Samothrake

Yeah, Connor felt the Kurgan, and the feeling in the movie was described akin to sudden nausea, or feeling ill. But the strange thing about Connor and the Kurgan’s first meeting is that the Kurgan already knew that Connor was immortal or would be immortal. He even knew his name, and had made a deal so that no others would kill him. I’m of the opinion that Connor may have already been immortal, because the Kurgan tried to take Connor’s head right there on the battlefield.
However, Connor didn’t feel Ramirez the first time they met. At least not for about 10 seconds. But then again, he was busy with Hether at the time. Funny how both the Kurgan and Ramirez seemed to know who and what Connor was before they met. Now I can kinda see Ramirez wandering the Highlands and hearing stories when he stops in Glenfinnen, then deciding to see what they were all about. But just HOW did Kurgan know about Connor beforehand?


Having done a rewatch this evening, I can say that this scene is rather ambiguous. Yeah, we see Connor on a bed wrapped up in bandages and his two-faced girlfriend wailing over (He’s a Highlander by God. The last thing he hears should not be that of a wailing woman!) his body. However, the priest also gave him last rights and Connor’s eyes are wide open and he’s awfully pale. If you listen carefully, you hear very shallow breathing, almost a ‘death rattle’. And then we pull out with a electrical type flashing to the next scene. Couple this with somewhere in one of the movie versions of learning that Ramirez first died by being run over by a card in Egypt, and we could probably conclude the Connor breathed his last and the flashing was his immortality kicking in. I’m not saying that’s right, but it’s one interpretation.

It’s not quite Connor getting falling out of the boat, Ramirez paddling away (you can’t drown you fool, you’re immortal!), and then Connor on the bottom. There’s a several seconds of him sinking to the bottom – screaming all the way! By the time he reaches the bottom and starts to look around himself in wonder and start laughing, there shouldn’t be any air in his lungs. We’re not really given how long he was underwater, but it was enough time for Ramirez to get back to shore, start a fire, and have it burn down quite a ways. Connor was pretty much dropped off in the middle of that lake. There’s no way that he should have had any oxygen in his lungs by the time he got to shore.

Now on to some other topics, since I'm on a roll here:
One thing that I noticed in my quick re-watch is that the two quickening we see the Kurgan gain do not have the flashy electrical effects that we see with Connor’s. When he defeats Ramirez, he stretches out his arms and slowly, with what looks like great effort, brings his hands together in front of his chest around his sword hilt. He does this again after taking Kastagir’s head in the alley. It’s not until after he does this that a single lightning bolt strikes the tower he is standing on in Ramirez’s case. And there’s no lightning at all in Kastagir’s case, just a whole lot of exploding glass. It’s almost as if he is somehow resisting the whole lightning effect with his ritualized actions. Weird.

As for Holy Ground, Ramirez’s line is “You’re safe only on Holy Ground. None of us will violate that law. It’s tradition.” Right there we don’t know if it’s actually a rule or tradition. But the Holy Ground part really isn’t explored in the movie, other than that scene with Connor and the Kurgan in NYC.

At the very end of the movie, while Connor is receiving the Prize he speaks these lines: “The Quickening is what powers me! I feel everything! I know! I know everything! I am everything!”

And lastly:
In the movie, it seems like when two Immortals get together there is atmospheric disturbances. Both the first time Connor ‘met’ the Kurgan, and within seconds of meeting Ramirez the sky clouded up and lightning struck all around and rain started. In fact, I think every time in the first movie that Immortals fought there was rain and lightning. This gathering of power, it’s disturbances, and the sensation it produced in Connor was what Ramirez actually called the Quickening – at least in their first meeting. Later in the training montage there’s brief, maybe 30 second, scene-lette where Ramirez shows Connor a stag. He then proceeds to give Connor some sort of telepathic/empathic lesson where they “feel the stag.” I don’t believe that I have seen anybody expound on this little snippet of the movie.

I like the photoshopped one better as well. Much less latex looking. And the pants - on my monitor at least - aren't black, but a dard navy blue.

The question that always pops up in my head is what's the difference between cutting off the head, and shooting them in the head with a large enough calibur bullet so that it effectively obliterates the head?

The only thing I can think of is that one would have to be close enough so that one could recieve the quickening.

And speaking of the quickening, in the first movie, Ramirez decribed it entirely differently from what was shown in the series. Even the whole lightning storm, floating cars and breaking windows in the movie wasn't actually called or referred to as a quickening. I don't think even movie 2 or 3 acutally called that event a quickening. We were just led to belive that this is how immortals passed their power from on to another.

Ah. I see you missed it. The Ancients DID put supplies and things on the ship. Go rewatch the first few episodes. Specifically the ones where they are trying to get the air recyclers working again. One of the characters specifically state that they should start opening the Ancient boxes to look for replacement parts. To which the leader dude says "NO! We don't know what's in them, let's just use what we have and try to find a world where we can get supplies."
Now since then there have been a very few allusions to the fact that those Ancient supplies are slowly being opened and catalogued - like when they found the superluminal drive repair bot. But for the most part, the writers have ignored then.
Which means that most viewers have forgotten them.

Tell that to Highlander Season Six.

Actually, that's a comics/movie error right away there.
Thor is from Asgard. He's a Norse god. He wouldn't saY "this is earth" it would be "oh no....this is Midgarde, isn't it?"
Him saying "this is Earth" makes him sound like he's from a different plante, not a different, yet connected, dimension.

So what you are saying is that Smallville didn't have it all wrong?!

See. this here is why, if I haven't read a book beforehand when a movie comes out I always watch the movie first. I have learnt from past experience that if I read the book first, I will be looking for things in the movie, that might not make it, and it lessensed my enjoyment of the movie. Whilst if I see the movie first, then read the book, the book adds to the experience of the movie. I get to find out the internal workings of the scenes, like why someone does what they do in the movie. What was this character's thought process and so forth. It also gives me voices and images for my mental screen to play off of the events in the book.

So far, in my opinion, what was left out of the Potter movies from the books has not affected the story much at all - with the exception of Half-Blood Prince. In the book, Hermione and Ron had done much more research on this person. They had pretty much figured out that it was Snape (which of course Harry rejected for his own reasons - dislike of Snape being a big part). In the movie, there's a mention of Hermione going to the library, and mentions/showing that Harry is rather obsessed with reading his Adcanced Potions book and that's it until the end when Snape confesses that he is the Half-Blood Prince. Comparing those two leaves me disappointed in the film's dealing with the subject. Especially since it was the name of the movie. To only have it mentioned twice in the movie really made no sense.

On the other hand some things that the movies have added have been better than the books. In the movies, we can see that in HBP and DHp1 that Draco is scared spitless of Voldie. The books didn't convey this as well to me. I also liked how in HBP we actually see Draco repairing the Vanishing Cabinet. In the book, Harry knew that Draco was doing something in the Room of Requirement (and was rather obsessed with finding out about it), but we never know what he was doing until the end, when Hogwarts is invaded.

So yeah, always watch the movie first. I have the last book, but haven't cracked it open yet - and won't until next June - just to preserve my experience of the movie. And then I will probably go and reread all the books in order before I read the Deathly Hollows.

Good gravy! If you roux the whole day, you're going to need a whole lot of butter and flour!

I take it this one's directed at me and others like me.
As I said, I do most of my large pieces in Word. In word I use Arial because I find its readability easier on my eyes than, say, Times New Roman.
I'm still getting used to the new boards (yes, 6 1/2 years and only six hundred twenty some odd posts). The old ones would strip all my formatting when I copied things. The new ones, not so much. Though I did try to make the size as close to the others as possible. I only just now saw that "Remove Text Formatting" button there, and have since corrected the two posts so as to be "one of us."
Whist I have mine own pet peeves, I do try not to be others'.