
'The Guardian' in The Source basically makes the same mistake Jafar makes. McLeod doesn't make it. He wins. Oops spoiler.
The kind of writing the guys at The Source wish they'd come up with.
To it's credit, the washed-out colours and swoopy camera work were very clearly emulated by Catherine Hardwicke when she directed Twilight the year after Highlander 5 came out.
My advice is get some friends around and play a drinking game with this film. Take a shot every time there's a flashback. And every time the gang are driving awkwardly through a forest in a Volvo like an overgrown pack of kids on a family holiday. And every time someone says "There can be only one". And every time someone's buried somewhere inappropriate. And that time near the start when you see bare breasts for one second. Generally, whenever it surpasses itself in terribleness.
Be careful not to die though.
In the words of Duncan McLeod somewhere in the middle of the film,
“It’s all bullshit anyway. ‘There can be only one’. ‘The
Source’. It’s all a lie."
You've been warned. This is the trailer:
I think Kevin Sorbo sums it up for everyone:
(This isn't from The Source, even though it looks like it could be. It would have saved the film if it were.)
Just kidding - I'm not going to mention Vs. Predator here. Nevertheless, Ridley Scott's Prometheus is caught in a bit of an argument about it's status in the Alien canon. Is it stand-alone, is it a full-blown prequel, does it exist on two levels, is it a hybrid of compromise - or is it the greatest Science Fiction film of recent times, worthy to be watched alongside the film that taught us that in space, no one can hear you scream? The arguments can go back and forth on this one. Personally, I don't think it's a game-changer in anything like the way Alien was and still is, but Prometheus is still significant in two different ways. Firstly, Prometheus is a film that completely justifies 3D - it is visually brilliant, from landscapes to ship interiors to dark tunnels and holographic projections - the perfect antagonist to Avatar'stie-dyed acid trip. Secondly, and more importantly, Prometheus is like a 'Greatest Hits' anthology of Sci-Fi's best concepts, in the way that Scream is to slasher movies - not in a derivative way, but in a way that pays homage to the genre by tastefully going back to basics.
Alien trailer
Obviously, Alien is a classic and so far as back-to-basics Sci-Fi goes, it's not a bad place for anyone to start. What the flash-bang-scream trailers don't show you is what makes it so good - the quiet boredom of a long voyage on a ship, the claustrophobia, the mixed motivations for being on the Nostromo, the very authentic feeling mealtime conversations that bristle with that most human quality, subtext. Alien is exquisitely normal and mundane, right until chests start popping open. Prometheus has similar character-building scenes in its first half, and it is for this reason that, if pushed, I would say the first half is where Prometheus is at its best.
This scene in Alien (below) is what Prometheus is all about - the alien race of 'space jockeys' who have been decimated by the 'xenomorphs'. Prometheus raises more questions than it answers on this front, so there's plenty of room for prequel-sequels, but it is at the point in the film where the crew are antagonised by two separate alien races, rather than each other, that the film stops being decade-defining and becomes summer-defining. Which is still good, but quite a lot less good, like a point off of the Richter Scale of film greatness.
Discovering the 'space jockey' in Alien
The premise gives Prometheus one glimpse of greatness, and is expressed by Michael Fassbender's wonderful android David in the scene below: what if the Creator of mankind had very unedifying and disappointing reasons for making us?
Prometheus: why were we created?
This disturbing theological-philosophical theory is unsettling on a very basic mental level, and really amplifies the background tension that has built up throughout the first act. As in Alien, this tension approaches a shock-horror breaking point. Everyone remembers the fabulous scene with John Hurt that achieves this in Alien, shown below, but Prometheus's moment is a little more predictable, very much along the lines of Dennis and the Ink Dinosaur in the first Jurassic Park film. Never try to play with the quite obviously deadly alien/dinosaurs, please.
The scene we all remember from Alien
Jurassic Park. Playing with monsters is a classic mistake
However, a little predictability is actually rather heart-warming, and the catalogue of classic inspiration and references is rather nice. For instance, helpful androids, advanced alien races, and unknowable threats were floating around in space in Forbidden Planet (1956), which is itself 90% Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Forbidden Planet: Sci-Fi classic
The idea that the quest for man's primitive beginning at the guiding hand of some outside force might coincide with man's own creation of threateningly intelligent A.I. is most famously painted across the stars in Kubrik's 2001: A Space Odyssey with the HAL 9000 ship's computer. 2001 is also a pretty good model of the 70s space chic that decorates both Scott's Nostromo and Prometheus vessels.
2001: A Space Odyssey trailer
The Andromeda Strain trailer
Whilst packed up in poorly-sealed jars the weaponised xenomorph spores (in some unexplained pre-egg-laying life-cycle) pose the threat to mankind seen in The Andromeda Strain (1971) (above), threatening to lead to a 28 Days Later (2002) (below) scenario; once out and about, the 'space jockey' and the xenomorph each act as pitiless psycho-killer-in-the-house, like a Halloween (1978)(further below) double team.
28 Days Later trailer
Halloween trailer
All of this fantastical 'creator's of humans and monsters' science is made credible in a short wordless prologue in which a 'space jockey' drinks a funny potion that does something funny to his DNA - it must be possible, because we see his double-helix's unravel before us in eye-popping 3D. Anyway, it's basically a moodier way of doing what Mr DNA does in Jurassic Park:
Mr DNA in Jurassic Park
If the alien vessel looks familiar and you've never seen any of the Alien films before, it's probably because you've either read The Lord of the Rings or seen the films, because they're basically like Alan Lee's illustrations. Still, sitting half-way between Lord of the Rings and 2001 isn't a bad place to pitch a films looks.
Alan Lee's original illustration of Isengard for Lord of the Rings
However, some sources of inspiration can be a little too close by. If the audience hadn't clocked the similarities by the end of the film, then the 'space jockey' temple turning out to be a space ship will take them back four years to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), or twelve years to Stargate (1994) and the fifteen years of TV franchises it spawned.
The ancient flying saucer emerges from under ground in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Now, I'm all for passing nods to great films, but right at the climax Scott does make a bit of a strange choice, and pays homage to Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997). This is the manner in which the uppance cometh for one Charlize Therone's character, whilst the heroine makes a daring dive to the side.
Austin Powers: get out of the way!
Slightly puzzling but nevertheless very pleasing is the continual reference to Peter O'Toole - upon whom the android David consciously models himself. Whilst the rest of the crew is in stasis en route to the planet, Fassbender brilliantly marauds about the Prometheus, playing basketball on a bike and other great android pass-times, but also watching old Peter O'Toole flicks. He even goes so far as to quote from Lawrence of Arabia (1962) when observing the desert planet. If anyone knows the reason for all this, I'd love to hear it. All I can say is, Fassbender does a very good android Peter O'Toole, which can only increase demand for his acting talents.
Lawrence of Arabia. Must be relevant somehow
Last of all, Ridley Scott reclaims his rightful place as king of gyno-horror after the Twilight series copied his ideas - Breaking Dawn (2011) is thoroughly put in it's place by Prometheus, which fits a more powerful vision of pregnancy into a sub-plot. People will be talking about the life-or-death pregnancy long after the painfully long Breaking Dawn (below) is forgotten.
Prometheus is better than Breaking Dawn
Prometheus may have its downs as well as its ups, but it really is a return to class for the genre it represents. Compared to Star Wars prequels, Indiana Jones revivals, Twilight and Avatar, Prometheus can hold it's head high. For anyone new to the sci-fi/horror genre who hasn't seen Alien or 2001 or Jurassic Park or Scream, it'll probably blow your mind.
Two nights ago, to my great
excitement, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
(1991) was shown on Channel 5. I texted my friends. Strains of Bryan Adams
manifested in my ear. I have seen few, if any, films more times – but I had to
watch it again. Unnoticed or unappreciated aspects queue up to present
themselves with each viewing. This time, however, was different: I really did see new things.
This, it turned out,
was Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves:
Special Extended Edition.
The Film: Was Already: Amazing. I
couldn’t even calculate how amazing the same film but Specially Extended might be.
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
The extra scenes amounted to only a few minutes, but managed
to include Satanism, religious discrimination, torture, and sexual violence. Classic
Robin Hood themes marinated in Red
Bull for a harder, grittier, deeper kind of epic? Sadly, no. The most
impressive thing about these scenes was how efficient they were in deflating
the film by adding detail. The Sheriff of Nottingham is transformed from arch
villain to the victim of terrible parenting. Satanism is briefly questioned in
a way that makes it not threatening but ridiculous. The adrenaline-pumping
capture of the taxes and the friar in Sherwood Forest has a bucket of cold
water poured over it when, in slapstick style, Azeem forces Robin to leap from a
moving carriage by directing it into the river. Religious difference goes from
an uncrossable cultural divide to a pretext for squabbling. The unmentionable but
pervasive threat of sexual violence that provides much of the tension in film’s
last act is slackened by the clumsy observation of one henchman that he’s “never
seen the breasts of a noblewoman” before.
Did we need to know precisely how the Sheriff’s New World
Order would take shape, that Great Britain would be divided into seven sections
along the lines of a pentacle, the seventh section being a left-over bit
between two of the star’s legs? Or that the witch Mortianna is really Darth
Vader the Sheriff’s mother? That she murdered the old Sheriff, his wife,
and their baby in order to secretly supplant their line with her own heir, all
so that that child could grow up to be a rebellious Sheriff who could in turn fight
his way to the throne and legitimately put a grandchild of hers on it through
marriage to the royal line?
There's always room for one more
Like the executioner who gleefully insisted “there’s always room for one more” whilst
dribbling all over Christian Slater’s face, whoever decided these extra scenes
should exist should be shot in slow motion with Kevin Costner’s Flaming Arrow
of Justice.
The original edit clearly understood the principle that a
delicate breath on the cheek can be more distracting than a yelling crowd of
unwashed men. The Special Extended Edition brings out the disappointingly
abrupt Axe of Detail when we were getting along very happily with the dull
Spoon of Implication.
Distracting
Robin Hood: Prince of
Thieves is still one of my favourite films. I will remember how slick it
was in the beginning, how every secondary scene shored up the arch plot without
stealing the limelight, and I will try to forget all mention of swapped babies,
infanticide, and the breasts of noblewomen. The lesson to all film editors is clear
and simple: keep the stitches small.
