2020-01-08, 03:00 PM
(This post was last modified: 2024-03-13, 07:56 PM by HippieDalek.)
UPDATE 12/03/2024 - For now this preservation will no longer be available.
The US Cut of Highlander 2 is suddenly available to buy and stream on Amazon UK! If I had to guess I'd say it's an old, fairly soft, HD transfer made for a DVD that was never released. It's certainly different from every transfer I've seen before. Sadly it's got PAL speedup. I wonder if the UK distributor is planning to finally update their old pan and scan DVD. It's certainly a step up from the French DVD which served as the basis for this preservation.
I encourage everyone who has this preservation to consider buying a copy of the new streaming version, hopefully it will remind the studios that there is demand for a wider release of this cut.
After completing the latest version of the European Theatrical Cut preservation, I thought I'd put one together for the US Theatrical Cut too. I had hoped this would be a quick process (I actually had an initial version ready to release just before New Year) but a few complications came up and it got delayed a few times.
The US Theatrical Cut is a mess, but it deserves to be preserved if only as an example of how not to edit a film. As I was putting this one together I noticed lots of tiny editing oddities which clearly point towards the US Cut being edited from the EU Cut (or at least something very similar to it), rather than this version being put together from scratch. There's one instance where an additional scene is added to the US cut, and when the film proceeds to the next scene you can still see a few frames of fade out from the scene before the new scene. It's a real mess.
The main visual source for this restoration was the French DVD which provides a nicely detailed picture. It's probably the highest detailed SD source I've seen for the film in any cut, however it looks like there's been some DNR applied and there are quite a few compression artefacts. It does however have the US Theatrical colour grading which is nearer to grey than the blue of the EU cut.
Thanks goes to TomArrow for helping me with a shot extension; a ~3 second clip had to be reconstructed from three very different sources. My attempts to fix the shot were far from convincing but TomArrow came up with something that works really well.
I originally used the English language audio from the Japanese DVD of the US Theatrical Cut, which is basically a poor quality LD rip, however Soundman offered me a bit perfect PCM rip from the US laserdisc which was much nicer quality so I've used that here instead.
So thanks to both Tom Arrow Soundman!
![[Image: wWekJ6H.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/wWekJ6H.jpg)
There's a bit of scope for an second version in the future; I have both the French and Japanese audio for this cut of the film so they could be included if there's call for it. The French audio does feature Christopher Lambert dubbing himself so it may be of interest to some.
I think after this I'll be leaving the world of Highlander 2 for a bit. I've now spent over a year working on various cuts of this film so want to take a break, work on some other projects and learn some new skills. I may revisit this and the EU cut later down the line though as I've still got some ideas for improvements...
PM me for links. I hope you enjoy and please let me know if you have any feedback!
The US Cut of Highlander 2 is suddenly available to buy and stream on Amazon UK! If I had to guess I'd say it's an old, fairly soft, HD transfer made for a DVD that was never released. It's certainly different from every transfer I've seen before. Sadly it's got PAL speedup. I wonder if the UK distributor is planning to finally update their old pan and scan DVD. It's certainly a step up from the French DVD which served as the basis for this preservation.
I encourage everyone who has this preservation to consider buying a copy of the new streaming version, hopefully it will remind the studios that there is demand for a wider release of this cut.
After completing the latest version of the European Theatrical Cut preservation, I thought I'd put one together for the US Theatrical Cut too. I had hoped this would be a quick process (I actually had an initial version ready to release just before New Year) but a few complications came up and it got delayed a few times.
The US Theatrical Cut is a mess, but it deserves to be preserved if only as an example of how not to edit a film. As I was putting this one together I noticed lots of tiny editing oddities which clearly point towards the US Cut being edited from the EU Cut (or at least something very similar to it), rather than this version being put together from scratch. There's one instance where an additional scene is added to the US cut, and when the film proceeds to the next scene you can still see a few frames of fade out from the scene before the new scene. It's a real mess.
The main visual source for this restoration was the French DVD which provides a nicely detailed picture. It's probably the highest detailed SD source I've seen for the film in any cut, however it looks like there's been some DNR applied and there are quite a few compression artefacts. It does however have the US Theatrical colour grading which is nearer to grey than the blue of the EU cut.
Thanks goes to TomArrow for helping me with a shot extension; a ~3 second clip had to be reconstructed from three very different sources. My attempts to fix the shot were far from convincing but TomArrow came up with something that works really well.
I originally used the English language audio from the Japanese DVD of the US Theatrical Cut, which is basically a poor quality LD rip, however Soundman offered me a bit perfect PCM rip from the US laserdisc which was much nicer quality so I've used that here instead.
So thanks to both Tom Arrow Soundman!
There's a bit of scope for an second version in the future; I have both the French and Japanese audio for this cut of the film so they could be included if there's call for it. The French audio does feature Christopher Lambert dubbing himself so it may be of interest to some.
I think after this I'll be leaving the world of Highlander 2 for a bit. I've now spent over a year working on various cuts of this film so want to take a break, work on some other projects and learn some new skills. I may revisit this and the EU cut later down the line though as I've still got some ideas for improvements...
PM me for links. I hope you enjoy and please let me know if you have any feedback!
Program material is recorded on the other side of this disc...
