YMMV / Highlander: Endgame

• Better on DVD: The theatrical version had some unfinished special effects and was missing several plot critical scenes. This was all fixed in the DVD and VHS releases.
• Contested Sequel: The movie generally isn't well regarded by the fanbase, especially due to the fact that Duncan kills Connor. Most will agree that it's better than The Quickening and The Source though.
• Continuity Lockout: As many professional critics noted, the movie won't make much sense to casual viewers who haven't seen the original films or TV series.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Donnie Yen plays as Jin Ke/Jing Ke, a former retainer of one of the rival states of Qin, who ends up trying to assassinate the First Sovereign Emperor of China. Donnie Yen later played alongside Jet Li, in Hero (2002), as another assassin that tried to kill the First Sovereign Emperor of China (with Jet Li being Jing Ke, and Donnie still using a polearm weapon: a guando in Highlander, a spear in Hero). In The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Jet Li plays the First Sovereign Emperor of China.
• Ho Yay: The ultimate example in the entire franchise would have to be, "Don't you want to be inside me?" They had the chutzpah to use this line twice, repeated by Connor's ghost, no less.
• Moment of Awesome: Say what you want about Endgame, but the Quickening that Duncan gets from killing Jacob Kell is awesome.
  • Donnie Yen vs. Adrian Paul is almost, almost worth the price of the admission.
• Narm: The entire idea that putting your sword behind your head makes the next strike impossible to defend against is just ludicrous, yet the film just keeps asking us to accept it over and over.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • Connor's makeup. Just watching the movie, you think that Christopher Lambert is horribly showing his age, and it's impossible to see him as the Immortal 18-year old Connor Macleod. Until you watch the cast interviews and see that Lambert is actually not all that bad-looking, and that they had to have made him look 70 intentionally. Presumably it's to reflect how he's tired of life and ready to give up, but without any explanation, you just assume it's the actor being too old for the role.
  • Not to mention the flashbacks of Kell in a cheap red beard and wig, when the present-day Kell is greying with male-pattern baldness.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Bruce Payne is scolded for his performance as Kell, but he's oddly one of the more-memorable movie villains. That awful "Don't you want to be inside me?" line wasn't an ad-lib, it's in the script. What's an actor supposed to do with that? Tellingly, this was the same year Payne played the blue-lipped second banana to Jeremy Irons in Dungeons & Dragons (2000). Much like Irons in that picture, this wasn't going to be his finest hour no matter what he did, so he just took the brakes off and gobbled up all the scenery so at least he wouldn't be upstaged.
• Why Would Anyone Take Him Back?: In the video ending, Duncan and Faith get back together despite all the bad blood between them.

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