Treknicalities

Any true fan of Highlander will tell you that Highlander II should never have been made and might just take the title “Worst Movie Ever Made” from Ed Wood’s Plan Nine From Outer Space.

This plot summary is written from memory because, having seen this atrocity once 20 years ago, no human should be required to watch it again for any reason. Fans of the original film would be more satisfied with watching two hours of the world’s best beauty products reviews. This movie should have been called Highlander II: It’s Sickening.

Highlander II: It's Sickening

Highlander II, unlike most sequels, does not simply pick up the storyline from the first movie and continue. It couldn’t have done that because the first film wrapped up all the loose ends with no opening to build into a sequel.

To get around this, the writers simply ignored the back-story from the first movie and decided to make Connor McCleod, Ramirez, and all the other Immortals exiles from the planet Zeist, where, apparently, nobody has any sort of life and all they do is watch the activities of the Immortals on a giant screen.

The movie opens in the year 2024 and Connor McCleod is an old man. It is explained that in the late 1990s, the Earth’s ozone layer was almost gone and McCleod helped construct The Shield to protect the planet from deadly radiation. The side effect of The Shield is that the whole world is in constant darkness and the sky is always filled with angry red clouds. The population is becoming filled with more and more people who hate McCleod for constructing The Shield and plunging the world into eternal night while saving them all from dying of skin cancer. How dare he save the planet?

Back on Zeist, General Katana has grown tired of waiting for McCleod to die – it’s been 488 years, for crying out loud – so he sends to henchmen who remind me of Lenny and Squiggy from Lavern & Shirley to kill McCleod. In the midst of the fight, Connor calls out, “Ramirez!” but his old friend has been dead for almost 300 years and being dead takes up all his time, so he doesn’t show up for the fight. After the fight, McCleod is Immortal – and young – again. Connor’s soon-to-be-girlfriend, trying to wrap her head around what has happened after McCleod finishes off Lenny and Squiggy, says something like, “So, you’re mortal there, but you’re immortal here until there is only one of you left here. Then you’re mortal here, until more guys from there show up here. Right?”

Let’s pause and examine that statement which, for the record, McCleod confirms as accurate. These people are mortal on their home world, but General Katana is roughly 500 years old – he’s been waiting for McCleod and all the other Immortals to die off since 1536 a.d. Anyone see a problem here?

After the fight with Lenny and Squiggy, McCloud doesn’t get the whole electric shock and thunderbolt thing that he did at the end of the first movie, so this must mean there is still at least one Immortal left, right? It turns out that Ramirez missed that left turn at Albuquerque on his return from The Great Beyond and found himself on a stage in England during Hamlet’s famous “Alas, poor Yorik” scene.

After making a fool of himself, Ramirez excuses himself and goes to a taylor where he exchanges a gold and pearl earring for a suit of clothes and, presumably, an airline ticket because next thing you know he’s on a flight to New York to meet up with Connor. It isn’t explained how he knows where Connor is, however that didn’t seem to bother him in the first movie either and that time he hadn’t just returned from the afterlife with all of its secrets fresh in his mind.

Connor, his girlfriend, and Ramirez find out that the Ozone layer has replenished itself and the corporation operating The Shield is just using it as the world’s largest cash cow. The three of them decide to break into The Shield Corp’s headquarters and shut down the unneeded shield.

About this same time, General Katana decides that if you want anyone killed right, you have to kill them yourself and heads to Earth.

Ramirez sacrifices himself so the other two can get into the Shield Corps headquarters. Sean Connery got off easy with only nine minutes in this film, but anyone wanting to see it because he was in it was in for a terrible disappointment.

Katana shows up in New York (he must’ve gotten better directions than Ramirez did) and takes a group of subway riders on a ride they’ll never forget. He tracks Connor to the Shield Corp where they have it out. Connor wins, of course. He shuts down the shield, the ozone layer is fine, Connor is young with his new girlfriend and another 50 or 60 years of life to look forward to.

Unless you like bad acting, plot holes you can drive a semi through, and sequels that completely ignore their predecessors, consider yourself warned: If you get the chance to see this movie, don’t.

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