The Highlander 2 Syndrome Rant Reviews Continue with Highlander 3: The Final Dimension

Last week, I wrote about a rant review on Highlander 2: The Quickening. This film is so god awful that it caused me to invent a a term: The Highlander 2 Syndrome. This term goes out to all horrible sequels that are dead to me and I pretend they never existed. So what better way to follow up this theme than with the next installment of the Highlander franchise, Highlander: The Final Dimension.

Anytime Mario Van Peebles is involved in a project you know you are going to be watching some real cinematic feces. Combine Mario's acting with a Highlander sequel and you have a full-out colon blow! Now onto the premise...

The first signs of trouble: Mario and his gnarly ass tattoo

Completely disregarding any and all references to The Quickening (thank all that is holy!), The Final Dimension takes place a few years later after the original. Now the father of a young boy, Connor MacLeod (played once again by Christopher Lambert) does not understand why he is still immortal and feels that nothing is physically different with his body since taking down the Kurgan. To explain this reason, we get a flashback.

When Connor was younger, he trained with an immortal master of illusion and magician named Nakano after Ramirez's demise. One night, an immortal barbarian named Kane (Peebles not the pro wrestler unfortunately) busts into Nakano's cave, takes his head and the forthcoming quickening causes the cave to collapse and bury him. Of course MacLeod thinks he was dead all these years until an seismic incident frees Kane from his tomb, who then heads off to find MacLeod in a final battle of immortals. MacLeod's new love interest Alex, played by the then sexy Deborah Kara Unger coming off her role in the mainstream hit Whispers in the Dark, and his son are now Kane's targets of torture and revenge for leaving him buried alive all these years.

Making matters worse for MacLeod is even though he has a major strength advantage after taking Kurgan's lifeforce, Kane is more crude then Kurgan, if that's even possible, but also a formidable opponent due to the fact that Kane now has the power of illusion transferred to him from his quickening received after killing Nakano all those years ago. This definitely plays into Kane's advantage.

Connor never made it to the "head" of Nakano's class - har har!

MacLeod and Kane finally go head-to-head, pun intended, which ends in MacLeod taking Kane's head. Finally MacLeod has truly won the Prize and lives happily ever after with his new hottie and also his young son. The film ends with MacLeod visiting his long dead women's grave in the Highlands of Scotland as Queen's "Who Wants to Live Forever" plays on the soundtrack in one of many nods to the original.

This film is still in sharply etched in the soul of the original, but the problem is that it still severely downplays the final battle with Kurgan, like The Quickening. The bigger issue is that while it tries to capture the feel of the original as an apology to fans for Highlander 2, it also comes off as a remake of sorts. Kane is very much a Kurgan-lite and many scenes are plucked from the original, i.e. Kane driving at top speed with music blaring to scare MacLeod's young ala Kurgan perfoming the same act with Roxanne Hart's character.

Look familiar? No I'm talking about Mario kidnapping a child.

Of all the Highlander sequels, this one gets a slight (and I mean slight) pass from me, but I still discount it from the Highlander universe. MacLeod kills Kurgan and ends "The Game"...and that is that. Story over. And I still don't understand why is it called The Final Dimension? What dimension? The film takes place in parallel storyline to the original. Maybe The Final Battle (sorry V) would have been more appropo?

While it is an improvement on The Quickening, which is very easy to do, I want to mention again that the film plays out like a remake instead of an apology and therefore is a totally unnecessary sequel.

And did I mention it has Mario Van Peebles stars in a major role? Oh I did? Mario Van Peebles and Highlander should never be mentioned in the same sentence, unless that sentence is "at least Mario Van Peebles has nothing to do with the Highlander films". Well there's the final piece of important evidence in my case for tagging it with The Highlander 2 Syndrome and striking it from my mind.

Blonde or brunette, Unger is by far the sexiest MacLeod girl

If I have to give some positive factoids about The Final Dimension, I do like where the creators added on to the Highlander mythos with successful results. First, I like the fact that an immortal can acquire the talents of another immortal once they take their head. This allows Kane to participate on an equal playing ground with Connor. Also, I am pleased to learn what happens if you cut a body part off an immortal besides his head. They simply reform back together again. It echoes Ramirez's words "You can never die...unless you lose your head" and makes total sense. But the best addition to the mythos is the answer to the question of what happens when the main commandment of immortals not allowed to fight on holy ground is broken. Well who is to stop that from happening? In my favorite scene from the film, Kane does not abide by this rule and forces Connor to scrap with him in a church. When their blades finally connect, both their blades shatter into particles. It comes across as a warning from the "powers that be" to basically "knock it off" so to speak before something worse happens to them.

Unfortunately the Final Dimension was not the "Final" Highlander sequel as things get even worse with Highlander: Endgame, a game that should never been played in the first place. Stay tuned.