The ENDGAME

[luckyD]

Finally got to see the movie "Endgame". I really enjoyed it. Conner vs Duncan - was not expecting that scene. There can only be one. Kinda sad:(

PEACE TO ADRIAN ALWAYS

[Coolwater]

It usually manages to make me cry.

[Sam]

:D I loved Highlander Endgame!
Although it broke my heart to see the scene between Duncan and Conner...I thought it was very much in line with the code of honor they seemed to live by.
And I totally understand Conner's way of thinking when he said he was talking about being tired of the game and the endlessness of it all.
I think the thing that threw fans for a loop was the introduction of Kate as a wife after The Series had Duncan say many times that he had never married.
It kinda messed with the whole Duncan honor code. It also broke the code of it being a strictly one-on-one fight rule and I think that put some off. But it did add a new twist to The Game.
And of course you all know that I thought the love scenes with Duncan and Kate being combined was just genius.

[L_Shell]

The fight scene between Duncan and Connor always makes me cry. It doesn't matter that I have seen the movie numerous times and I know what happens, it just gets me.

[geishagirl_1]

I too love End Game. No matter how many times I watch it I don't understand why Jen k didn't take kell's head when he first met him! :confused: Jen k could have most definitely whipped kell's tush. I'm not sure of the time period of the emperor chin, but I would estimate it being before kells time, so obviously Jen was stronger. I do like the way he denied kell taking his head tho :cool: :cool: :D

[Tessa]

I love Endgame. The performances by Adrian and Christopher Lambert are amazing! I thought it was a good story on many levels and it is spectacular visually. I think the soundtrack is incredible! The music is haunting and stirring and just perfect to set the mood of the film. I will never forget that music. I feel it should have won an award! But it never bothered me that Duncan said several times in the series that he had never been married and yet here we have him married to Kate in Endgame! I rationalize it this way. The marriage never saw the light of day! When Duncan made that dumb decision to *kill* Kate on their wedding night after they made love (talk about afterglow huh?) and she revived, like the flaming idiot that she was she ran off into the night and they didn't cross paths again until Endgame's timeline.

Now my frustration was with Duncan not just telling her first and explaining that she is an immortal in waiting, that he is an immortal, and he could give her a push and they could live in eternal bliss together forever, if they didn't take each other's heads at some point. LOL He could have eased her into the idea gently and given her a chance to get used to it and maybe ask him some questions about immortality, as I'm sure she would have had *several* LOL and she could toss around the idea and think about letting him kill her or at least find some way to end her life with a violent death so she could join him in marriage for eternity! But for the sake of the plot he had to take matters into his own hands. They were never truly husband and wife in the true sense and so Duncan never felt that he was married. He chose to pretend it never happened and in fact he probably was so ashamed and regretted doing it so much that he wanted to just block the whole episode out of his life and so that's why he never talked about being married before and chose to say he had never been married when asked, which he does several times in the series. As for his gypsy lover's prediction in *The Darkness* flashback which stated that he would never marry and that he would always be alone, well that happened in 1848 and so in the Endgame timeline it was true because between 1848 and 2000 or whatever the exact year Endgame takes place, he had never married. He married Kate at some point in the 1700's or maybe it was the 1600's, I'm not certain! Don't know exactly when but it was before 1848 anyway! The gypsy girl was talking about the future.

Then we have*The Source* which I believe takes place further into the future, maybe 2020 or so?? when the world has deteriorated and descended further into chaos and I'm afraid the events of that film make the gypsy's words spoken in 1848 untrue because in *The Source* Duncan refers to Anna as his wife so he did marry in the future, contrary to the gypsy's prediction!

The posse all ganging up to fight Duncan was against the immortal code of honour but that was because they were Kell's minions and he didn't play by the rules, and they did as they were told.

Ah well, so maybe they rewrote history a little bit for the sake of the plot and the story they wanted to tell but it can be rationalized! I don't mind that at all and many fans do see the Highlander films and the series as two separate universes! Whatever the case, it's alot of fun to discuss it! I enjoy hearing people's opinions.

[luckyD]

Tessa:

When I watched the "SOURCE", I too did not understand why Duncan was married to Anna. There was no lead to it. However, the meaning of the Highlander was there "can be only one"....Only one to become human (?) and beable to have children. This is only my belief.


PEACE TO ADRIAN ALWAYS, Mortal or Immortal.

[Tessa]

Tessa:

When I watched the "SOURCE", I too did not understand why Duncan was married to Anna. There was no lead to it. However, the meaning of the Highlander was there "can be only one"....Only one to become human (?) and beable to have children. This is only my belief.


PEACE TO ADRIAN ALWAYS, Mortal or Immortal.

Yes LuckyD, the lack of a decent backstory for Duncan and Anna's relationship is a serious flaw in *The Source*. I found it very difficult to feel anything for her or to understand why Duncan was so passionate about her because she had no history! She was just there! There was some serious potential there for a good backstory because the actress had a certain quality about her that given the right character development, it might have worked alot better than it did. If we had known how they met, a little about what she did before she met Duncan what it was that brought them together *besides the Source of course!*. Pity there were not a few meatier flashbacks that could have at least filled in some blanks for us.
Also, I can't bear to think that *There can be only one* was so misunderstood by the immortals and that only every thousand years that secret is revealed to one special immortal. I prefer to pretend that *The Source* never happened! ;) Having said that, I enjoy watching it too! :)

[Littledevil]

Now my frustration was with Duncan not just telling her first and explaining that she is an immortal in waiting, that he is an immortal, and he could give her a push and they could live in eternal bliss together forever, if they didn't take each other's heads at some point. LOL He could have eased her into the idea gently and given her a chance to get used to it and maybe ask him some questions about immortality, as I'm sure she would have had *several* LOL and she could toss around the idea and think about letting him kill her or at least find some way to end her life with a violent death so she could join him in marriage for eternity!

Well let's think about that for a second...given the time period in which he would have married her...think of what something like that would have sounded like being told you are an immortal in waiting and the only way to awaken it is to die, etc, etc...She would have thought he was nuts, probably run for the hills anyway, and possibly gotten his head cut off as a result. Think of the Witch Trials, persecution, anything that delt with devil worship or not conforming to the church, heretics. Most of the immortals only ound out after they had died.

[Coolwater]

He could have killed her more gently, though. Poison in her drink would have been far less terrifying than stabbing. Or he could have drugged her and then stabbed her. And frankly, the cowering and weeping after he did it and his failure to be holding her when she came around was very un-Duncan-like. He was, what, maybe 150 years old at that point? certainly old enough to have more sense by that time.

I understand that the author wanted some reason for Duncan to lose his lose his love, and feel guilty about having driven her off, but they could have come up with a more plausible, more in-character device. Thiis was was a dreadfully conceived scene, and one of Highlander's low points, IMO.

[Littledevil]

maybe so, but Duncan probably never killed a woman before like that as an immortal and maybe he thought it didn't work and that he was wrong because it may have taken awhile for her to wake back up. It's one thing to kill someone in battle or defending oneself...it's another thing when that person has done no wrong, not in battle, etc, and doing it for your own personal reasons as in immortal love in Duncan's case. When it comes to Highlander you kind of have to think outside the box and anything can happen.

[appeace]

Dont I remember Conner and Amanda (in the Raven) Saying that one can only become immortal as a result of a violent death? Therefore, poison would not have allowed Kate to come back. (sorry)
However, I did not understand MacLeod making that choice for her. In my opinion, he could have shown her his own death and revival, as he later did Tessa, and then she could have made her own decision. If she then viewed him as a "Devil" then he could have simply left the country as he had done many times.
I do understand the desperation of his love for Kate, but how could he expect Kate, even tho she loved him and could until the end of time, to reconcile with the man who, basically, murdered her?
Tho I love both "Endgame" and "Source" for the acting and the overall story line, both were very disjointed, especially when compared to the Series.

[Tessa]

Well my point is that he could have found a way to do it more gently and eased her into the idea, he could have tried to make her understand, in spite of the *witch trials* and such but I understand your point littledevil. :)
I think Immortals can revive after being poisoned. Any *unnatural* death qualifies I think, it doesn't necessarily have to be a violent death. In The Blitz, Duncan is poisoned by gas but he revives. I guess the way it works is that if a potential immortal never experiences a violent/unnatural death like a fatal car accident, stabbing, gun shot wound, etc., they would just die of old age or disease. I'm guessing they could succumb to diseases if they have not yet died a violent/unnatural death.

[Coolwater]

Yeah, that business about a violent death or an unnatural death has been debated a lot. It's never been clear what triggers immortality, and given HL's lack of story continuity, we may never know.

[Tessa]

But don't you think they have been fairly consistent about what triggers immortality? All the immortals who's stories we learn in HL die an unnatural first death which initially triggers their immortality. I don't think any of them die of cancer or a heart attack and revive after that. It's usually an accident (Kenny, Michelle, ) or being shot (Carl Robinson, Richie), or being skewered to death in battle (Duncan, Connor) Something other than natural causes like disease or illness. Once they have died that first unnatural death, they are immune to disease and those conditions that cause a mortal to die. They just have to hang on to their head and everything is cool! ;)

[Ambereliz]

Such an interesting tread :) I am almost certain that we are told somewhere
in the Highlander episodes or movies that the first death has to be violent. Once they are immortal they can die any and every way and will revive as long as they do not have their head cut off while they are dead :D

[Tessa]

Remember Duncan tells Dr. Anne, *I can catch cold, I just can't die from it*, so I suppose they can get sick once they are immortal but the illness doesn't last very long and their body heals itself very quickly. As far as serious diseases like cancer I don't think they ever addressed whether or not they could get those on HL.

[EvanStar4506]

Remember Duncan tells Dr. Anne, *I can catch cold, I just can't die from it*, so I suppose they can get sick once they are immortal but the illness doesn't last very long and their body heals itself very quickly. As far as serious diseases like cancer I don't think they ever addressed whether or not they could get those on HL.

Tessa, how different would the series have gone if the illness of Darius was written into the episode? If Darius told Duncan that he was dying and that cancer in the brain can kill an immortal, how would he have reacted?

Well it sounds like crazy talk but just speculation on my part. I love exploring new ideas. I guess the sad and unexpected death of Darius always made me wish for a different story line for him. I didn't like the way he died.

[Coolwater]

Unnatural, but I don't think it had to be deliberately violent. When Kenny said that he died in the back seat during a car accident, no on seemed to think it was odd.

[Littledevil]

true coolwater...but we find out later that wasn't the case with Kenny...it was a lie. He was over 800 years old. Though a car accident is very plausible to trigger immortality. I think that is what makes immortality so intriging...in that there are so many possibilities. What if a potential immortal was in the path of a nuclear bomb. Would they survive that or not. Example blown to pieces.

[Coolwater]

Kenny was a rotter, wasn't he? As I said, though, the point was that no one doubted that a car accident would send a pre-immortal into immortality.

As for getting blown up, there seems to be some more conflict: the ep that takes place mostly in the 1920s had both Duncan and another im getting blown up (humorous!), and I think the implication was that as long as the head was still attached to the torso, they were going to recover. The eps with the villains who lost a hand and a voice suggested that an exploded im might live forever as a limbless torso!:eek: Or not: would they eventually regrow limbs? I don't see why not, but I think most of the fans said no.

Really, the person who has all this stuff memorized is a fellow on the HLbb called Darth Sinister. He knows chapter and verse; shall we ask him to come tell us?

[Littledevil]

Yes I think we should...i don't think the limbs grow back because wouldn't Xavier St. Cloud's left hand come back after Duncan cut it off?

[Coolwater]

I think it might - but how long would it take?

OK, how about if before I drag Sin over here, we come up with some more question? I'll start a new thread!