In 1986, a film entered theaters and left almost immediately with little acclaim; because it had not even earned back half its budget.(1) Yet The Highlander went on to spectacular success in the nascent home video market, and led to sequels(2), a television series, and a reboot happening soon.
It was only after I began writing about science 20 years after the film, and watched it again, that I realize it contained the four most important words in science:
"That can't be right"
The context is that forensic investigator Brenda Wyatt(3) has examined fragments of metal discovered at a crime scene and found it predates known technological history. So she says the first thing any good scientist would say: that can't be right.
A sociologist or whatever adopts a belief and then looks for things to confirm it. A scientist adopts a hypothesis and immediately does the opposite - they falsify it. She has the evidence right there but because it can't be right, she is skeptical. Then sets out to falsify her own conclusion.
When the evidence is confirmed, she changes her belief. Because the sword does exist but it is from 600 BC and the folding technique it used was not known then. In her words, it would be like discovering a 747 a thousand years before the Wright brothers ever flew.
This concept of free discovery is why government no longer paying for musicals in Ireland or sociological examinations of why politicians lie using science funding is not going to damage actual science. The biggest breakthrough of the last 50 years, the COVID-19 vaccine, used science the government refused to fund and an alarming amount of science funding did not go to science anyway. Even when it does, it may be not useful. Government panels fund safe experiments and are often driven by cultural agendas. Bold science might fail, and that is the kiss of death if you have an R01 grant. The private sector builds failure into their business model.
What matters more than funding or the ability to write grants - that is why most Nobel prizes are for work done by young scientists - is that sense of discovery and wanting to figure out the laws of nature.
Seeing something that can't be right and saying, "That can't be right."
Thanks, Brenda Wyatt!
NOTES:
(1) The marketing sure didn't help. The movie poster - those mattered 40 years ago - lacked any of the humor, heart, or adventure of the film. Instead, Christopher Lambert looked like a serial killer.
(2) The sequels are not good, to such an extent they are still ridiculed, like this fan edit of the work of Fowl Language Comics by Brian Gordon (low res to be fair use, please visit his website and support his work), nor is the TV show, though better acting and storytelling made the cheap production palatable in season three. The ponytail lasted until season six.
And I suspect that not a month goes by without me invoking it for some reason or another. Like this article. Or anything happening in culture.
(3) Played perfectly by Roxanne Hart a short while after her Tony award-winning work in "Passion" on Broadway. Her character was dead by the time of the Highlander TV show, because that is what lazy screenwriters did to create male motivation in the 1990s. And in Deadpool 2.
