Misery Loves Company: Two Guys Watch Baseball

Mailbag

Wait, we've got a mailbag? Sweet!

Avid (only?) reader T.J. Doyle from Arlington, VA chimes in with the first-ever MLC mailbag entry:

"Worst sequel, Ghostbusters 2 or Another 48 hours?"

The answer, unequivocally and without question, is Highlander 2, The Quickening. To steal unabashedly from the once and future Boston Sports Guy, I will not argue this. The original Highlander was simply a terrific film, with an intriguing (assuming willing suspension of belief) time-twisting plot, a chilling, pitch-perfect villain (I defy you to watch the scene where the Kurgan describes killing Ramirez and raping Connor MacLeod's woman without the hair standing straight up on the back of your neck), and a bunch of cool swordfighting scenes.

I will admit that Highlander resonates all the more with me for the fact that I've seen it literally dozens of times. It, along with Fletch and Spinal Tap, served as the videotrack for my college years, playing over and over again on the television in my fraternity house living room.

So when the sequel came out in 1991, the brotherhood of Pi Lambda Phi rose as one to attend opening night at the Carmike Cinemas in downtown Williamsburg, VA, anticipating the continuation of the legacy of the One. We knew within the film's first 10 minutes that the sequel was an unredeemable pile of stinking monkey shit. The filmmakers took an epic fantasy, nuanced and clever, and turned it into a hackneyed futuristic cliche. We were laughing at ostensibly serious dialogue less than halfway through the movie, and openly rooting for the bad guys (aliens, as it turns out, fucking aliens) to destroy the earth and with it the screenwriters.

The Quickening? We dubbed it the Sickening. And it's the worst sequel ever even contemplated. Next question, please.