Hmmm, well I'm not as critical of the fight scenes in older movies. Truthfully I feel that they tended to be more realistic and better in a lot of ways compared to the hyper-kinetic fights you see in some of the movies today which seem to largely be inspired by the Hong Kong action cinema. In some cases it works, in others it does not.
I thought the general "style" of the fights in the original Highlander made it seem kind of gritty and realistic because on a lot of levels you could see people doing those kinds of moves. The beginning where a miss with a sword lead to it cutting 3" into a concrete support beam was the kind of relatively understated superhuman abillity that kind of made the atmosphere of the original.
Opinions are of course going to vary. I think the style of the action should depend on the movie, and honestly I think they overdo things in a lot of modern movies. But then again I personally consider the 1980s and early 90s to be like the golden age of American action cinema. Of course that probably has to do with my age during that time frame.
I also think they should leave this alone because a "re-imagining" of the series was what caused it to go to cr@p. Some writers and directors wanting to leave their unique and special mark on things lead to stuff like "they are all exiled SPACE ALIENS!!!!!!".
Right now I think the original Highlander movie, and the TV series, were both very good. They should leave it at that. Neither Christopher Lambert OR Adrian Paul are very good actors and their respective apperances seem to be the highlights of their career amid many failures and mediocre performances, yet they are still the defining performers for those roles, and truthfully I don't think anyone can outdo those specific performances.
Now, I could see them doing something SIMILAR to Highlander if they want to do a total re-imagining of the concept. But honestly they should not tack the name onto something else, it's been done and really it's amazing that the "Highlander" name still carries any kind of weight or nerd-cred given the job people have done on it already.
Besides with some occurances in the series, I still haven't seen a satisfactory answer as to why an immortal can't just waltz around with a 10 gauge and an axe, shoot their opponent and then chop off the head. It's not a tight enough concept (although entertaining) to really tolerant much deep analysis or "re-invention" to begin with.
