Retro Review: Highlander Endgame

 If you've ever wondered why it is that some people think that the Cap'n will watch literally any movie that happens to be playing somewhere, it's probably fair to disclose to you that I sat through the entirety of Highlander: Endgame, a movie so bad that I don't remember anything about the plot. I remember moments from the film, but your Cap'n remembers more about what happened in the theatre than what happened in the narrative of the film. To say "because it was free" doesn't really excuse me from having to admit that I not only know the fourth Highlander film exists, but that I sat through it.

 That's right, kids: the FOURTH Highlander movie. Not one of the ones with Sean Connery, or even the one with Mario Van Peebles, but the fourth entry into a series that had, until 2000, been banished to the realms of syndicated television. You know, where you'd find Cleopatra 2020AD or Jack of All Trades or Hercules or Xena. Whatever channel carried those where you lived, odds are it also carried Highlander: The Series. The show starred Adrian Paul as Duncan MacLeod, who is in some way part of the same clan as Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert), who was in the movies. I wish I could tell you more, but I never watched Highlander on TV. In fact, I only had a passing knowledge of Highlander the films - I'd seen the first one some time during high school and vaguely remember enjoying it; I gave up on the trainwreck that is Highlander 2: The Quickening almost as many times as Shock Treatment before I finally finished the movie; and I never saw Highlander: The Final Dimension.

 As you can imagine, there was all the reason in the world to go see a sequel to a movie I kinda thought I liked. But I did work at a movie theatre, and it was free, and two former employees were along for the ride, so what the hell, right? What did we have to lose? We'd jokingly called the film "A Samuel Beckett Joint" for months, and considering the other crap we'd subjected ourselves to (this would be only a few months after the Nutty Professor 2 / The Replacements adventure) why not have fun with a bad movie?

 This is what I remember about Highlander: Endgame - both MacLeods are in the film, it bounces around through time, that a group of Watchers who "never interfere" with history do so in some way, that (at the time) WWF superstar Edge appears in the film as a sword wielding dandy that at some point he's holding a rock over his head to crush Duncan or Connor or something and they put a sword up to his junk and say "I guess you've lost your EDGE" *rimshot*. There's some bad guy (I'm really not going to look this up, folks, I'm sorry) that poses enough of a threat to Duncan and Connor that Lambert convinces Adrian Paul it's best to (SPOILER) kill him and assume his power through a lightning storm called "the quickening" and then Duncan MacLeod presumably beats the bad guy in order to appear in... wait... there were TWO MORE Highlander sequels? Seriously? I guess the "Endgame" part was just to trick us.

 As I understand it, there are fans of the Highlander series that feel this film is important to the canon and not at all to be a stupid movie with bad acting and high-end TV production values. Maybe I just am not "getting it" because I'm not intricately versed in the history of the show, but I think we laughed a lot. It seemed really stupid that they say the Watchers don't interfere and then have them do exactly the opposite, but I guess it's possible I missed something there. I had more to occupy my interest at that point.

 This leads me to what was arguably more interesting than the movie, which was that one of the fine fellows who joined me for the movie picked up two cans of Sapporo and brought them with us to the movie. He left one of the cans in the car, and took the other one inside. Quickly into the movie he decided that drinking the beer was a better plan than watching Highlander: Endgame, and when he finished it, he walked out of the auditorium, walked outside to the parking lot, got the other can, walked back in, sat down, and opened his second Sapporo. The only other person in the theatre with us didn't seem to notice at all, even though the theatre in question didn't sell anything in a can and there's no mistaking that sound. Maybe he'd given up trying to follow the movie too.

 It's sad when I can recall more about events surrounding the movie than the movie itself (something that happened again with Dungeons & Dragons, next week's Retro Review), but I'd be lying to you if I said I had any interest in seeing Highlander: Endgame again. It's one of those movies I don't even feel the need to adjust my initial reaction to by watching it repeatedly. I'll leave Highlander to its fans, and that more than likely will include the remake that's on the way - that is, if they're really done with the continuing adventures of Duncan MacLeod...