The so called "first death."
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Highlander
Digital_Cowboy — 11 years ago(March 25, 2015 09:37 AM)
What I'd like to know is that why between the movies and the series did they make the so called "first death," in order to become immortal?
After Conner's first battle wiht Kurgen his father say's something to the effect of "last night you're all but dead and today you're walking around like nouthing happened."
Then when Conner meets Rameriz, he is told "you are immortal, and cannot die unless you lose your head."
He reinforces this by knocking Conner into the water when he is standing in the bow of the rowboat, wearing an ox yoke. And instead of drowning Conner mearly walks across the bottom of the loch.
Then there is the sword fight scene, where Conner is stabbed many times only to immedeatly gets back up on his feet.
Yet, in the series, an immortal has to "die" a so called "first death" in order for their immortality to be tiggered. Suggesting that if they do not die a first death that they'll age and die of old age. -
Duragizer — 11 years ago(March 25, 2015 05:18 PM)
Well, Connor does appear to suffer a "first death" of sorts in the movie he doesn't automatically recover from the Kurgan's attack like he does from severe wounds suffered later on down the timeline, after all. Perhaps the writers of the show interpreted the scene as indicating that immortality wasn't something that just "kicked in" at birth and came up with the "violent first death" bit as an explanation.
[EDIT]
It's possible the "first death" scenario was also thought up to explain why some Immortals like Ramirez were physically older than other Immortals.
If this is a consular ship, where is the ambassador? -
DonutPower — 10 years ago(April 04, 2015 07:57 PM)
Connor's first death was in 1536, that was the day he became immortal. he wasnt just born an immortal. you have to become immortal from the shock of a violent death. just like how Ramirez's first death was when he got run over by a cart and became immortal. its how there are immortals of different age groups.
its like a dormant gene that gets activated after a violent death. that is when one becomes immortal. -
jstang411 — 10 years ago(April 09, 2015 07:53 AM)
I wouldn't say it is a problem, but the first death trigger does leave open the question of what happens if you come to a "natural" death, in the movie at least.
You have what would otherwise be a fatal heart attack at say 70 and do you just die like everyone else? -
super_rodimus_convoy — 10 years ago(April 10, 2015 12:18 AM)
I'm not sure if it was ever answered in the movieverse (I don't think it was and I've seen them all) but it was answered in the series: If you're immortal and you don't die a
violent
death, then you just die. Otherwise at whatever age you had your first death (and again it has to be violent) is the age your frozen at forever. I think the show even had a child immortal once.
So that means SLOW deaths, you just die. Dying of old age is a slow death. Being poisoned (almost Nick's fate from Highlander: The Raven) is a slow death. A fatal heart attack, I think those tend to be violent so that wouldn't count and might actually activate immortality. Slow deaths, i.e. slipping away, and FATAL heart attacks tend to be the opposite of slipping away. -
Jan_El_Senor — 10 years ago(April 10, 2015 05:34 AM)
The only way it is addressed in the original film is that Connor is shown to have a violent death before he knows that he is Immortal.
Endgame
is the only movie that explicitly stated that a "pre-Immortal" would live a normal life if he/she did not suffer a violent death.
Please stop. -
super_rodimus_convoy — 10 years ago(April 16, 2015 11:16 AM)
Endgame is the only movie that explicitly stated that a "pre-Immortal" would live a normal life if he/she did not suffer a violent death.
If you mean Kate, there is that, but the only thing I'm unsure about is whether "pre-immortals" can have children, which is something she stated she wanted to have. I was under the impression that even if immortals never activate their immortality by avoiding a violent death, they
still
cannot bear children. Otherwise you'd hear stories or at least mention of the children immortals had before their violent death, and unless it was by adoption that was never the case.
I figured Duncan simply didn't want to correct her when she said that cause he still made her immortal against her wishes and at that moment didn't want to compound her grief and anger. -
phantom-97887 — 10 years ago(April 16, 2015 11:47 PM)
This stupid concept was my #2 biggest reason for disliking Endgame. (#1 was killing Connor of course)
But Pre-immortals having kids was already answered back in season 3 of the series when Someone tried to convince Richie he had a kid from 'before'.
Joe came right out and told him that in all the centuries the Watchers have been keeping records it's never happened. Sorry. Not possible.
Granted Duncan was already said to have been with many women over his life, but would never marry so the Gypsy curse killed off Tessa. REALLY, Kate was just a big bucket of contradictions -
phantom-97887 — 10 years ago(April 16, 2015 11:43 PM)
The problem is simply that Connor does not 'die' then. He is severely wounded and was well prepared to die.. but then woke up the next day just fine.
It's all in the wording.
It's also the difference between making a series six years after the movie. They never fit together perfectly. In the movie immortals 'did not die' in the Series they 'did not stay dead'. Hence the difference when Connor walks on the bottom of the water, but Duncan and friends talk about drowning over and over again -
HellboundHero — 10 years ago(April 20, 2015 10:37 AM)
If Connor hadn't been temporarily dead, I don't think his village would have reacted so harshly to his recovery, thinking he's a demon or a witch. So I don't think the show was inconsistent with the "first death" concept, but may have been when depicting subsequent "deaths".
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PillowRock — 10 years ago(June 07, 2015 01:44 PM)
No, recovering from a wound that clearly should have been fatal would have been more than enough to draw the witchcraft accusations. I would actually go the other way: If Connor had actually died before recovering, then I doubt that Angus could have stopped the burning once the village had gotten that worked up.
More concretely, Connor having died was very specifically NOT what the villagers said had happened. Dugal's line was "You saw the wound. He
should have died
." The verb phrase "should have died" means that Connor had not died. And they would have had a death watch on him, he wouldn't have been left alone when they thought he was dieing. So Connor couldn't have died without anyone noticing.
This is simply a case of the TV series mythology being a bit different than the original movie's mythology. Nothing wrong with that. -
Herreken — 9 years ago(July 18, 2016 04:19 PM)
One of Connor's clansmen says to the woman crying something like "He's a Highlander by god. The last sounds he hear won't be that of a weeping woman." We then see an angle of Connor from below. Connor is lying motionless his eyes open yet not blinking as the camera pans out. We see flashing lights as the scene changes to the crime scene in present day New York with a dead body. I think the parallel is pretty clear.
I never doubted Connor died in that scene even before I started watching the TV show and learned their rules.
DISPLAY thy breasts, my Julia! -
bayardhiler — 10 years ago(August 01, 2015 10:12 PM)
"Why was Kurgan looking for him in the original battle if he wasn't immortal yet?"
I've heard that in the novelization of the film, the Kurgan's teacher was an immortal called the Bedouin who had the power to see prophecy and who told the Kurgan to kill immortals wherever you find them. The Kurgan kills his teacher and assumes this power and sees that an image of a Scottish Highlander (Connor) that will be his undoing and thus decides to seek him out before he becomes immortal. If we accept the novelization of the film, that makes sense. Another reason may be due to immortals' ability to sense who will become immortal if they die a violent death. In the television series, it's implied several times that immortals have that ability, in addition to being able to sense those who are fully immortal. Keep in mind the film says the Kurgan is the strongest of all the immortals, so either possibility could be true. Hope that answers your question. -
tb-sch — 9 years ago(June 05, 2016 12:06 AM)
That is because the movie was written with a loose mythology in the background and meant as a single fun right. The whole creating-a-franchise thing happened much later and had to come up with beep on the fly. None of the concepts presented later were part of the universe in the movie.
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supercygnus — 9 years ago(October 01, 2016 12:09 AM)
Very easy answer. The series and movie are different stories. The tv series is really more of a remake. The series and two movies that follow it reference events and even include some of the same characters, but it also ignores the entire end of the original film. None of the various incarnations line up very well actually. I call it the Scooby effect. All the Scooby shows and movies each have their own continuities although each incarnation does share the same characters and a vague background that our heroes solve crimes with a talking dog. The Evil Dead films and tv series have the same issue (both from rights issues and simply because it made telling each new story easier) as none line up right. The end of Evil Dead II and the beginning of Army of Darkness don't quite line up. The Ash in Evil Dead is a very different character than Ash we see in Ash vs Evil Dead or Army of Darkness. Ironically Ash from Army of Darkness and the Ash from Ash vs Evil Dead are the most alike, but they don't acknowledge the events of Army of Darkness in the show.or even the events of Evil Dead 2.
So Highlander really is a stand alone film. The closest connection it has to any sequel is Highlander the Quickening. But those still aren't seamless. The series meant to continue the story but there is a very definitive end to the film's story. So rather than create some sort of explanation that would probably confuse new viewers they simply blurred some stuff, had Connor make an appearance to please fans but really is completely its own thing.