Mitch

Highlander Returns, The International Version (AKA, Highlander 2 The Quickining/ U.S Title)

A CHANCE IT NEVER HAD…

Without a doubt, this is one of the more interesting backstage sagas in modern film. Once upon a time, a production team went down to South America to film a sequel to a very popular movie from 1986 called Highlander. Leading this team was the director of the first film, Russell Mulcahy, and there was no reason to believe that the production would go any way but smoothly. Fate, however, had other plans. During the course of filming, the local economy took a nosedive, and inflation went through the roof, driving up production costs. This caused tensions to flare in many quarters, and soon arguments began to brew between the production company, the director, and even the insurance company that held the completion guarantee for the film. In the end, final creative control over the film was taken away from the director; thus, Russell Mulcahy had no say in the final editing of the film, which instead was handled by others whose main objective was to try and come up with something that would make the most money as opposed to something that made sense. The original theatrical cut (for American audiences), subtitled The Quickening, which resulted from this so disgusted Mulcahy that he walked out on the premiere within the first fifteen minutes. A few months later, an alternate cut of the film with a little more footage was released for British audiences, this version resembled closer to the vision that the director originally had for his film. Years afterward, when the Highlander franchise began to enjoy resurgent success thanks to exposure to new fans through a syndicated television series, Mulcahy and members of the original production team went back and recut the film into what is called the Renegade Version for video release, which significantly alters the premise and recuts the Highlander returns version. This is the most generally accepted cut of the film as far as most fans are concerned. Incredibly, there may be at least one more cut of the film following the theatrical release’s premise, and there is still footage that has remained unused in any cut. No released version of the film is completely consistent with the original Highlander from 1986

One of the film’s saving graces is Sean Connery’s performance, short on screen time though it is (he filmed for a total of nine whole days). It’s obvious he’s having fun in the role (three and a half million bucks for just over a week’s work would make anyone happy, though, I suspect), and his scenes, particularly those before he reunites with Connor, are among the most amusing in the film. If the film is going to be relatively nonsensical anyway, might as well enjoy the fun parts, and Connery provides several of them, making the most of a bad situation.

Christopher Lambert is, of course, in his element as Connor MacLeod, a character whose screen persona he helped to shape in the first film. MacLeod is Lambert’s single best role, and it shows.

Facts about the International Version:
This version contains some of the footage from that is in the “Renegade Edition” although the sequence of events is more like the theatrical release. It also contains footage and dialog not seen in either of the other versions. Noteworthy differences include the following: During the opera scene the intercutting and the dialog is far superior that the theatrical or the Renegade version, it flows better.
While Katana is fighting the rebels on Zeist soliders from both sides use machine guns. Connor and Louise leave earth for Zeist at the end of the movie.
other added scenes included scenes only shiown in the TV version: At ther beginning of the film Brenda his wife is dieing of Cancer from the sun she has a wrist band that clearing signifies her passing. Evene more footage of the race to the top of the Earth above the shield and altenate dialog. The original dialog from the script is intact in most scenes.

This version was commonly used for television broadcasts and I have obtained a cut of the TV version and the Alternate cut in which I am talking baout.

What I need is someone or people with an interest to help me restore this to the best possible.

Using to versions.

Highlander 2 German internatinal cut
Highlander 2 JAPAN CUT - The American TV version

Now the Japan cut is fullscreen ratio 1:33.1 and colors are washed out and has onscreen no removable japanese subtitles, qulity is poor and sountrack is not much better. However, this soundtrack is the only copy of the version avaible in english. It has a horrible hissing noise but it will have to work or maybe we could work on it.

The German Highlander 2 is shown in the correct aspect ration of 2:35.1 the color is very fine and the defention very clear. However, sadly only has a 5.1 soundtrack in German and no English subltitles.

These version are almost identical until the last scene, in the Japan cut Connor and Louise leave earth for Zeist at the end of the movie.
The footage shown is the actually footage that is on the Highlander 2 Directors Cut new dvd IN THE outtakes/ DELETED footage area, but in the Japan/ TV version cut is in finished form , the horrible shot of Connor floating into space and Louise saying take me with you is the scenes I am talking about. This scene would be the only edit.
In the German Cut it ends like the Renegade version. This is the only change thus would allow us to add the Japan Cuts English dialog and overlay it onto the 2:35.1 footage of the German version up until those last few minutes.

I myslef do not have these capablities nor the computer to pull of this feet. What I am asking for is help. I will provide the Cut of the movies and if someone could overlay the english soundtrack and edit the scene and work on the english soundtack a bit, this would be great. Keep in mind this may be a bigger task than actually I am stating, the two speeds of the movie are off which in this case we would have to slow the pace of the Japan/ TV cut verus the german cut.

Please help me with this project, it has been something I have been trying to do for years but no one is ever interested. I think the Intrernational cut is somewhere close to what the director inteneded and often makes more sense in scenes. It would make a great addtion to anyones Highlander library.

Thanks.

Mitch.

BTW!! whoever helps me with this will have free rain to my complete movie collection, some of which people even on these boards say don’t exist, but I keep quite sometimes and beg to differ. I never give away all the apples.

peace…

“The version relased in Japan is forteen minutes longer. Forteen minutes that weave much more interesting links between between characters, that say longer about themselves, especially Takahashi.” William Gibson in Mad Movies, n°58, November 1995 (translated from already translated French)

Main titles are added at the beginning, featuring the song “Lost” by Stabbing Westward (“bonus song” on the soundtrack). Soundtracks songs are not used the same way and the previous score is composed by Mychael Danna (The Sweet Hereafter, Ride with the Devil) has been kept.

“As far as JM goes, after I finished the film (the “long” version), I left the country (to India where I taught English in a small village in Begal). Meanwhile, they decided to cut the film significantly, and therefore, the music no longer fit, hence the hiring of Brad Fiedel. There is no soundtrack. The Japanese distributor prefered the long version, most countries went with the short one.” Composer Mychael Danna to the webmaster

Of course it’s a must, this long version seems closer to the film that director Robert Longo and writer William Gibson had in mind. Other deleted scenes can be found on the Terry Bisson’s novel (based on the Gibson’s script).

With more than a year of post-production Johnny Mnemonic was reedited again and again, Dolph Lundgren’s brilliant (and lonely acclaimed by the critics) Preacher role being the first victim of it.

“[Johnny] Mnemonic was supposed to show his range; alas, his big monologue was cut.” Beth Pinsker, Entertainment Weekly, n°279, 16 June 1995

“I don’t know why, but I always liked kind of pervers characters like the Street Preacher! They’re characters coming from “The Beggar’s Opera”, likeable bad guys with great sense of humour. A kind of humour that suited Dolph Lundgren’s personality well. After we found his caustic irony, he imposed from himself for the role of Street Preacher.”

“It’s a shame we had to cut one sermon of Dolph Lundgren, Street Preacher, who vehemently condemned the malice of technology, its satanic hold. The scene was deleted from the final cut for a matter of rythm ; it seems it slowed the film down ! Again it’s a pity because it parody of religion which sees the Great Satan in computers ! The Johnny Mnemonic we had in mind was much slower than the one you know. Now it’s a compromise between pure action and science-fiction. When Speed was released, around the end of filming, we had the star of one of the most profitable action films ever ! Then Robert Longo and I had to fight against producers who wanted more stunts and gunfights. They even tried to impose us a chase sequence in bus ! At the begining, Johnny Mnemonic wasn’t the film that marketing is now selling like a Speed sequel. It was entirely re-edited to speed up the tempo, eliminate dialogues for action. When I look at this other Johnny Mnemonic, I see the traces of darker movie, more poetic, more literary in a sense.” William Gibson in Mad Movies, n°58, November 1995 (translated from already translated French)

“In 1989, we wanted to make a little black and white movie for a million dollar. In 1993, we didn’t found one million dollar but 26 millions dollars.”

“We often asked ourselves with William Gibson if we had to leave this fucking film or try to make with the bad ideas from the production and make them as good as possible. When TriStar took control and eliminated all the intermediares involved, it was clearer. The film’s subject is also compromise: for exemple, I would have done a more nihilist version, TriStar insisted on making Johnny-Keanu Reeves likeable.” Robert Longo in Libération, 22 November 1995 (translated from translated French)

“Most of the Preacher’s sequences didn’t survive a pitylessly reducing editing.But the experience turned out to be interesting, breaking off the every day action movies and gauged roles of the blond giant.” from Seven Sept Magazine (“The Peacekeeper”), n°1, September 1999 (translated from French)

William Gibson also said later: "I’ll tell you something you may not believe: Dolph Lungren can actually do comedy. I mean, like, who knew? But he can, and did, with great gusto. The nature of his character was anchored in a scene in his church (he’s the local Panawave-equivalent) in which he preaches, buck nekkid and skin-studded with creepy nano-gizmos, to a congragation of adoring female NAS victims. He delivers a bombastic, faux-Sterlingesque, literally balls-out sermon on the virtues of posthumanity. It came off sort of like Fabio as the Jesus you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. It rocked. Hilarious. So Sony cut it.

They cut it out of fear of offending the religious right. No kidding. They actually told me that. That’s the sort of thing I mean when I say the JM you see is not the movie we shot.

[JM as I wrote it, and Longo shot it, is only available as the published screenplay (but quite readily available as that). I only agreed to publish it, in the first place, because I wanted to be in the position to demonstrate the difference between what I wrote, and we shot, and what they released. I doubt there’s even a remote possibility of there ever being a restored “director’s cut”, although the Japanese version of the DVD is a little closer to our intention.]" from Wiilliam Gibson official site, May 10, 2003

"DRE: What happened with Johnny Mnemonic? I blame Dolph Lundgren.

WG: Oh no [laughs]. I would blame Sony Pictures Imageworks. Nobody got to see the film that Robert Longo shot. Longo shot the script I wrote which I was happy with. The tragedy with Johnny Mnemonic is that we shot an ironic broadly comic action film that at some level was supposed to be about bad science fiction movies. We were not trying to make a blockbuster mainstream adventure film starring Keanu Reeves. When we started shooting that film Keanu wasn’t a movie star. Speed came out while we were shooting. As soon as it was a hit we had guys from the studio coming out of the woodwork telling us that we shouldn’t shoot a funny movie, where’s the bus? It just got worse from there. We kept doing what we wanted to do. Keanu and Dolph were both doing exactly what we told them to do. Sony cut 90 % of Dolph’s role because they said it would offend the religious right. He doesn’t even have a character in the movie they put out. He’s just this insane caveman who comes rushing in and flinging people around. It doesn’t make any sense. In the film we shot you get his backstory where he is preaching stark naked to churches full of women whoa re afflicted with the weird disease in the movie. He completely got into doing this comic villain and it just ended up making him look like an idiot. I personally felt very bad about that because he was doing what he was told to do." William Gibson interviewed on suicidegirls.com

I just got the actaul VCD. title JM