. . . Now, I hate right-wing fundies as much as anyone, Ollie, but it couldn’t be because, umm, just maybe, your film sucked?
You mean the public was tricked away from your obvious greatness, Mr Stone?
Yep it must be a conspiracy. You are no hack sir, so the Fundies must be up to some plot. (Plot would have been a good idea in that monstrosity by the way, Mr Stone)
You know maybe you could wip up a new Conspiracy movie out of it.
From the movie’s star, Colin Farrell: “The film is a draining experience to watch. It’s loaded with mythology, icons, symbolism and destiny. My friends have watched the film and said: ‘Jesus Christ it’s not exactly Gladiator.’” (bolding mine).
I think Colin summed it up nicely!
Hmmmm. Methinks even that backhanded coment gives the film too much credit.
To be fair, Stone’s statements don’t seem to me to add up to anything like “Right-wing fundies made my film flop.” It sounds to me like he’s blaming the critics for concentrating on Stone himself (and Alexander’s sexuality) instead of just reviewing the movie.
For the record, I saw *Alexander * and loved it. It’s not an action film , but rather a character study and a questioning look at the idea of militarty conquest (is it ever justified?). Stone presents Alexander’s strengths and weaknesses, his triumphs and failures, and lets the viewer judge.
It deserved, IMHO, to be a big hit–but then, so did Sky Captain.
The problem was that the movie didn’t suck. Jared Leto going down on Colin Farrell would have been a relief from all the silly Freudian symbolism.
I think Alexander is suffering the same fate as Caligola. The movie may seem like its mythical and legendary but it is in fact rather down to earth. Everything bad that can happen eventually does and the director didn’t concern himself too much with protecting viewers from overt sexuality (which i might add is well on par with the violence and doesn’t really stand out that much). The fact is Alexander’s is a looong story with many moments of boredom, tension and fear. So when the film about Alexander contains all those I think it speaks for it rather then against it. After watching Gladiator what do I know about that Maximus dude? That he was a generic action hero. After watching Alexander I know a lot about his reasons, motivations and generally why he did what he did. As far as this one goes - screw the critics it could have been much worse.
I read his interview in Playboy and concluded that he is just plain old nuts.
The defeat of Alexander in the theaters was inevitable – after all, it was going up against The Incredibles. 
(Oliver Stone vs. Pixar? Sorry, Ollie…)
::spew::
Thanks for the Diet Dr. Pepper on my screen.
I came to that conclusion after watching JFK.
This movie got a truly hilarious bitch-slapping in that noted right-wing fundamentalist journal The New Yorker.
Who are you going to believe: Stone, or 144 out of 168 film critics?
While I certainly noticed where the film was headed, I didn’t think that’s why it sucked. I say it sucked because it was well-acted but poorly edited/directed. The battles were a total loss, the film lacked any unifying theme, and Alexander, while interesting in himself, had no real relationship to anything or anyone else in the movie. The chronological bumps could have been used well, but, well, weren’t.
Ironically, I don’t exactly favor homosexuality, but the homsexual aspect was arguably the most entertaining part of the movie, simply because the rest was so ill-used. By the end I felt like I didn’t know any character in the movie except his parents.
The alternative would have been to do as Martin Scorsese did with Howard Hughes: portrayed a middle section of the character’s life, with a brief flashback to his childhood and some foreshadowing of his ultimate fate* (and excised Hughes’ homosexuality entierly).
Even if Stone had done this, we’d still have been subjected to Angelina Jolie sounding like Natasha Fatale from Bullwinkle, but lost Brian Blessed’s cameo.
*Stone kept showing an what looked like an eagle soaring above the deathbed, even though Alexander died from an infected mosquito bite. Man, they must have some big bugs over there!
How does Stone explain those of us who do “favor homosexuality” but still had no interest in seeing the movie?
Alexander wasn’t gay ENOUGH?
Well, that might have helped (or rather, “not helped”). But I don’t think fundies would go see an Oliver Stone film anyway. It’s not like Stone has a “Disney-like” reputation for quality, family filmmaking.
But no… the main reason “we in the South” didn’t read the reviews (or see the movie) is because Oliver Stone hasn’t directed a good film since 1988 (Talk Radio), or possibly 1995 (Nixon).
Maybe he secretly hates left-wing homos, and produced a bad film on purpose.
I’m a right-wing fundy by SDMB standards & I’m disappointed my local theatre didn’t get ALEXANDER. (I asked the Mgr & he said the company decided the abundance of family films out would do better business so they were held over & thus no room was made for Alexander.)
If I avoided Entertainment Media because of my politics or homophobia, I’d hardly see anything! L