A: It was bad.
B: It didn't have to be. But it was.
C: I thought the producers of the show were involved as creative directors? How did they forget in two successive films that a tenet of the show-- the show that they wrote-- was that MacLeod wouldn't marry a mortal woman because of the burden it imposed on her, particularly the lack of children? It only consumed four seasons in agonising detail.
D: Mac in a faux fur collar is not strangely erotic or rakishly post-Apocalyptic, it is crappy costuming.
E: Speaking of post-Apocalyptic--
why was it post-Apocalyptic? What was the Apocalypse? And why are Acocalypses always pictured as dirty Eastern European countries?
F: And for that matter, since you bothered to make Methos one of the main characters, you might have plumbed his rich character backstory, which included
riding with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.G: The Biblical Apocalypse, not your crappy 'who knows why?' Apocalypse. Which was, like, a bajillion times stupider.
H: You killed Joe.
I: Not only did you kill him, you killed him really badly.
J: Death-rattle.
K: He used his last breath to call Mac his best friend.
L: When Methos was sitting right there. And had apparently been in, you know, touch since the Apocalypse, not moping about in faux fur.
M: One good touch-- Methos in leather.
N: Spoilt by the insanely bad biker fringe on said leather.
O: Seriously, fringe?
P: Not as bad as the hairstyle on the priest. And was his frock made of pleather? At least he died. I was looking forward to it.
Q: There was a Wicker Man. I assume that had something to do with plot when you came up with it, and possibly still when the props department built it, but by the time you were hiring extras to play violent 1980s hippies, you ought to have reconsidered what point the Wicker Man was serving.
R: 'R' is for rocking sex scene. Here's a tip: whoever's writing your porn ought to write the rest of the script. Immeasurable improvement.
S: 'S' is for 'slow the fuck down'. The special effects might have seemed good in theory, but as a loyal fan struggling to justify your production, even I have to tell you that borrowing
any ideas from Super Mario Brothers for your film is unlikely, at best, to prove watchable when applied to real actors. 'Obviously bad' would also occur to me.
T: I appreciate that someone finally realised the whole 'there can be only One' idea had been done to death. That said, abandoning the Gathering for a completely random idea that contravenes show and previous film canon? No. Bad.
U: Let me see if I have this straight. All the planets are aligning at once? And hovering insanely close to the Earth? Okay. I'm willing to buy it. You know what would have made it
work as a plot device? Have the alignment cause the Apocalypse. At least have higher neap tides. Seriously.
V: Adrian Paul is an actual action star. And Peter Wingfield isn't awful. The guy who died in the opening sequence seemed to know what he was doing. So who decided to film it as if they were afraid the viewers would realise none of the actors had ever held a sword? If the show did nothing else well, it always had terrific action sequences. I'll assume this was the fault-- severe fault-- of the director, but honestly, that was a real loss for the film.
W: As in, 'WTF-- is that a FOETUS?'
X: And speaking of babies, if the only reason MacLeod won the weird pyschic honour test is that he refused to take the prize, does that mean that Methos, who
also chose not to take the prize so that Mac, whom he felt was more worthy, gets a baby?
Y: The show did an excellent job of giving us both sides of Mac-- the stubborn ass and the actually honourable man who struggled to make the right choices. The film did not. At all. He had no epiphanies, he had no growth arc. He showed up refusing to buy into the premiss of the story and he only refused to kill the Guardian because he
still refused to accept the premiss of the story. That is not honour. That is the stubborn ass. And if I were his mummy, I would not reward that behaviour, particularly by placing an impressionable young child in his care. Also, why give him a baby? Why not make his mortal wife immortal? Or make the baby immortal? Or give him a baby and make
MacLeod a mortal? Or maybe just a nice cash prize?
Z: It was a bad film. It didn't have to be. The only sop to my wounded heart is that it was so bad, it's likely to be the last Highlander film ever, because after this, no-one would ever fund another one.
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chipper
