If you consider yourself a fan of the Highlander franchise, then you are something of a glutton for punishment. It’s hard to imagine how anybody — myself included — is a fan of the series of films and TV series considering that the vast majority of it has been pretty bad. And yet, here I am, incredibly excited that we’re getting a new Highlander movie starring Henry Cavill, and the more Chad Stahelski talks about it, the more excited I am getting.
The great thing about Highlander is that the idea behind the franchise is brilliant. The problem is the execution has never really been there. However, that’s exactly why hearing Chad Stahelski talk about his plans for the Highlander franchise is so exciting. He seems to understand the potential the franchise has, and as he recently described to ScreenRant, he wants to make more Highlander because he loves the franchise and thinks he can upgrade it. The director explained…
If you’re a fan at all, you know about the TV shows and the mythology there, the things that worked in the feature aspect of the franchise, what didn’t. I would like to think that it has — I guess, I hope I’m bringing to it the realization of the potential that we all see in that franchise. Now, we probably don’t love all the other ancillary stuff that’s come out of it, but we love the potential of it. There isn’t an episode of the TV show that I didn’t watch hoping for more or wanting more. That’s not to say they did a good or bad job, just that I want more. For whatever reason, 20 years later, I want more Highlander.
The benefit of hindsight will be key to the future of Highlander as a franchise. Highlander is a movie that is ripe for reboot not because of the original franchise’s massive success, but because of its failures. The ideas are there, Immortals living for centuries, having to hide themselves, while fighting each other to the death and signing on Henry Cavil for the gig was perfect casting. The biggest problem was that the original film was never meant to spawn sequels, so when they came, they had to twist the mythology into knots to make it work, and the stories that came out were not good. Highlander can now learn from those mistakes.
It sounds like Stahelski’s concept is to take his time. Rather than one Highlander movie set to tell us the entire life story of a man who lived for centuries, the series of films will follow his life. It’s not unlike the John Wick franchise as the characters exist in a world where countless stories could be told, and Stahelski sees the connection between the two franchises as well, saying…
I think that franchise with the mythology of people going through the centuries, and the burden of immortality as much as the wish fulfillment of immortality, you know, how you relate to people you love and don’t love, both mortal and immortal, and what you can do with that is some of the most romantic, interesting, existential stuff I’ve ever seen. I think it’s a playground for everything that I love about the John Wick series, and everything that I can’t do in the John Wick series, because I’m dealing with mortals, so it gives me another realm to play in.
It seems like Chad Stahelski is going to take the best parts of what has been created in the Highlander world, and maybe add some new stuff to it, and make a story that works. He sees the franchise as having a lot of potential, which, it has to be agreed, has never been realized previously. he continues…
I just look at it as a natural evolution of worldbuilding and potential behind that is more than any other property that I’m attached to. And I know that, so hopefully, that’s where I’ll put my energies and whatever talent I have.
The idea sounds great, but as with all the other failed Highlander stories, it’s all going to come down to the execution. There will be plenty of time to figure all that out, as the Highlander reboot apparently isn’t coming out soon.