What's Wrong With Endgame?

[Andrew NDB]

Better editing. Way better hair & makeup on Lambert. A way better Quickening for Connor, with Duncan levitating (more like this:

) and just more to it. Maybe include Amanda and/or Fitz in the flashbacks (of course they'd be at Duncan's wedding!) or maybe Amanda in the present... I could see Duncan going to Amanda for advice on what to do with Faith/Kate. Alternately, it'd be kind of fun if Duncan went into Connor's loft WITH Amanda... sort of, the two of them against everyone else (primarily Faith vs. Amanda).

I don't know that I'd change a whole lot more beyond little nits. i.e., the repeated shot in the final battle with Kell, etc.. I wouldn't mess with the music or score... it's on par with Michael Kamen's work in the first film.

[dubiousbystander]

I tend to repeat, frequently, that the problem with that being Kell's MO is that Rachel lived to get old and Duncan did not die an early death. He lived long enough to marry Kate. Then of course, there's also the Kurgan.

[David McMurdo]

You know, I forgot all about that trailer. Well, on the bright side, at least we didn't end up with a magical portal of some kind.

[Donut]

all your points are what bothered the hell out of me. they had some good ideas and scenarios but they just didn't play out too well due to poor execution.

I think the biggest thing that pissed me off back in 2000 and even today is the movie wasn't at all like what was depicted in that one trailer. I was so eager to see THAT movie and instead got a very different movie.

The movie is too short. The theatrical cut was 80 something minutes, the producers cut is a little longer but you don't get a whole lot more from it. Had the film been 2 and a half hours....it would have possibly flowed a bit better. I feel like they go back and forth too much in so little time, that it throws off the pacing.

Christopher Lambert's limited screentime. If you could only have him for so many scenes...they need to be present day scenes. It felt so wrong to kill him off in what was his second and last scene in the present tense. Had they given him even just two more scenes to depict his pain and tiredness of immortal life, then I could have digested the concept of him being at the end of his rope.

The music..As much as I like the score, I think there needed to be some actual songs in there. Who Wants To Live Forever would have fit in during a montage. Bonny Portmore is at the end credits but it's not as effective there. Rob Zombie's song from the trailer would have fit in the movie during a fight quite well. Needed more of that edginess added to an otherwise dreary somewhat dull & depressing movie.

Again, I expected an adventure buddy buddy movie. I wanted a training montage of Connor training Duncan in the early days. I wanted a training montage of them in the present. Even if just a minute in length.I wanted to see so much more of that passing of the torch. Of that legacy of Ramirez and young Connor being continued with Connor and Duncan. To really emphasize that the two of them are as brothers, as equals, as family. Instead, I felt like Connor was no different than any of Duncan's other trainers thru out the centuries.

I didn't like that the memorable characters were simply there as cameos. I want to see more of Heather and Rachel. Some more Methos and Joe.
Most of all I want to see Rachel and Duncan sharing a scene together.
I want to see Joe Dawson in the same room as Connor MacLeod. etc etc.

I didn't like the editing of the film.I think that's one of the things that seriously hurts the film in general.

[David McMurdo]

I started my topic for stating the positives of Endgame, so now I'm starting one in which people can say what they didn't like about the film. Even though it's my favourite Highlander film, I can think of more than a few things that bother me.


1: Connor's curse. I really love the back story between Kell and Connor as far as the Highlands of Scotland go, but I really hate the idea that Kell has been killing all of Connor's friends and lovers down through the ages for the simple fact that it colours all of Connor's life and changes not only what we've already seen of his past, but what we imagined of it. It didn't need to be written this way.

2: The Sanctuary. This makes no sense to me. If you're an immortal who is sick and tired of the game, why wouldn't you just kill yourself? Remember that imprisonment in the Sanctuary is forever. Why would you ever choose this state of undeath over plain old death? And of course the Sanctuary only makes sense if it's built on Holy Ground, but then Endgame's plot wouldn't work, and I'm sure you all know that in the theatrical cut it was on Holy Ground but that they changed it for the Producer's Cut. The one thing that I do like about the Sanctuary concept is the idea that some rogue Watchers want to imprison immortals to keep the Prize from being won. That's a cool idea. But I think that the Sanctuary only makes sense if you have it that the immortals are abducted and kept there against their will, though that would have nothing to do with anything in Endgame's plot, aside from that minor bit where Duncan is captured.

3: Christopher Lambert looks old, and there's no real reason for it. I've seen even fairly recent interviews in which he looks much better than in Endgame. Bad hair and makeup is responsible here.

4: Jin Ke's death. Originally Jin Ke was meant to decapitate himself instead of dying at the hands of Kell. They claimed that they just couldn't get the shot to look right and so went with what we have. I actually don't believe this, because you could very easily have just cut away from the decapitation itself or otherwise have it off screen. They only did it hundreds of times in the TV series. What I actually think happened was that they realised that even if Jin Ke did decapitate himself, his quickening would just go to the nearest immortal anyway, and so it wouldn't make sense. But Jin Ke just letting Kell kill him doesn't sit right either. I think that this, like a lot of the film's plot issues (especially the one about the Sanctuary) is just the result of a poorly thought out script that didn't pay much heed to Highlander lore.

5: That repeated shot. This film has so much going on and so many interesting characters that it really needs to be considerably longer to do it all justice, and the existing edits are weird in their own ways. I've been thinking about this particular oddity for nearly twenty years and I'm still no closer to figuring out why the Producer's Cut repeats a shot in the final battle between Kell and Duncan. Based on what I've seen of the unused footage, that entire last battle is a complete mess in terms of showing where Kell and Duncan are meant to be at any given time. One minute they're in one place and then the next they're in another that doesn't seem related. But that repeated shot gets me every time. I once showed the film to a bunch of people who weren't Highlander fans, hoping they wouldn't notice. But they did. And one of them said, "wow. I've never seen that in a film before." Pretty embarrassing.

6: The face morphing. I know a lot of fans hated the face morphing shots during the final fight, but regardless of how you feel about them I really think that you have to take an all or nothing approach with experimental elements like this—either you keep all of the face morphing shots or you cut all of them out. In the Producer's Cut they leave the first one in, but then cut the second one out (though in a way that's clumsy so you still see a bit of it). I really liked that second face morph. I used to play through the quiz on my Region 1 DVD set on hard difficulty just to see it, since it was basically the reward for winning. That Region 1 Endgame DVD was a real treat. The Region 2 one sucked. It had nearly no extra features at all. Unfortunately, I later gave that Region 1 DVD set to a Canadian girl I met. Wish I hadn't now. It was a hassle importing the Region 1 versions of the films and TV series and it wasn't cheap either. I bet she never even watched it. What greater token of love could there be than a copy of Highlander Endgame?

7: Is it Christmas? I know about the cut Christmas Tree plot, but they still leave in Joe saying "Merry Christmas" after he shoots Matthew, and you're like, "oh wait... it's Christmas?! Or is that just a terrible one-liner?" There's a Christmas tree in the background, but still it's confusing. It's almost as if it's only Christmas in that particular room. Probably should have cut that line out. And what's with the dubbing of Duncan and Kate towards the end? Could they really not get Adrian Paul back to record some lines? I can only assume that the final scene in the Producer's Cut is meant to be a New Year's celebration.

8: The JVC sign. In the theatrical cut there's a massive, distracting JVC sign in the background of the fight between Connor and Duncan. In the Producer's Cut they tried to digitally erase it, but only partially succeeded. On the DVD commentary the producers' claimed that no-one noticed it during filming, which may well be the most obvious lie ever uttered by a human. So you spent hours, possibly days setting up and filming this scene that involved complex choreography, but not one person on the crew noticed a giant, glowing, red sign overshadowing it all? Okay.

I think that's about it. I've restricted myself to being critical of what's actually in the film. If I were to talk about what I thought should have been done, I'd never finish this post.


So what do you dislike about Endgame?