So we’ve covered how the pre-release hype for Highlander: Endgame was nothing more than lies to cover for a movie that was unfinished and quite bad. And we’ve discussed how the first half of the film is a muddled mess that asks the audience to do all the emotional investment and hard work that the story doesn’t earn. So let’s finish this hellish trifecta by discussing how the end of Highlander: Endgame is basically nothing more than a series of gut-punches to fans who were conned into watching this movie.

The Problem with Kate

Highlander: the Series started off with a strong and faithful love interest for Duncan: Tessa, a mortal who spent years with him and went from being the younger woman in the relationship to physically aging past her immortal lover. It was a great dynamic that the show never fully replaced after Alexandra Vandernoot left the role, even though the series’ storytelling got better as time went on. Highlander: Endgame brings us the latest in a long line of attempts to fill that void with Kate.

In flashback, we get to see Duncan at his wedding with Kate. Oh yeah, Duncan and Kate were married. This isn’t a huge deal except for the fact that the TV series made a huge deal out of Duncan never marrying. It’s highly implied that he actually is cursed, and that Tessa, the love of his 400-year life, died partly because he proposed to her. But yeah, Duncan and Kate got married because the folks who made this movie as a continuity bridge seemingly didn’t watch the series it was spun off from.

Connor shows up to the wedding and tells Duncan that Kate is a pre-immortal, and that she can only become immortal if she dies a violent death. Duncan wants to spend his life with Kate, but she doesn’t know that she’s immortal. Knowing Duncan from the series, he’d probably carefully approach this subject and maybe even try to convince Kate that she doesn’t want to be immortal. But no; instead he waits until after he’s had sex with Kate and plunges a dagger into her heart. What the hell, hero?! No wonder Kate hates Duncan so much.

Duncan’s actions are absolutely hideous, and Kate has every reason to hate him. Unfortunately, Lisa B, the actress who plays Kate (aka Faith, a name she takes in the present day) never really gets to show that level of hatred. She certainly says that she despises him, and even claims that the reason she’s on Kell’s crew is because his level of hatred for Connor matches her own animosity for Duncan. But aside from a few hard glares and some words that are probably supposed to sound angry, we never really get to see any real enmity.

Part of Kate/Faith’s issue with being immortal is that she can’t have children, and she blames Duncan for that. One issue with this motivation is that pre-immortals can’t have children, either–this gets established in the series when Richie thinks he got someone pregnant before he became immortal. And while hatred doesn’t need to be logical, it feels like Duncan might want to say something along those lines in his defense.

But I guess none of that matters, because shortly after the flashback establishing Kate’s backstory, we jump right into her having sex with Duncan, even though she claims to still hate him. What the fuck, lady? Do you just really like hate sex? Because if you were just horny, Donnie Yen is sitting around with nothing else to do right now, and Jing Ke has got to be a lot better in bed than Duncan “I’ma gonna murder my wife on her wedding night for great justice” MacLeod.

The Worst Death in the Whole Franchise

Highlander is no stranger to bad death scenes. We had Tessa get shot by a random mugger, Richie die while Duncan was fighting hallucinations, and poor Brenda get killed off in every single sequel up to this point. But none of them make me cringe like the big death in this one.

First, let’s get the pointless and emotionally empty deaths out of the day. Kell has a big supper scene where he slaughters all of his minions for no apparent reason. In the workprint of the film, it was because he wanted a big boost in power before taking on Duncan for the final battle. In the final version of the film, it makes no sense, because he’s eliminating one of his big advantages in that he now no longer has a gang of evil immortals to help him in a fight. Oh yeah, he also kills Kate. Like too many women in the Highlander franchise, her character existed largely to provide an Act 2 sex scene before she became irrelevant.

Meanwhile, the worst scene in the movie takes place. Connor and Duncan fight. Why? Because the rules of the Game say that only one of them can take on Kell. Why are you guys still following the rules? Kell doesn’t – he made that clear when he had five guys whup on Duncan at once. It’s now well-established through this film that the rules are bunk anyway. There is no reason to follow them.

And why are these guys fighting anyway? No one wants to see that. Fans came into this movie because the trailer lied and showed extra scenes that had them fighting together against Kell. The only people who might have wanted to see this are the message board fanboys who go on endless versus debates about who would win in a fight between Connor and Duncan, and even they can’t be satisfied with this fight. The bland, emotionless dolt that is taking Connor’s place for this movie is making it clear that he’s basically committing suicide here, so he’s basically throwing the fight.

And to add even further to the mountain of problems in this scene, the entire thing has already been done before in the TV series. It’s how Methos was introduced to the show – because he wasn’t sure if Duncan could defeat Kalas alone, Methos offered Duncan his head to give him the boost he needed. If Duncan didn’t take the head of a guy who was at that point a total stranger in order to defeat a hated immortal who had killed several of Duncan’s closest friends, gotten his girlfriend suspended from the hospital she worked at, got Joe’s bar shut down under accusations of trafficking drugs, and forced Duncan to flee to Paris after his life in America got ruined, he’s not going to kill his clansman and mentor in order to take a shot at a guy he hasn’t even tested his steel against yet.

Despite the fact that there is no way in Heaven or Hell that Duncan would actually kill Connor…well, you can guess where this is going…

Ah gawd, I can hardly say it.

Connor forces Duncan to go into the super-duper fencing move he showed off in the flashback. That supposedly unblockable move that is fucking stupid. This move requires the attacker to have his own sword behind his neck and to traps his opponent’s blade between his sword and shoulder. Then he executes a maneuver that leaves him with a clean shot to the head. This is the stupidest goddamned move anyone could conceive of. It serve no purpose in fencing – you yield a point by letting your opponent touch his blade against your shoulder. It serves even less of a point in a life and death battle, because then you are standing right in front of your foe facing him with your sword behind you. Anyone with half a brain has a free hand to punch you or stab with a second blade, or they could just kick you in the groin.

And I’m wasting time talking about fencing moves because…

Oh damn it…

Duncan then kills Connor.

At least in the animated series Connor went down as a hero fighting the big bad. Here he dies like a chump. This scene basically happened so the producers could move forward with the Highlander franchise with Duncan as the main guy instead of Connor. And that wasn’t necessary, because Connor already got a nice sendoff in the pilot episode of the series.

To be clear, I don’t object to the idea of Connor dying. It’s the way he died. Highlander is, ultimately, a heroic fantasy. To see heroes effectively commit suicide for no good reason robs the audience of any joy they got from investing in the character’s story in the first place.

Also, the whole point of Connor letting Duncan kill him is so he can give his clansman the boost needed to defeat Kell one-on-one. And guess what? It doesn’t work! The whole damned sacrifice is pointless.

The Underwhelming Finale

Kell’s role in the plot after taunting Connor some is to sit around and wait for Duncan to finally fight him. This happens in an abandoned factory that looks similar to the end scene of Highlander III. Except that we don’t get an entertaining Mario van Peebles and a bunch of goofy fun scenes here. Bruce Payne may have wanted to be entertaining, and he certainly chews the scenery as Jacob Kell, but he simply doesn’t have enough material to work with.

The fight enjoys blatantly defying the laws of physics in a way I could enjoy if the film hadn’t been so tedious and infuriating up to this point. It all leads up to the unblockable move that Connor taught Duncan…which Kell blocks with a second blade. He then stabs Duncan repeatedly and has him at his mercy. So that boost from killing Connor? Meant nothing. Duncan still loses the fight.

Despite the victory, Kell doesn’t kill Duncan because he’s a fucking moron. Sorry…his actual reason is that Duncan has inherited Connor’s “curse” of suffering forever. Then Duncan gets up, speaks with Connor’s voice for some fucking reason, and kills Kell.

The use of Connor’s voice is meant to imply that he’s not truly dead and lives on in Duncan, in that way in which all immortals become part of their killer. It doesn’t work. Having Connor within him doesn’t give Duncan any sort of boost or advantage. The sacrifice goes nowhere; it was just meant to heap more tragedy upon the long-suffering Duncan MacLeod.

The theatrical release of the trailer ends with Duncan at Connor’s grave in front of a hideous blue screen effect that is supposed to convince us that the scene takes place in Scotland, where Connor is finally buried with his beloved Heather. THAT’S IT, FOLKS! HIGHLANDER IS OFFICIALLY DEAD AND BURIED!

The DVD release ends with a stupidly painful scene that reveals that Kell killed all of his gang except for Kate. Why? Who the fuck knows? Judging from the “last supper” scene, he chopped off Kate’s necklace and then Kate quickly ducked under the table when we got an over-the-shoulder shot from behind Kell that clearly showed that everyone was dead! This movie hates me, and I hate it right back!

What Might Have Been

Somewhere in Highlander: Endgame there was a good movie. Say a movie featuring Donnie Yen as Jing Ke, the ancient Chinese warrior who died trying to assassinate a corrupt emperor. Because he died due to his honor, he decided that honor was for chumps and spent thousands of years building up an army of evil immortals and becoming so powerful that he could bend reality itself. To finally defeat him, Connor and Duncan need to team up against Jing Ke and a whole gang of evil immortals. It could have been a look at honor and morality. It could have been a fun movie. But no one involved in this film had the time, money, or studio support to pull it off. And the fuckers in marketing knew that, so they filmed a bunch of extra scenes to falsely lure fans into this terrible film and milk whatever money there was left in this franchise.

The good news is that Highlander: Endgame pretty much used up all of my hate for the franchise. I mean, what could possibly make me angrier than having watched this film?

Oh, fuck.