Do you believe there can be only one?

My little punk rock friends and I were all into Subway when it came out and Christopher Lambert’s date shows up for a nice dinner with her hair up and explains the style as “Iroquois”. We were mostly DC punks with families of politicos and lawyers and diplomats and university presidents, so we could handle reading subtitles on a French punk flick. So we all showed up to see the first Highlander movie in the theatre, fully expecting to root for Christopher Lambert’s Connor MacLeod character. I think most of us still were pulling for him to win, but we were swayed by the snazzy dress of darkness personified, The Kurgan, played by Clancy Brown, who, with all the makeup, we did not recognize from his turn as Rawhide in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.

Basic concept of The Highlander is that there are all these nearly immortal high beings enjoying life on earth. They can be killed by something like beheading, but mostly they can live forever, exploring multiple lives with different partners and the wealth of many lifetimes. The only thing is that, if one of them can manage to be the only surviving super-dude, then he will have extra amazing vast powers. In particular, The Kurgan just can’t be satisfied with his already kinda awesome situation. Nope, he has to be the only one. There can be only one. So he hunts down the others of his kind and tries to destroy them all.

I think I come across too many people in business these days who identified a little too much with The Kurgan. I blame the costume department from the first Highlander movie for the bitchin’ threads and I blame Clancy Brown for playing him so appealingly. It really disappoints me that the people I feel should be most closely my peers are often all Highlander and wish I would just fucking not exist, so they could be the only one. For someone psycho-competitive, I guess that would be a dream come true. For someone who longs for community and belonging, feeling like the only one of your kind is kinda sucky really. Connor and The Kurgan are the closest things they each have to peers, yet they spend centuries battling one another and hiding from one another and generally messing with each other.

I always liked the Superfriends concept and I believe that everyone needs friends and companions. I do not believe that anyone else’s abilities lessen my own somehow. I do believe, however, that The Highlander was an extremely well-done movie with quality visuals and a strong character-driven story which set it above other action movies. After yakking about how there can be only one, how did they end up making so many sequels to The Highlander? Apparently, it had a TV series and a video game and a cartoon and a sequel called Highlander – The Source starring Adrian Paul from the TV show as recently as 2007 and a marathon on Sci Fi channel as recently as today. I can see how the storyline would lend itself to prequels and I know everybody has bills to pay, but I’d be hesitant to watch follow-ups which could distort my feelings about the original. The irony of sequels to The Highlander really knows no bounds. There can be only one. Or possibly five. Or possibly a hundred and nineteen. Or a hundred twenty-four if you add the movies and TV show episodes together. Maybe more.

Fun fact to know about Clancy Brown: The actor who played The Kurgan to perfection is the son of a former United States congressman and the grandson of a former United States congressman. He comes out of DC and you might be surprised at how many DC punk rockers have that sort of pedigree. Then again, maybe you would not be surprised at all.

PS: One of the most delightfully chilling moments in cinema, ever:

Oh, she never told you? I had your woman and she never told you.

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Posted by Amelia G on December 26, 2008. Filed under Blue Blood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry