You heard me, Ryan Reynolds has been cast as Connor Macleod in the Highlander remake. For many, apparently this is a bad thing, but I’ve always had a history of loving Ryan Reynolds, and I always look forward to seeing his abs him in anything I watch. I think he’s a perfectly fine actor, and has comedic chops, which I’d argue are the same set of skills you need to act well in drama.

While other details about the film have yet to surface, like who will be playing Juan Villalobos-Ramirez, the immortal Spanish-Egyptian-Scotsman, or The Kurgan, I’m positive those details will come soon, and at the very least, will be interesting. I’m happy the movie is being remade, and I’m looking forward to seeing how they handle the concepts of The Prize, The Gathering, and brutal decapitations being a main plot point. The only way they could screw this up, would be by trying to somehow have covers of Queen as the soundtrack. Either license the original soundtrack entirely, or get a totally new composer to write a new score. Queen or bust.

As many of you probably know, Highlander is the quintessential cult movie favorite. An argument could be made that in a way, it was the reverse Firefly of its time. It started out as a fantasy film that was clearly only meant to be one movie, but showcased a world and mythology so evocative and thought-provoking, people just had to go and make a sequel and screw it up by making them aliens. That then led to further sequels that retconned that detail, and a directors cut that tried to redeem that inane writing decision, and ultimately led to the franchise getting its own series, that built its own intricate mythology that contradicted the movies canon, and led to yet another movie sequel, that confusingly attempted to bridge the two sets of continuity in a way that left everyone feeling awkward. Being a Highlander fan has always been difficult because of this, and the thoughts of any more sequels generally brings a headache as we all try to retrofit everything into the tangled web of sub-continuity and pseudo-explanations for concepts such as The Watchers, or just what the hell The Prize is in the first place.

Thankfully, someone in Hollywood saw the franchise, realized another sequel was a lousy idea, and took it to its obvious and necessary conclusion: REMAKE TIME BABY! Remakes are trendy now sure, but there is a place for them. Some movies get so clustered with badness that a remake/reboot is the only way to give a franchise some new lifeblood (Batman), and others are genuinely good retellings of a story that takes it in a new and exciting direction (1982’s The Thing), while others are more akin to re-adaptations of the source material it came from (2012’s Total Recall). So it stands to reason that Highlander lies somewhere in between the reboot/new exciting direction remake clause, and while many of my colleagues here at Grizzlybomb have lamented the decision to cast him, I’m Pro-Ryan Reynolds in this remake.

Also can you imagine Ryan Reynolds trying on a scottish accent? AMAZING.