:rolleyes: So there probably wasn’t really a chorus of sea-horses playing “Wipe-Out”, with a sperm-whale on the drum solo. It’s called artistic license.
The film was so hard to squirm through. Every time I saw Alexander all I could think was, “ew. Cindy Brady, all grown up, and apparently in need of a little hormone replacement therapy.”
I never really got much of a gay subtext. It was more just two really femmy guys, wearing too much mascara, and sorta making eyes at each other once in awhile.
I had no sympathy for any of the characters. I did have a little sympathy for Colin Farrell, the actor. He acted like he knew how ridiculous he looked.
With a Wild Wild West or an Attack of the Clones or a Battlefield Earth, your mind can at least push through the suckiness and see some way by which some halfway-reasonable studio exec might have thought that producing such a movie was a slightly defensible idea. Not so with Alexander. What the hell were they thinking? What was up with that scene in the temple in India that went on for half an hour with nothing happening? And the flashback scenes. Oh god, the flashback scenes! Yargghhhh.
After seeing that movie, I avoided theatres entirely until Kung Fu Hustle was released almost six months later.
When his wife walked in on him recieving the ring and she gave him that look, I said “How could you not know? He had subscriptions to martha stewart living all over the place. He talked about lamps. He had two efemminate guys hanging around him all the time. Do the math”
I don’t know how I got through this movie. Absolutely every scene in it dragged on until I didn’t think it could drag on any further, and then it dragged some more. Dull, dull, dull. It could have been so much better than this. Stone had certainly done some preferable work in the past.
Hey, it’s good for curing insomnia, at least.
I saw the DVD “director’s cut” where Stone shortened it, and I’d give it a B minus. Other than the weird obession with the king being a man of the people and about freedom, it was not a historical monstrosity, but that alone made me dislike it. I think if someone is going to remake a historically based epic or piece of literature, like Alexander or Troy, one should could at least justify it by presenting something accurate to the source material. The flaws with Stone’s Alexander were the freedom politics and that Stone made one of history’s most exciting conqueror pretty boring.
As for Troy, well, sorry, Menalaus and Agammemon both made it home resulting in more interesting drama. And what was the deal with the gods in Troy? Achilles’ is presented as the son of a goddess, as in the Illiad, but no other God meddles in the story? And Eric Bana did a fine job as Hector, but he was hardly fearsome. Couldn’t they have made him appear bigger through camera tricks? I thought Peter O’Toole as Priam captured a spirit and fatalism true to Homer that the rest of the cast (except Brian Cox) missed entirely. Oh, and I did like the lovely lady who played Helen.
I once again have to give Hollywood marks for making some bizarre accent choices in the film - Alexander - Irish (even as a child), various other european accents, and Angelina - some strange almost russian sounding accent.
I did not know anything about the history of Alexander the Great before I rented this movie, except the fact that I assumed if he was “Great” there would have to be some pretty cool battle sequences.
I had also heard about the homesexual angle, which didn’t bother me.
What bothered me was that the whole movie seemed to focus on that (and only that).
That was it, in a nutshell. I never turn off movies, unless I find them extremely disturbing, but never for being stupid. I even finished watching Cool World for pete’s sake (hey, I paid for the damn thing I was going to watch it).
I turned off Alexander. I was just fed up.
Oh, yeah. I had forgotten that part. Was she trying to sound like Count Dracula or something? Too weird.
You said it better than I. Personally, I consider Master and Commander as one of my favorite movies.
That’s what I was wondering. They’re all supposed to be greek. Why the wierd accent from her?
Actually, Farell didn’t even sound Irish. He hasn’t sounded Irish to me in any movie I’ve seen him in. Maybe he just has a very subdued accent?
Gee, I liked it. Sure, the “freedom” stuff was anachronisitic, but didn’t ruin it for me. I thought the gay angle was underplayed and there was too much hetero sex.
I was happy that it wasn’t a mindless action movie, with wall-to-wall battle scenes. It also wasn’t a worshipful hagiography like Braveheart.
I also like that itwas actually about Ptolemy’s memories of Alexander-- an old man trying to explain a great man he once knew, bur never really undrerstood. In this way it reminded me of Gore Vidal’s *Julian * (a shame Vidal didn’t collaborate with Stone on this).
But then, I also liked KIngdom of Heaven.
Olympia wasn’t a Macedonian. She was from Illyria (or Thrace, I can’t remember which). I think the movie was trying to point out that she was a foreigner. The movie just sucked.
What I kept getting destracted by was Colin Farrell’s horrible blond wig. Some brown-haired people can convincingly be made to look blond. Mr. Farrell is not one of them. It was especially annoying because the most famous picture of Alex shows him with brown hair anyway. I also hated the treatment of Hephaistion. Hey Oliver! Gay lover doesn’t have to equal womanish wimp with long, flowing hair and mascara!
Mine, too. And shame on me, I’ve only seen it nine times so far.
I’ll echo the sentiment re: Farrell’s blond wig as a distraction. And I swear I heard some Irish as well. It just didn’t mesh with the character he purported to be playing in Alexander.
I agree with you that the sex scene was complete gratutious, and the subtext seems to be “Rape is Sexy”, but i do wonder how the gay angle can be underplayed when it takes up half the movie, or so it seems. This wasn’t THE HOURS, which was entirely about the gay angle, but it was supposed to be about a guy who conquered the known world(apparently). Okay, we get it, Alexander, you’re gay. Now that we’ve firmly established that point, can we move onto something else?
I would have liked to see more of that. I don’t need to see battle after battle after battle, but something more then what we were given.
Sounded like she was from Pottsylvania.
I saw trouble when Anthony Hopkins appeared. The most dependable turd-polisher working in movies today.
Mentioning Troy, Sean Bean also had a few excellent scenes as Odysseus, and lived up to his legendary craftiness. Sadly, he didn’t get much screentime.
Similarly, I rather liked Kilmer’s role in Alexander. He came acros very convincingly as a man who was a loudmouthed braggart, yet also did care deeply about his child and his child’s future. And as a man whom others could follow to war, even if he wasn’t cultured.
Frankly, I would have strangled Alexander’s mother with her own socks.
She was from the kingdom Epirus, which today would correspond to the mountainous coastal strip of western Greece and southern Albania ( which, incidentally, at one time modern Greece claimed as “north Epirus” ). The population was largely Greek, or at least Hellenized, with doubtless some Illyrians and whatnot mixed in. The royal family of the Molossians of which Olympias was a member, claimed descent from Achilles - a claim Alexander subsequently adopted through her.
Her daughter, Alexander’s full sister Cleopatra, was married to her brother, king Alexander of Epirus ( installed by Philip ), another adventurous would be imperialist who died fighting in Italy.
King Pyrrhus of Epirus was a slightly more distant relative, a grandnephew I think.
- Tamerlane
Gah! Epirus! I knew that!
I probably should turn in my Classics degree now…
It is certainly one of my favorites of the last ten years, and probably one of my all time favorites as well.
I am hoping for a sequel, as long as it is of similar quality.