Do you believe there can be only one?
by Amelia G : December 26th, 2008
My little punk rock friends and I were all into Subway when it came out and Christopher Lambert’s date shows up for a nice dinner with her hair up and explains the style as “Iroquois”. We were mostly DC punks with families of politicos and lawyers and diplomats and university presidents, so we could handle reading subtitles on a French punk flick. So we all showed up to see the first Highlander movie in the theatre, fully expecting to root for Christopher Lambert’s Connor MacLeod character. I think most of us still were pulling for him to win, but we were swayed by the snazzy dress of darkness personified, The Kurgan, played by Clancy Brown, who, with all the makeup, we did not recognize from his turn as Rawhide in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.
Basic concept of The Highlander is that there are all these nearly immortal high beings enjoying life on earth. They can be killed by something like beheading, but mostly they can live forever, exploring multiple lives with different partners and the wealth of many lifetimes. The only thing is that, if one of them can manage to be the only surviving super-dude, then he will have extra amazing vast powers. In particular, The Kurgan just can’t be satisfied with his already kinda awesome situation. Nope, he has to be the only one. There can be only one. So he hunts down the others of his kind and tries to destroy them all.
I think I come across too many people in business these days who identified a little too much with The Kurgan. I blame the costume department from the first Highlander movie for the bitchin’ threads and I blame Clancy Brown for playing him so . . .
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