Trivia / Highlander II: The Quickening

• Awesome, Dear Boy:
  • Michael Ironside confessed that part of the reason he agreed to be in the film was that he'd never played a barbarian swordsman before (as well as for the money).
  • Virginia Madsen signed on partially to work with Sean Connery.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $30 million (not counting marketing costs), $34 million (counting them). Box office, $15,556,340. A notorious critical and commercial flop, noted especially for its Troubled Production and is a notorious example of Executive Meddling.
• Contractual Obligation Project: Christopher Lambert was so disgusted with the re-written script that he wanted to drop out of the film. Contractual obligations forced him to finish it.
• Creator Backlash: Neither the director, the producers nor the cast was happy with how the film turned out. By the end, many of the main cast had only finished the film because of their contract obligations.
• Creator Killer: One of the writers, Brian Clemens, never worked another movie. Clemens did have a very prolific television writing career that included The Avengers and a single episode of the Highlander TV series.
• Deleted Scene: Unused scenes reveal that the Kurgan was also a resident of Zeist, and General Katana hired him to kill Connor. The final battle between Connor and the Kurgan is shown on a large screen to Zeist bettors, and when the Kurgan fails, Katana sends down the two assassins featured in the final cut of the film to take out Connor.
• Executive Meddling: Russell Mulcahy, the director, has blamed the incredible crappiness that is the film on the fact that the film's completion bond company took over production after he repeatedly came in late and over-budget. They made numerous changes to the movie, and haphazardly edited the film to the point that the two fight scenes between MacLeod and the villainous Katana were merged, resulting in glaring continuity errors. The film's British distributor financed a re-edited version of the film supervised by Mulcahy for theatrical release in the UK and some foreign markets. A few years later, Mulcahy made further re-edits to bring the film in line with the continuity of the previous one, shot an entirely new action sequence, and released it in 1995 as Highlander 2: The Renegade Version.
  • Contrary to popular belief, the idea of the immortals being aliens from the planet Zeist was not the idea of the completion guarantors; that was in the first draft of the script. This misinformation could be attributed to subsequent edits eliminating all references to Zeist, though that probably had more to do with fan backlash than anything else.
• Follow the Leader: Back to the Future Part II was released shortly after production on this film began. The design team had to redesign the Zeist assassins' flying sleds to make them look less like Hoverboards.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The U.S. theatrical version has never been released on DVD in Region 1. As of April 2020, said cut can be viewed in America on the Roku Channel, albeit in standard definition and Pan & Scan.
  • The U.S. theatrical cut can be found on DVD in the Europe/Australia in Pan & Scan. France got the original cut in anamorphic widescreen (but with an abysmal English 5.1 surround mix), and Japan received it as a bonus feature (non-anamorphic widescreen) for the Blu-ray.
  • A more literal example with the British theatrical version, which was passed around at conventions on bootleg VHS tapes back in the '90s and is practically non-existent now. The only chance of seeing it now is the odd television broadcast.
• Money, Dear Boy: Michael Ironside notes that he took the role for the money despite knowing it would be bad. Clancy Brown got bad vibes off the low quality of what he was shown and the cageyness the casting department displayed when he wanted to see more; he was only willing to return for a project he had little faith in if they paid him more than they were willing to pay.
• No Stunt Double:
  • Christopher Lambert performed most of the stunts himself including the hoverboard fight scene, which is pretty impressive considering his well-documented vision problems.
  • Originally, Katana crashing into the subway car was going to be performed by a Stunt Double. The stunt double ended up getting addicted to cocaine during the shoot and was subsequently let go and Michael Ironside elected to do the stunt himself.
• On-Set Injury: Christopher Lambert refused to use a fake sword for the fight scenes. In his first scene with it, he cut his finger to the bone and Michael Ironside dislocated his jaw in the dome fight. After these accidents, Lambert agreed to use a plastic sword. While filming their duel, Lambert chipped one of Ironside's teeth, while Ironside inadvertently chopped off part of Lambert's finger. Both men recovered from their injuries, but Ironside said precision thrusts and parries were impossible when wielding a twenty-two-pound broadsword.
• The Other Darrin: Karin Drexler replaced Roxanne Hart as Brenda Wyatt MacLeod in the flashback scene which Connor's wife succumbs to her burns from the unfiltered sunlight and dies in hospital.
• Romance on the Set: The Argentinian author Diego Curubeto covers the film in his book Babilonia Gaucha (dedicated completely to big movie productions filmed in the country), including different love affairs between Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery and women in Buenos Aires.
• Troubled Production: So much that it was covered in the documentary Highlander 2: Seduced by Argentina.
  • The film was plagued by the bonding company's interference with the script (the original script covered several plot holes raised by the reveal that the immortals were aliens from the planet Zeist), Christopher Lambert insisting on the resurrection of Ramirez, as he and Sean Connery had become good friends on the set of the first movie, as well as disastrous inflation in Argentina, where the film was being made.
  • Almost immediately at the beginning of the production, many lawsuits were filed by Argentinian staff for default of labor laws.
  • Lambert refused to use a fake sword for the fight scenes, something extra dangerous in his case since lambert is legally blind without his glasses and cannot wear contacts. In his first scene with it, he cut his finger to the bone and Michael Ironside dislocated his jaw in the dome fight. After these accidents, Lambert agreed to use a plastic sword.
  • During nine days of filming, Lambert was a client of the Buenos Aires' discotheques and night clubs, which made him unable to film any scene during the day, due to hangovers when he arrived to the set. He was also cheated by false Argentinian business men to invest the money he got from the movie in some financial managements. Lambert lost all of the money. Connery was almost cheated when he was offered to buy a mansion at an exhorbitant price.
  • When filming was starting, a sea storm isolated all of the sets created in the Buenos Aires' seaport.
  • When the film was released, the public hated it, and over time, the original version has gotten lost to history in favour of a re-edited version, and is now no longer considered a part of the series' continuity.
• Vacation, Dear Boy: Virginia Madsen partially signed on for a free trip to Argentina.
• Wag the Director: One of several problems associated with the film can be chalked up to Christopher Lambert refusing to participate in the film unless Ramirez (who died in the first film) was resurrected, as he and Sean Connery had become very good friends whilst making the original. Of course, Ramirez is frankly considered to be one of the best things in the film, it's really only a bad thing because the way they did it was... odd. (How they could have done it better is... well, who knows?)
• What Could Have Been:
  • Russell Mulcahy tried to have himself credited as "Alan Smithee", but he was threatened with a lawsuit if he attempted to petition the DGA to remove his credit from the film.
  • Clancy Brown was asked to reprise his role as The Kurgan in a cameo, but declined after one look at the script and another at the paycheck.
  • Sharon Stone was considered for Louise Marcus.
  • The original screenplay featured several alternate sequences and more detailed exposition. For instance, three assassins confronted MacLeod, not two. They arrived during an elaborate wine-tasting sequence. Also, the Kurgan was revealed to be a henchman of Katana sent to Earth to prevent MacLeod and Ramirez from winning the Prize. Ramirez and Connor were seen reincarnated as their Earth identities, in Egypt and Scotland, respectively. One Zeist day was equal to one Earth century. When above the Shield, Ramirez's katana is magically returned to Connor.
  • The film was originally supposed to have a Bittersweet Ending with MacLeod leaving for Zeist (which he vowed to do earlier in the film) without Louise. Then the director decided to lighten it up and have MacLeod take Louise along with him. When the film was taken out of Russell Mulcahy's hands, this entire ending was cut out, leaving the film ending on an abrupt note (for one, MacLeod's vow is still intact). The British version reinstated the happy ending.
• Working Title: Highlander 2020.
• You Sound Familiar: In the French dub, Richard Darbois voiced General Katana. He voiced the Kurgan in the first film.

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