cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/1842280
Talking to the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the John Wick director suggested his approach to the new film in development will be to launch a potential series of films. He says the idea is to not rush the first movie to the original film’s conclusion — which crowned MacLeod the sole survivor of a group of dueling immortals following their climactic Gathering.
“I think we have some very good elements now,” he said. “The trick is when you have the tagline, ‘There can only be one,’ you can’t just kill everybody the first time.”
Stahelski also said the film will incorporate elements of the 1992 syndicated Highlander TV series, which ran for six seasons.
“Our story engages a lot of the same characters, but we’ve also brought in elements of all the TV shows,” Stahelski said. “We’re trying to do a bit of a prequel — a setup to The Gathering — so we have room to grow the property.”
He noted he hasn’t thought of John Wick as a franchise (despite that Continental TV show coming) but he does see Highlander as a potential franchise.
“We have ideas for days for the coolest characters [that could make for] an epic TV show,” he said. “I just think that’s rich mythology when you can pick any period of time, any nationality, any culture, any type of person and make them an immortal that have to duel and deal with the burden of immortality — that’s fucking cool.”
Why not reboot though. Its one of those things I don’t think really I want to go away. It saves so much time. I already know the story and characters. I don’t need 6 seasons and 2 films to build the mythos. Its all built into it.
It could work. Reset Raiden (er, Christopher Lambert) in Sean Connery’s role. Introduce known and new immortals while slow feeding a build up to the Quickening. Just try to avoid any of what happened with 2. Just, no.
Hold on a sec, you don’t want them to use any of the Highlander 2 revolutionary ideas?
/s
Seriously though, trying to reboot Highlander might actually work. It’s a known property, but really only the first movie had any value (and some of the TV series) and it’s not that well known from younger generations. It’s also not such a classic that you cannot touch it without people screaming (like, say, Ghostbusters)
Edit: grammar
Except all reboots waste time retelling the very beginning of a characters development because they are banking on starting a franchise.
How many reboots are stories about the lead up to the character becoming the character? This sounds like we won’t even get to the “there can only be one” finale before the franchise is cancelled.
Could be straightforward enough. Just start with his death and then he wakes up. Mild confusion, but Conner finds him quick enough to explain the basics, your immortal now, there can be only one, we’ve done this before but something new fucked it up.
He can either be the new Sean Connery as a mentor, or have him get instakilled by our big bad.
We can see Carvell deal with his old life (perhaps someone had him killed, aka mafia?) and the new immortal world he got sucked into.
… Or maybe I just wrote it the way you said sucks, I’m not sure
Ahem, every reboot of a Batman or Spider-Man movie starts with another origin, except maybe the Pattinson Batman, I can’t remember
Battinson didn’t really do an origin. He’s a younger Batman, and they touch somewhat on his parents’ death, but they don’t like…re-enact the run-up to him becoming Batman. He’s just Batman.
FWIW I rather liked The Batman. I liked the more noire-detective element that often seems to be missing from Batman movies.
