So far, I’ve seen three separate reviews that compare this flick to Heaven’s Gate…
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Do you have a good thread on Platoon? There was one here a couple of days ago and I didn’t have a chance to ask you.
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Honestly, I’d like to see this movie for one reason: I can’t recall an unsubstantial performance by Colin Farrell. From the snippets on NPR, though, he sounds pretty anemic. I’ll probably cringe at the ticket booth.
I saw it this afternoon. I thought it was okay. Not terrible, but not great either. And yeah, it dragged in a lot of places.
The thing I felt was lacking was major battles. I was impressed with the first battle they showed against Persia- sweeping aerial shots that let you see what was actually going on, why these guys were running this way, and so forth. But the camera action on the close-up fights was annoyingly jerky, and it made me dizzy.
The only historical innacuracies I could find:
[spoiler]1.) The doctor warns Hephaestion not to drink any wine while he recovers. Hephaestion talks to Alexander a bit, then just up and dies. From what I have researched last year, Hephaestion recovered a bit from the fever, and drank wine despite Alexander’s warnings not to. After drinking more wine, he relapsed and died. I think the film would have done better to show it this way- symbolizing how Alexander’s world was unraveling and his men’s faith in him waning.
2.) The wound Alexander receives in India was from a different battle than portrayed in the film. Alexander WAS shot by a thick Indian arrow, but it was during an assault against an Indian fortress. Supposedly Alexander was the first over the wall, and the target of Indian archers. The battle against the elephants that they showed in the film was a different battle, which if my memory serves me correctly, the Indian King Alexander fought allied with him out of respect (I could be wrong, though) [/spoiler]
There could be much more, though. I did a research project on Alexander the Great last year, and was familiar with some of the battles and people involved. However, one thing had me nagging. Aruvqan, I don’t know if you saw the film or have any interest, but they showed scenes in Alexandria. I was curious if they got the costumes right, because I know you did some SCA work dressing up as an Alexandrian citizen 
Wow.
That was without doubt the shittiest movie I’ve seen since Pearl Harbor. The trailers ran from 8pm until around 8:24. I was ready to leave by 9, and positively drowning by 9:30. There were still 90 minutes of “movie” to go.
It wasn’t a drama- it was a documentary. Unfortunately, it wasn’t actually accurate- just devoid of entertainment value. My only emotional responses to the movie were “Eh?” during all the bits where…
…Alexander and various male characters appear to be about to kiss, and mostly never do…
…and “Eeeech” during the bit where…
…he kisses his mother, even if she IS Angelina Jolie…
…and “Thank God that’s over,” when he gets killed. (If you needed a spoiler box for that bit then you really ought to be ought catching up on a few thousand years of western history rather than faffing about on a message board.
I give it one star out of five, and half of that goes to whoever did Val Kilmer’s makeup. The (presumably) poked-out eye was very well done, and he didn’t look like Val Kilmer at all.
The other half-star goes to the elephant trainer for his/her work on the final battle scene.
I saw this tonight and I liked it more than I expected to. I liked the first hour which focused on A the G’s childhood and involved some set up for his motivations. Val Kilmer was good as Philip. Angelina Jolie was a MILF and a half. I can understand why having a mother that smoking hot would screw with a kid’s mind a little.
As others have said, the film lacked battles. As a matter of fact I think there were only two battles in the whole film.
There were several Alexandrain anecdotes and legends which were missing- the Gordion knot, Alexander pouring out his own water when his men were dying of thirst, even his encounter with my name sake (I know it’s an apocryphal story but it’s a movie so it still would have been cool to see it).
There is a great movie in Alexander’s life and I wish somebody would make it. Stone’s movie isn’t it but it isn’t as bad as some of the reviews make it out to be.
That’s because it was REALLY BAD, and I speak as one who owns all the early Roxy Music albums. Glam Rock was down to UFO’s and Oscar Wilde? OK, if you say so…Ewan McGregor sounds like Iggy Pop’s asthmatic little sister, big dick or not. Christian Bale jacks off to the NME? Ewww… Jonathon Rhys-Meyers {I almost typed John Rhys-Davies} is unable to do anything but look pretty and pout sulkily.
David Bowie wisely decided to have nothing to do with it, despite them pretty much ripping off his Ziggy Stardust persona, and pinching one of his song titles: oddly enough, the real story would have been far more mundane, yet completely enthralling: serial failed pop star, with one bon fide hit to seven years of trying has one last throw of the dice - recruits a mutinous band of macho Hull brickies, releases an album pretending to be a bisexual alien rock star, and proceeds to conquer the world. Pretends to fellate the guitarist on stage, then breaks up the band. Proceeds to be one of the most innovative and influential performers in music. Now, there’s a story.
OK, end of hijack.
How you can tell it’s an Oliver Stone movie:
The Indian Ghost in The Doors = the Eagle in Alexander.
I really enjoyed it, despite the horror that is Colin Farrell’s bad blond dye job. Jared Leto rocks the black eyeliner as Hephaistion, and Gary Stretch was a standout as the ill-fated Kleitos. For the most part, they got just about all the historical stuff correct – other than compressing some stuff (such as the Indian and Persian campaigns) and leaving out a lot of subplots and secondary characters. Oliver Stone only had 3 hours to chronicle Alexander’s life, there’s only so much you can pack in.
As for the man-on-man action, it’s pretty tame between Alexander and Hephaistion. Some longing looks, wrestling, a lot of pledging of love, some hugging, and Heph gives Alex a wedding ring (!!!). We see Kleitos macking on some dudes and Val Kilmer and Toby Kebbel share a passionate kiss right before Philip is assasinated. As for Alexander, he does kiss Bagoas and there’s definitely some hints as to the nature of their relationship (Alexander beckoning to him as Bagaos blows out the lights in their bedroom).
Geek-out moment: Raz Degan as Darius was dressed and groomed to look EXACTLY like the ancient statues of the Persian shahs. He’s perfect from head-to-toe, down to the double eagles on his chariot.
I saw it (not by my choice) last night and found it, for the most part, pretty boring.
The battle scene against the Persians was very well done, I thought.
I love Angelina Jolie, but what the heck was she trying to do with that accent?
Meh. The movie, IMO, was not good enough to like, not necessarily bad enough to hate.
Sorry to resurrect this old thread but I just saw this “movie” last night.
Jeez, a documentary about Alexander would have been more interesting and less boring than this drivel.
And why do all the Greeks talk in a Scottish accent?
Except for Alexander’s mom, who speaks in a bad Russian accent.
And why, oh why, did they spend 150 million on this drivel?
Who oh who put Oliver Stone in charge of this?
Some people need to lose their jobs over this debacle.
The Macedonians actually all spoke with Irish accents(there were a few Scots alright but mostly Irish). Val Kilmer put on an Irish accent even. Strange choice IMO and was the only thing I liked about the movie as it added comic value.
Other than that it was a mess of a movie. Stone really dropped the ball on this one. Usually he can at least be trusted to make a movie that looks great but this didn’t.
The main battle scene was confusing and there were too many close shots which took you away from the spectacle.
They used the accents to convey that Macedonians spoke Greek but came from different ethnic origins than the Greek Greeks further south. Similar to how the Irish and Scots, to the north of England, speak English but came from different ethnic origins. It’s setting up an analogy with language accents and ethnicities.
American viewers hear Irish or Scottish accents and the point is lost on them. Instead it’s “Why are they talking like that?”
J. R. R. Tolkien used this device with great skill and subtlety to show overlapping palimpsests of ethnolinguistic geography. For example, a place like Bree right outside the Shire; Bree wasn’t its “real” name in Middle-Earth languages, but a Celtic-based name to show that the “English”-speaking Hobbits inhabited a land formerly occupied by beings speaking an older language, as Celtic place names persist in England. Likewise, the Brandybucks were given Frankish names such as you might find in the court of Charlemagne, to show that they were an old family, and Frankish was an old Germanic language related to English.
La Jolie’s accent was also meant to convey that she came from a very different ethnic origin. The character she played came from Epirus, a land on the Adriatic which is nowadays partly in northwestern Greece and partly southern Albania. It would have made sense to give her an Albanian accent. Instead they got it dreadfully wrong. She used a Slavic-sounding accent. Maybe they thought it would make her sound more “Balkan,” except that Slavs did not inhabit the Balkans until about a thousand years after Alexander’s time. Considering the problems with ethnic Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo, that was a blunder. I have talked with people from Albania, and the Albanian accent sounds nothing at all like Slavic. Of course, in ancient times the people of the western Balkan region were Illyrians. Nobody knows for sure how the Illyrian language is related; linguists assume it was probably the ancestor of Albanian, though proof is lacking.
I personally liked this movie . Wasn’t the best , wasn’t the worst , but I look forward to adding it to my DVD collection when it comes out . I bawled like a baby when Beucephelous (his horse) went down , still trying to defend his master .
And you get to see a quick glimpse of Colin Ferrel’s (or however you spell his last name :dubious: ) winky . 
Yes, but Bucephelos had the best parts.