If the 1980s had to be summed up in a few words, tacky would have to be one of them. As I lived the decade, I spoke with authority. And we knew it was exaggerated, colorful, and excessive. Comedy films praised misogyny, racism, xenophobia, sexual and psychological abuse. Even the music, although melodic and creative, was plasticized with the electronic beat and keyboards louder than other instruments. We survived, didn’t we? Four decades later, as always happens, the nostalgic wave leads us to revisit the past, so it’s no surprise to learn that Highlander, a film that in the cheesy decade was considered, you know, “cheesy”, is going to be remade. That’s right! Let’s talk about another film with Henry Cavill leading the cast!

At this point, the favorite actor on any list of possibilities, with a loyal fan base, could not fail to be the best for the idea of rescuing the story of Connor MacLeod, the immortal who became legendary due to the band’s soundtrack Queen. Although we will revisit here that the band wasn’t even the first to be considered to do the song, without them, there would be no franchise, fans know.

So, shall we travel in time?

In the 1970s, former firefighter Gregory Widen was a film student at UCLA – and obviously passionate about the seventh art – when his expected final job was to write a script for an original story. During this period, two things impacted him and were on his mind: Ridley Scott‘s 1977 film The Duelists (which is worth a separate post) and a recent vacation trip he had taken to the United Kingdom which was still on his mind.

For the final college project, inspiration from Ridley Scott and a trip to the UK

On the trip, Gregory was enchanted by the beauty of the Scottish highlands and even more so by the armor exhibition at the Tower of London (which is permanent and truly impressive, worth a visit!). The thought he had was “‘What if you owned all this? What if you had used it throughout the story and were showing someone your life through it?’” It was a thought that remained hidden and that would be vital in changing the life of the future director and screenwriter.

The film The Duelists, an adaptation of a short story inspired by a true story, marked Ridley Scott‘s film debut, but if it is now a cult and classic, at the time it did not have the same impact. Those who are fans of cinema loved it and this was the case for Gregory Widen, who loved the fact that the film is about a duel between two men over several decades. When the UCLA professor gave the final project, he was inspired, by precisely what fits with the curiosity he had during the holidays with the film he loved. That’s right, a duel over centuries, two immortals facing each other at various times in their lives. The story would be about immortality. It received a grade of 10 with flying colors. “It’s a house”, as Gregory joked in an interview years later, referring to the success of the film.

“I think its appeal is the uniqueness of how the story was told and the fact that it had a heart and a point of view about immortality,” the screenwriter himself assessed years later in an interview.

The plot and how Hollywood embarked on this journey

Gregory’s story “revealed” that immortals were living among us, with the hero, Connor MacLeod dueling across the centuries until the final confrontation with the antagonist, Kurgan, in New York during an Immortal confrontation called “The Quickening”. The original script was titled Shadow Clan and, on the advice of his teacher, he sold it to an agent for $200,000. Thus began a saga, on and off the screen.

Being his first work, it is not surprising to learn that the original draft told a darker and more violent story than the final version, more fantasy and with some fun elements, things that the executives asked to change. Details such as the year in which Connor McLeod was born, as well as the fact that he would have a family – mortal – with parents and brothers, that he would not be married (in the original he would be rejected by his girlfriend when she discovered his immortality) and that he would voluntarily leave his clan instead of being banned. Furthermore, he could have children. Other changes would be in the fact that Ramírez was effectively a Spaniard and not an ancient Egyptian born more than two thousand years ago and that the villain, Kurgan, was only known as Knight, using the pseudonym Carl William Smith, and was not a savage, but a cold-blooded killer.

Perhaps the main change is that Hollywood hasn’t bought into the original concept that there is no ultimate prize for duelists. When Connor finally killed the Knight, he would only feel a lot of pain, but he would soon identify another immortal nearby, leaving it open that the game would continue. Us

In the 1980s, studios didn’t understand vague concepts, they needed to have a goal and a single winner. Thus was born the classic phrase – There Can Only Be Only One – in which immortals cannot coexist, they need to duel, for a final prize that they still don’t know what it is, which is a discharge of energy.

The 1986 film

Today Gregory Widen is an experienced director and screenwriter, but 40 years ago no executive would give him the budget to sign his work, so producers Peter S. Davis and Bill Panzer brought in popular MTV music video director Russell Mulcahy to bring the fantasy to life. the screens.

Renamed Highlander, the film lost its elements of brooding melodrama and gained the clipped format of so many films from that decade. One of the several adaptations that bothered Gregory was the humor inserted into Connor McLeod: being positive even though he had lived through so many painful moments was ok, but he would have to feel physical pain anyway, but there are scenes in which he simply laughs when he is hurt. Anyway, 1980s!

When choosing the cast, today we also laugh at the options, even though fans love Christopher Lambert. The French actor, who never lost his accent when speaking English and at the time was not yet fluent, only came into consideration after Mickey Rourke and Kurt Russell were dropped. At the time Lambert was on the rise for being Tarzan in Greystoke and the director realized he had found his Connor McLeod by looking at his photo.

Ironically, Sean Connery, still pre-Oscar and not so hot after having done Never Say Never as an aging James Bond, was effectively Scottish, yet his character is an Egyptian using a Spanish name (and clothes). His charisma, of course, was untouchable. And he was paid a million dollars to record it all in a week.

And Clancy Brown was the undeniably perfect choice for Krugan, even though he was the one who did the most work behind the scenes. This is because he, just as Gregory Widen imagined, that the antagonist would be a more complex and tortured man than the shallow psychopath who was in the new script. After all, he lost everything over time and his only motivation was to face McLeod. “We were all trying to make a good movie, and the producers were trying to make money any way they could, so there were a lot of things we had to work around, do on the cheap because of these producers,” Clancy Brown commented on Redditt Ask Anything at 2014.

Unsurprisingly, Highlander failed at the box office (and with critics) when it hit theaters. making a mere six million dollars, having cost 16. Only in Europe, where Christopher Lambert was famous, was there any recognition. Above all, the one who didn’t let the film fall into oblivion was the band Queen, who wrote the soundtrack with the album A Kind of Magic. Another curious behind-the-scenes story.

The immortal soul of a soundtrack that saved the saga

It is so impossible to separate Highlander from the music of the band Queen that actor Henry Cavill has already announced that it will be present in the reboot. But even that wasn’t as easy as it seems today, because if Marillion, David Bowie, Sting or even Duran Duran had bought into the idea, the film would have been different. That’s right, Queen was the fifth option.

Highlander‘s incidental score is written by Michael Kamen, but no one even remembers its melody today. What the producers really wanted was Marillion, whose singer at the time was the Scotsman Fish, who would even make a cameo as an actor. What prevented it? The band’s concert commitments.

After circulating among the most popular at the time, they passed to Queen, who at the time were no longer selling like they were in the 1970s, but as immortal as they are, they rose from the ashes with an anthological performance at Live Aid and were on the rise again. With the unofficial soundtrack, as the album A Kind of Magic is called, the band brings together the songs from Highlander with pop arrangements that are different from those in the cinema, such as Princes of the Universe, Gimme the Prize, A Year of Love, It’s a Kind of Magic and Don’t Lose Your Head. The song Who Wants To Live Forever deserves separate mention.

A Kind of Magic was also notable because it was during these works that Freddie Mercury discovered he had AIDS. Queen released two more albums with the singer still alive, but this was the album that included a tour, as soon after his health no longer allowed him to perform live.

Interestingly, the band used the lines that Connor MacLeod uses to describe his immortality as the title. Princes of the Universe would later be used as the opening theme for the TV series Highlander, but none of them had the impact of Who Wants to Live Forever.

The pain of immortality described in the song

The fact that they forced the action side more than the drama in Highlander is obviously one of the mistakes that to this day costs the franchise dearly. However, thanks to Brian May he captured the essence of what Gregory Widen wanted to highlight, which is the fact that antagonistic to be the same as time. All immortals lose the ones they love over the centuries, reinforcing the inherent loneliness of living forever.

The 1986 film has a certain inconsistency in how long the immortals age. Some more than others, but at a certain point they stop. In the case of Connor McLeod, he stays relatively young forever, doomed to watch people grow old and die. The greatest example is his love of life, Heather (Beatie Edney), who accepts him as he is, but grows old and eventually dies in his arms.

In order to write the songs, Queen had access to the rough recordings of Highlander before the film was finished and Brian May was particularly impacted by their love and Heather’s death scene. He left the projection room for the studio and in just minutes wrote Who Wants to Live Forever while still in the car.

“It’s a violent story of immortals fighting to the death, but there’s a subplot, a tragic love story,” the guitarist said in an interview at the time of release. “The hero cannot die, but he falls in love with people who can. It’s a strange kind of tragedy. I related it to my own life, to everyone’s life. Love always comes to an end,” he added.

And therein lies one of Highlander’s main secrets as a cult film: the life-death love connection. There will be no reboot without this song.

Criticism, as always, about the cast and adaptations

Remaking Highlander has been a real project since 2008, but clearly a problematic one. Until it reached the current team, it had names like director Justin Lin and actor Ryan Reynolds associated for some time. Yes, it’s chilling. The script was finished in 2019, but we won’t see the film until 2026 at best, in time for the original’s 40th anniversary.

Not much is known yet about the new Highlander, which will be directed by Chad Stahelski (John Wick), with Henry Cavill as Connor McLeod. One of the writers is Ryan J. Condal, the showrunner of House of the Dragon, and recording could begin in 2024. I worry that Chad has simplified the story as “John Wick with swords”, but let’s bet on the best?

There are defenses of Dave Bautista for the role of Krugan, but nothing has been made official. What some people on social media have already raised is the fact that they chose an English actor to play a Scotsman, even though there are so many current stars who wouldn’t have to work on their accent. Actors like Gerard Butler, Richard Madden, James McVoy, Ewan McGreggor, Jordan Patrick Smith and Sam Heughan, in a quick and superficial list. Well, as some also remember, Cavill’s departure from Witcher was precisely because he was a purist and interfered with the scripts. If it follows the same line… who knows, maybe the cast will change?

Pesquisar

Pesquisar