Highlander (film)

• 1. Introduction

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  Highlander, the 1986 fantasy action-adventure film directed by Russell Mulcahy, opens on a parking garage beneath Madison Square Garden where a sword fight decides who lives forever. Connor MacLeod, a Scottish Highlander born in the 16th century, beheads his opponent and absorbs a burst of raw energy from the body. Then he stashes his blade in the ceiling before police arrive. The questions are already stacking up. Who are these people? Why can they only die by beheading? And what does it mean that a man who fought in the Scottish Highlands in 1536 is now selling antiques in 1985 New York? Those questions pull the listener through four centuries of loss, rivalry, and survival. The tagline "There can be only one" has outlasted the film's troubled opening run, embedding itself in popular culture. At the same time, the movie itself barely survived its own release. It grossed only a little less than $13 million worldwide against a production budget of $19 million, earning mixed reviews on its way to becoming something far more durable than a hit: a cult classic.

• 2. A Class Assignment Goes to Scotland

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  Gregory Widen wrote the script for Highlander as an undergraduate assignment in the screenwriting program at UCLA, where it carried the working title Shadow Clan. His inspiration came from Ridley Scott's 1977 film The Duellists, which followed the decades-long feud between two swordsmen. Widen added a second layer of inspiration drawn from a visit to the Tower of London's armour display, where he imagined a character who had owned and worn all of it across centuries of history. He later described that idea as a scene that made it, essentially unchanged, into the finished film. His instructor read the script and told him to send it to an agent. Widen sold it for US$200,000. That draft was darker and more violent than the eventual film. Connor was born in 1408 rather than 1518. His romantic interest was a woman named Mara who rejected him. The villain was called the Knight rather than the Kurgan. Ramírez was a Spaniard born in 1100, not an ancient Egyptian born more than two thousand years earlier. Immortals in that draft could have children; Connor was said to have had 37. When he finally kills the Knight at the end, the story implies the battle is simply one of many, with no prize and no final gathering. Everything that gives Highlander its mythology was still to be invented. Director Russell Mulcahy entered the project when he was flipping through a magazine and spotted a photograph of Christopher Lambert from his recent role in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. Lambert could not speak English at the time, but Mulcahy told his production staff the actor had the perfect look, and Lambert learned English quickly. Mulcahy had originally considered Kurt Russell or Mickey Rourke for the role.

• 3. Casting Chaos

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  Kurt Russell was actually cast as Connor MacLeod during pre-production, beating out a list that included Michael Douglas, Ed Harris, Sam Shepard, David Keith, Kevin Costner, Scott Glenn, Sting, Mickey Rourke, Peter Weller, Mel Gibson, and William Hurt. Russell dropped out at the insistence of Goldie Hawn, and Lambert stepped in. For the villain, Arnold Schwarzenegger was offered the Kurgan but turned the role down, believing it was too similar to his work as Conan and the Terminator. Rutger Hauer and Nick Nolte were among those considered before Clancy Brown was cast. For the mentor figure Ramírez, Peter O'Toole, Michael Caine, and Gene Hackman were in the running before Sean Connery took the part. The role of Brenda Wyatt went through its own upheaval. Catherine Mary Stewart was cast first, edging out a group that included Demi Moore, Linda Hamilton, Sigourney Weaver, and Diane Lane, among others. Like Russell, Stewart departed during pre-production, and Roxanne Hart replaced her. The part of Rachel Ellenstein, Connor's adopted daughter who survived the Holocaust as a child, went to Sheila Gish. The character's backstory, that Connor rescued her from the Nazis and she has carried his secret ever since, is one of the film's most quietly affecting inventions. Widen had envisioned Connor as purely grim, ground down by centuries of violence. Lambert pushed back against that reading. In a 2016 interview, Lambert described the appeal of a man who carried five hundred years of violence, pain, love, and suffering on his shoulders and was still capable of humor and optimism, still capable of falling in love while knowing exactly what that love would eventually cost him.

• 4. Filming at the Edges

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  Production was financed by Thorn EMI, and when the script reached Russell Mulcahy it was titled The Dark Knight. Cameras rolled in Scotland, England, Wales, and New York City. Christopher Lambert spent months before filming working four hours every morning with a dialect coach and four hours every afternoon on sword training with former Olympic fencer Bob Anderson, who had previously served as a Darth Vader stunt double in the Star Wars franchise. The shoot was not without improvisation. The voice-over by Sean Connery has a distinctive echo because it was recorded in the bathroom of his Spanish villa, where he was working on his accent with a voice coach. The producers listened to a phone playback and approved it without being able to detect the unusual recording environment. Clancy Brown, in a Reddit session in 2014, described the set as strange, with producers constantly looking to cut costs. On the first day of filming, the producers decided the extras would not receive breakfast. The crew threatened to walk. Only when an assistant director threatened to bring Connery in to force the issue did the producers relent. The largely Scottish extras expressed their frustration by burning Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in effigy. Several scenes were shot far from where they were supposed to take place. The parking garage sequence was split between a Manhattan exterior and a London interior. The opening battle, meant to be set in the village of Glenfinnan on the shore of Loch Shiel, was filmed at Eilean Donan Castle on the shore of Loch Duich near Kyle of Lochalsh. The final confrontation, originally planned for the top of the Statue of Liberty, then relocated to an amusement park, eventually landed on the roof of Silvercup Studios in Queens. A number of alternate and deleted scenes were later destroyed in a fire, including a duel between the Kurgan and an Asian immortal named Yung Dol Kim, who after four hundred years asks only for the peace of death.

• 5. Queen and the Score

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  Brian May was watching the love scenes between Connor and Heather when the song "Who Wants to Live Forever" came to him. That single origin point gave Highlander a soundtrack unlike anything else in action cinema at the time. The British rock band Queen recorded several songs specifically for the film, including "Princes of the Universe" and "A Kind of Magic", which also appeared on their 1986 studio album of the same name. "Hammer to Fall", heard playing from a car radio in one scene, came from Queen's earlier album The Works and was not newly recorded for the film. The album version of "Gimme the Prize (Kurgan's Theme)" includes snippets of dialogue from the film itself. Marillion turned down the chance to do the soundtrack because the band was on a world tour, a missed opportunity that guitarist Steve Rothery later said he regretted. Their Scottish lead singer Fish had also accepted a part in the film before the scheduling conflict pulled him away. David Bowie, Sting, and Duran Duran were among those considered for the soundtrack role before Queen was chosen. The orchestral score was composed by Michael Kamen. A rearrangement of a cue from Kamen's score, specifically the opening of the track called "The Quickening", was later used as the logo music for New Line Cinema's ident between 1994 and 2011. Despite a credit in the end titles, a complete standalone soundtrack album for the film has never been released. The 1995 CD release Highlander: The Original Scores included only five cues from Kamen's work, paired with music from the two subsequent films.

• 6. Cult Status and Legacy

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  Highlander premiered as the non-competitive closing film at the Avoriaz Fantasy Film Festival in January 1986. It opened in Los Angeles on the 7th of March, 1986. The U.S. release ran 111 minutes, roughly eight minutes shorter than the UK version. The cuts removed sequences involving a specifically European style of humor that the distributors believed American audiences would not respond to, including a clansman repeatedly head-butting Connor and the Kurgan licking a priest's hand. Director Mulcahy found the removal of the scene showing how Connor met Rachel to be the most objectionable cut, arguing the relationship between the two was incomprehensible without it. The opening weekend in the United States brought in $2.4 million. The total U.S. and Canadian gross reached $5.9 million. The film found far warmer audiences in Europe and on home video, where it built the following that eventually made sequels and a television series viable. Highlander: The Series began airing in 1992, introducing Duncan MacLeod played by Adrian Paul. Lambert appeared in the first episode but had turned down a full return to the role. A novelization by Garry Kilworth, published under the pen name Garry Douglas, expanded the mythology by revealing details about the Kurgan's origins, including his training with an immortal known as "The Bedouin" and how he acquired his customized longsword. On Rotten Tomatoes, where 69 percent of 42 reviews are positive, the critical consensus captures the film's enduring contradiction plainly: people hate Highlander because it is cheesy, bombastic, and absurd, and people love it for exactly the same reasons. As of October 2023, Lionsgate was moving forward with a reboot, with Henry Cavill in the lead role and Chad Stahelski directing. Stahelski has confirmed that music by Queen will feature in the new film, a sign that the original soundtrack's hold on the franchise remains as strong as the story itself.