jayrebb
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Industry definition is 24 years or older. You are expected to be enhanced, but you also need to be at least 24.
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Highlander
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Industry definition is 24 years or older. You are expected to be enhanced, but you also need to be at least 24.
Haus
I am Big Balls!
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Rajaah
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The back half of Season 1 is good. The only time the show is truly not good is the majority of the first 12 episodes of S1 and the majority of S6's 13 episodes. Like ten out of each are subpar. The series starts weak and ends weak, with a ton of good the rest of the time.
Adrian Paul had fully checked out by Season 6 and didn't even want to do more. Ideally they would have wrapped up with S5. Take the last 3 episodes of S6 (which were quite good) and tack them onto the end of S5 (which is already a shorter than normal season).
The death at the end of S5 also took a lot of wind out of people's sails. That was such a downer ending that a lot of folks didn't even come back for S6.
As a kid, the high point of the series for me was mid-S4 with Duncan being consumed by darkness and beating the shit out of everyone, womanizing, etc. Heel Duncan was so much more interesting than his normal boy scout persona. That should have gotten a big multi-episode arc rather than the two it got.
I also used to think as a kid that eventually either Richie or Methos would take over as the main character later on. When Duncan turned evil, I thought maybe that would be the catalyst, like Methos would have to fight Evil Duncan at the end or something.
Similar thing happened in S5 when Kronos showed up. I knew Methos wasn't actually going to stick with the heel turn and was just playing along with Kronos. And Kronos was such a threat that I thought he might kill Duncan and the rest of the show would be about Richie having to get strong enough to take on Kronos.
That show had so much unused potential. There was another really cool / major threat immortal earlier in the show, Constantine, who was Roman-era and supposed to be one of the most powerful out there, but he didn't do much. He and Duncan got on well so there was never a battle, and I think he only showed up in two episodes.
Roger Daltrey's Fitzcairn and Roland Gift's Xavier St Cloud were both freaking awesome characters and should have been in more of the show. They were both in like twice as many episodes after they died as they were in before they died. The show really leaned on flashbacks.
Damnit, I guess I need to rewatch Highlander too
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nu_11
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Siliconemelons
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It gets worse when you read through lines of “ifs” and “would haves” The Source is actually a thread in that line of S5/6
There are kind of 2 threads that they attempted in the show, both really "the same" but done different because of the typical "oh we are getting cancelled! JK NM" like even Babylon 5 with its last 2 seasons. The dark quickening and the last season super evil were meant to jump forward in time showing what a truly evil and powerful immoral could do without a strong counter - i.e Duncan - be it he became corrupted or just 'walked away from everything' type dealio
from killing richie, loosing his love, etc etc
If you are a fan, as I have said before - and you really want to watch The Source- watch the first, about 10-15min? then the "Dock fight scene" and turn it off- that is all that is really all.
Then watch the Anime, it is actually one of the top highlander movies - I would put the top being 1 then The Anime/3 tied, then 2/Endgame tied then way way way down The Source. The series is it own thing and I do still love it, and I - being a minority - do not like the France/boat move, I liked it better in the gym / loft whatever.
Rajaah
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The Duende episode in Highlander Season 5 is kind of fascinating. It has one of the biggest immortal threats in the series with Otavio Consone, plus what might be the best fight scene in the entire series. The actor that played Consone (seen here) was actually the runner-up to star as Duncan if Adrian Paul hadn't gotten it. He's similarly versed in martial arts and swordmastery, and stuck around to help out with a lot of episodes behind the scenes (training guest stars, etc), so putting them together onscreen as foes was a tremendous idea.
Rajaah
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I definitely prefer the back half of every season being in France. The first half feels like a regular show, while the back half feels more RPG-ish with the old historic environments and the cold weather.
One of the Highlander blogs I read had a good policy on The Source: Turn it off once The Guardian speaks. It's somewhat passable, if still pretty bad quality-wise, up until that point. Then it just becomes a "who made this" joke where the series itself is the punchline.
HL2 is fun to watch while inebriated or making fun of it with friends, while The Source I can't recommend to anyone, it actually makes the rest of the series seem lesser by association. Yeah, it's one of those rare things that actually hurts the series it's from.
And yes, the series producers were obsessed with making the show post-apocalyptic. And also making a cop show. They tried so hard on both counts.
The cop show failed as a concept in Season 1 and a new show runner was given the reigns who veered sharply into mystical RPG territory, starting with Season 1 Episode 13, Band of Brothers.
The "make it post-apocalyptic and gay" idea was also in War of the Worlds Season 2 (1990), which I evolved a lot of the same people as Highlander. After a really tremendous first season (that I still rewatch every 5-10 years), WOTW Season 2 flopped so hard week by week that it didn't get a third season.
So given how much both of these concepts were a bust, of course the producers of Highlander would want to try them again. After the showrunners built the series into huge success (ratings were gangbusters in Seasons 3-5), the orders came down to make Season 6 post-apocalyptic and gay, with a time jump after Season 5 and Duncan now in a dark future. Luckily Adrian Paul and some of the showrunners fought this idea (Adrian wanted to be done with the show by then, not do two more seasons in the post apocalyptic future) and it didn't pan out. Season 6 just ended up being a normal season, albeit a half-length one where the star of the show was only in like six episodes.
The cop show idea got another whirl with spinoff The Raven and,.like HL Season 1, it didn't land with audiences and flopped. That's already been discussed on here.
Wonder how far into the negative the ratings would have gotten if they had managed to combine the two things that got the producers nipples so hard: a post-apocalyptic cop show.
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Siliconemelons
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The "owners" of Highlander are such an example of people that have near-zero concept of why 95% of the audience likes their content and they wont stop hammering at it completely like "WE made this! Thus we know what you want...you dont know what you want, or why you liked what we made."
And then you read and watch behind the scene stuff and almost EVERYTHING people liked were "well we did X because we could not do Z at the time, or budget or something" and X was what people like not anything close to Z
moonarchia
The Scientific Shitlord
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You watched it a lot because it was fucking awesome. Shame there were never any sequels.
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Siliconemelons
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Yeah the TV spinoff was good, really odd they never made any more movies though...even from the show.
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kroenen
Regimen Morum
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40th anniversary is this year, will be in limited theaters in may and a new 4k 40th set being released june 26th
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Siliconemelons
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No. I think I saw it on HBO when I was maybe about that age.
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Rajaah
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Pretty good podcast about Highlander. They have episodes on each movie, the overall The Series, each season individually, and two episodes for The Source because there's so much to get into. Their delivery is a little bit "sleepy, inoffensive NPR people" at times but they're big fans and know the material.
I listened to the episodes about HLTS Season 6, HL2, and HL3 (weirdly there doesn't seem to be an episode for HL1...) and now going through The Source. They talk about various scripts that were rejected for it, all of which were miles better than what we got.
So it appears that the Source we got might have actually been an unused horror movie script that had nothing to do with Highlander. That actually explains so much.
The rejected Source script that I like the most is one where Duncan is living at Connor's Forge, which he's been rebuilding. The villain of the story is a Dark Quickening infected immortal. Who, surprise, actually dies early in the movie and then the DQ starts making its way through good guys, eventually infecting Kate (the love interest from Endgame). Duncan has to defeat it by refusing to fight, like he did in the Source we got, except it might actually make sense in this situation.
Personally I think it would be a lot more interesting if the DQ ended up with Methos, forcing the big Duncan/Methos fight that we never got. (Well, we sorta got it in the final episode of the show, but not really). Then Duncan could save Methos the same way Methos saved him from his own DQ, by refusing to fight and getting him to a holy place where he could exorcise his demons.
In any case, it's an interesting podcast that goes deep on a variety of Highlander subjects. They even have an episode about the extended universe of books/audiobooks, which I thought were just a fever dream because I've never seen anyone mention them anywhere since I heard about them in 2012 or so.
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Rajaah
Honorable Member
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40th anniversary is this year, will be in limited theaters in may and a new 4k 40th set being released june 26th
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Yeah I'm gonna need this. I watched my first 4K Blu-Ray on the PS5 the other day, Star Trek Beyond. The movie's alright but the visuals were insane, I'm sold on 4K BRs now.
What is that skull helmet Kurgan wears supposed to be, anyway? A sabertooth tiger? A large bear?
It's surprising the show didn't get any movies, yeah. Star Trek TNG managed to get several movies after Kirk's run of movies ended with Generations, and it would have been nice to see Duncan and the show characters get a couple more movies after Endgame.
Highlander 3 is better than people remember it being. The final fight with Kane is easily the best fight Connor ever has in the entire series. (For Duncan, I would go with the Donnie Yen fight from Endgame)