Russell Mulcahy
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The Old Guard (2020)
Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood
influenced by Highlander (1986), Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)
Themes Visuals Music Plot
Nada hasta la fecha se compara con Highlander, incluso opacó la carrera de la eterna promesa Christopher Lambert.
There are many reasons why these mythic warriors would be morose about the constant decay around them or the sense of repetition in their lives without receiving any semblance of a purpose for why they’ve been “chosen,” but from “Tuck Everlasting” to Wolverine to those sword-wielding “Highlander” folks and everything in between, it’s always such drudgery.
So asked Freddie Mercury on the soundtrack to 1986’s Highlander , a film to which The Old Guard owes no small debt.
But Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Old Guard is something different, stranger, living somewhere between the existential brooding of Highlander and the tactical-porn precision of the John Wick films (or Theron’s previous dip into that style, Atomic Blonde ).
When it comes to the myth of immortality, the sweeping sentiments of Queen from the Highlander soundtrack say it best.
The good news is, The Old Guard is better than Highlander II — but that's true of literally every movie ever.
But that could also be that the lightning aspects just harkened back to Highlander for me.
Say what you will about the ’95 Mortal Kombat , but writer Kevin Droney ( Highlander TV series) understood that getting to know the karacters set up stakes so that the fights, ridiculous as they are, kontained weight.
But the garish lighting and focus on swordplay and hokum put it more in league with 90s cheapies like the Highlander TV series or, perhaps, the original Mortal Kombat films (I can’t say for sure as I’ve never seen them).
Digan lo que quieran sobre el Mortal Kombat del 95, pero el guionista Kevin Droney (la serie de televisión Highlander) entendía que conocer a los personajes ponía en juego lo necesario para que las peleas, por ridículas que fueran, tuvieran peso, en esta versión, las peleas son la pieza central, pero en su mayoría carecen de sentido, sobre todo por la forma en que la película establece los acontecimientos de la historia como el período previo al décimo torneo entre reinos.
The Shadow is a dismal, cheezoid mess, a movie that tries to turn the old radio serial into a cross between Batman and Raiders of the Lost Ark and, instead, vaporizes it into a glittery trash pile, an Art Deco Super Mario Bros.
The Shadow of this movie is basically Batman with a hocus-pocus background.
Despite classy production values, Mulcahy's attempt to emulate the sombre appeal of Tim Burton's Batman movies is too episodic, sketchy and uneven.
Even though it was the original "Shadow" that influenced the "Batman" comic books, this is the Tim Burton era: "Shadow" the movie is now the copycat, a cheap, atmospheric imitation of Warner Bros.'s "Batman."
"The Shadow's" radio roots are showing in this static "Batman"-esque film about a Depression-era superhero who fights crime by cab.
When it comes to summer movies, though, Batman clearly begat The Shadow — namely Tim Burton’s “Batman,” whose theretofore-unseen blockbuster boldness burst forth five years earlier, a big-budget behemoth of soundstage grandeur.
The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
Directed by Lana Wachowski
influenced by Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)
You see, like most truly great films, it really doesn’t matter what you know about this film beyond its context: That Lana Wachowski once co-directed a trilogy of films about the adventures of Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie Ann-Moss), who were a part of a human-centric resistance to the sentient machines that had enslaved humanity — physically in amniotic pods, stacked in giant pillars, and mentally in a virtual world modeled after 1999 — in the far-flung future in order to harvest the electrical energy that their brains supply to power the robots after mankind blacked out the sky Highlander II -style.
Strands of Highlander (1986) rear their head too as we discover that an Infinite can only be “stopped” by a blow to the head in the form of a bullet that… uploads their mind to a digital prison in the cloud?
The backhanded compliment to his Scottish accent is that it’s better than Christopher Lambert’s attempts in the Highlander films.
Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Directed by Lana Wachowski
influenced by Highlander (1986), Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)
Even when he’s just lazily doing Sean Connery in Highlander and Richard Harris in almost everything, he is really just doing The Dude.
Jupiter Ascending’s a baffling movie, because it seems to represent the directors’ desire to splice Highlander 2 with the Star Wars prequels and see what happens.
Jane, who speaks with the bizarre delivery of Highlander’s Christopher Lambert (he sounds poorly dubbed even though he isn’t), plays this broad vendetta of a character ramrod straight, which turns The Punisher into an overwrought, melodramatic comedy.
A cross between Chris Noth and Clancy Brown's The Kurgan from Highlander , Bulcsú (Sándor Csányi) is the Oedipal anti-hero at the heart of Hungarian director Nimród Antal's drop-dead brilliant Kontroll.
Following in the tradition of David Fincher's Seven, Frailty and Russell Mulcahy's little-known Resurrection (1999) with Christopher Lambert, Saw concerns a vicious serial killer whose motivation is a need to punish certain victims for their perceived transgressions.
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Directed by Cathy Yan
influenced by Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)
Suicide Squad is one of those movies that you think might turn the corner and be so bad it's good, but then you try to watch it, and it's just painfully Highlander II bad.
Tarantino did it with more moxie in Kill Bill – a dollop of full-fat cinematic ice cream where our hero had a lot more to say than “yeah”, and Clancy Brown’s on hand this time to remind us that Highlander did it with greater humour and economy.
That’s just the first act of a story that then proceeds to borrow from spaghetti Westerns, the Hong Kong “golden age” and even Highlander .
And there’s the wonderful Clancy Brown, famous for his role as The Kurgan in “Highlander” and most recently seen in “Dexter: New Blood,” who joins the franchise as the Harbinger, a high-ranking member of the High Table who serves as the mediator in the film’s climax.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
Directed by Gore Verbinski
influenced by Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)
It was either going to be Highlander 2: The Quickening, or it was going to be The Empire Strikes Back.
Under the direction of Aussie Stephen Hopkins–who helmed A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 and filmed all the action sequences as second-unit director on Russell Mulcahy’s Highlander–the pieces come together for a horror/sci-fi gem that will please most action-oriented fans.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)
Directed by Mike Newell
influenced by Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
Themes
“Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” will go down in history akin to other video-game-to-film failures including “Resident Evil: Extinction,” “Max Payne,” “Postal,” “BloodRayne,” “Doom,” “Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life,” “House of the Dead,” “Mortal Kombat,” “Street Fighter” and “Double Dragon”.