The First Look At Henry Cavill's Highlander Is Giving Me More Questions Than Answers

There have been attempts to reboot the Highlander franchise for years, but fans of the immortals fighting to the death can finally breathe a sigh of relief because the movie is actually happening. Henry Cavill is set to star in the reboot directed by Chad Stahelski, and we now have our first look at the new Connor MaCloud, and he looks pretty good.

Henry Cavill dropped two shots on his Instagram page, which show him in two very different locations, one appears to be the far east, and the other appears to be a cathedral. In one, he's holding a sword; in the other, he dons the classic Highlander trenchcoat, because how else are you going to walk around in public armed with a sword without making it obvious? Check it out.

As a fan of the Highlander franchise, I love everything about this. I've always felt Highlander was a franchise that truly needed a reboot, because the original films never really capitalized well on the franchise's potential, but I have to admit this is not what I expected from a first look.

Isn't Cavill's Highlander Supposed To Be More Of A Period Piece?

Both images appear to be set in the modern day. While the locations could be from different times, Cavill's character looks to be in more or less modern dress. While it had been reported that at least some of Highlander would take place in modern day, my impression was that the movie would be much more of an origin story, with a greater focus on the 1500s in the Scottish Highlands, than the original movie.

These two shots don't mean that isn't the case, of course, this could just be shots from the first scenes that were filmed, which happened to be the modern-day sequences for scheduling reasons. However, if I were going to release a first look at a new movie, i would want them to be representative of the movie we're going to get.

The original Highlander was mostly set in the modern day, but had significant flashback sequences giving us the origin story of Connor MaCloud. It looks like something like that might be what the new movie is going to do as well. The problem with that is that part of the reason that Highlander never worked as a franchise is that it did too much in the first movie, making sequels mostly irrelevant.

The Casting Announcements For Highlander Certainly Focus On the Past

The impression I certainly had from the comments director Chad Stahelski had made was that the new Highlander would be taking a longer and slower approach to the story, so the first film would focus more on the characters' origins.

That's certainly been the focus of the casting. Most of the major roles that have been revealed are focused on the early part of the main character's life. Russell Crowe is set to play the part of the Highlander's teacher, played by Sean Connery in the original film. Karen Gillan is set to play Cavill's mortal love interest from his time in the past.

Dave Bautista is on board as the Kurgan, the villain of the story, who dies at the end of the original movie, but who I fully expected to survive into future films, though now I'm not so sure anymore.