I have been reading reviews the last few days just ripping apart the latest “Highlander” movie as being pretty much incomprehensible. On the other hand, a lot of people seem to have problems following science fiction movies (as I was leaving “The Matrix,” for example, the woman ahead of me was complaining that she “didn’t get it”), so I will withhold judgment.
While it might not really be the worst movie ever, if you want to see a very bad movie rent “Highlander 2: The Renegade Version”. Okay, even though I like the original “Highlander” film, I will admit that that movie was a bad film unless you are a sci-fi junkie, and the theatrical version of “Highlander 2” was even worse. The irony is the director of the film complained about how the American distributors of Highlander 2 cut it all up and ruined it, so they went out and re-edited the film, changed the narrative and did a bunch of other crap to make the movie they wanted to release. After watching it, you will understand why the American distributors cut it so heavily!
First, although the characters are the same, there is absolutely no narrative continuity between the first Highlander film and the Renegade 2 version. The Renegade 2 version starts on some alien world with an incomprehensible plot twist involving a rebellion led by Christopher Lambert’s character and goes downhill from there. There are special effects shots in the new film that look like they were rejected from that wretched “Spawn” film.
I do have a small caveat, in that this is one of the few films I found to be so bad that I had to stop before reaching the end — and I tried on 3 or 4 occasions to give the film a fair shot. Unfortunately, there is this ridiculous scene about 20 to 30 minutes into the movie where the evil alien overlord from the other planet sends a couple of his minions to kill Lambert and there’s this stupid action scene, complete with flying skateboard a la “Back to the Future,” which is the aforementioned reject from “Spawn” scene. After all this crashing and just ridiculous level of explosions, Lambert ends up pushing his female companion against a wall and they have sex. The first time through I just busted out laughing. The next few times through I get to this scene and I am verging on physically ill because its the culmination of the start of a movie that is so bad you have to wonder if it was not done intentionally as a way of highlighting the idiocy of some sci-fi films.