hmm. interesting. okies. was it big? heheh j/k

My teacher and classmate who saw it say it sucks, I guess I will wait till the DVD to judge the film.

The grade 'E' is actually used in some parts of the world.

This was for sure one of my most anticipated movies 2004. I love these type of movies, Gladiator, Braveheart, Troy... I love them all. But this one disapointed me in so many ways. I hated how they told the story, i felt no emotional connection to any of the characters, farrell was just miscast beside the scenes where he was drunk, Anthony Hopkins really annoyed me (never imagined that could happen), really bad battle-speech, farrell crying in every second scene, the child alexander was really bad,... The gay scenes were not my thing too. There just was too much for me. I'm a big Colin fan. I think he's a great actor (Phone Booth, Tigerland, Recruit..) but he just didn't fit as Alexander. I never saw him as the big leader he was. But there were some things I liked, too. In the second half were some pretty good scenes (about 3 or 4), the end battle was pretty good beside the fact all went somehow pink. I don't liked that. Val Kilmer was excellent as Farrells father and Angelina Jolie deserves an Oscar nod, IMO. She was awesome. I loved her performance and she looked never better. I will definately watch this again to see if I like it more, now that I know what to expect. Some movies I have to see several times to appreciate them. I hope this happens with this one too. My grade for now is about a C-

Alexander - A-

I thought it was excellent. It was a proper epic film about a great leader. i feel that because it wasnt like Gladiator or Troy even, people didnt like it, which is basically just summer blockbuster entertainment, regardless of when they were released. The battle scenes in this were spectacular, the best ive ever seen. The story was amazing too and the bi-sexual story line didnt bother me also, it was hardly there!!!! Best battle film of 2004, probably ever.

Average KJ User Rating: C

Actually, I think the critics were way off on Alexander. It was far worse then they made it out to be. :razz:

A very nice movie I would give a 8-9/10.
Face it. Gladiator and Troy are action movies compared to this historic epic that really tries to get Alexanders Char.
Sure sometimes it could have been a bit faster but no wonder if you wanted an action fantasy like LOTR.
I also didnt like Angelina "I have been to eastern europe to pull out an awfully eastern accent.Seriously they talk like this there" Jolie.

All in all a nice movie about an important person in history with really stunning visuals. Not for the action crowd I guess.

8-9/10

The Gaugamela battle scene still stands as the best in a long long time.

Really? Wasn't that a 2-minute battle?

I thought every battle in every recent historical epic was better. By that point in the movie I was already regretting ever going near it, and while it might have been slightly better then the rest I suppose, but nothing impressed me visually, and the whole thing was a mess that was hard to care about or even pay attention too.

No, it lasted at least for 8-10 minutes, I think.

is this the one with that "conquer fears" line? if so, i just happened to switch it on at that exact moment, and have been watching some of the battle that follows...pretty great looking, at least. :o oh well, doubt i'll ever watch it in full.

You should give it a try. It is not half as awful as many make it seem. It is very very flawed, but there are some brilliant parts underneath a lot of crap... Also, visually, the movie is very nice.

I can't make it through this movie. It seems so flawed, incoherent, LONG, and appalling. Blech.

edit

Really the thing I really hated about this film was that three times in the film you had these scenes were everything was getting so over dramatic it was laughable. They were the scenes were Alexander started fighting with his own men and there is lots of yelling and crying and screaming and you seem some terribile acting from all the actors here.
If you make a film about a great man it would be sensible to use a great actor as well.

Curious if anyone has seen "The Final Cut" that Stone released. I haven't seen any version but kind of stayed away from the original release because of the awful WOM. I'd be curious to check out "The Final Cut" if it's actually better.

No final cut could save this film.

I love this movie. It has its flaws--Angelina Jolie seems to be acting in a whole different film, for example--but I find it SO entertaining. It's so soapy and bombastic and entertaining and, at times, sexy. It's very much...alive. And, in my opinion, Colin Farrell's performance as Alexander is underrated. It almost reminds me of, gulp, Lawrence of Arabia--an iconic man shown as equal parts heroic, fey, nuts, and noble.

To date, Alexander, for better or worse, is the last time Oliver Stone swung 100% for the fences. His subsequent films, even W., have been so mild in temperament and safe in trajectory. I miss the old Oliver Stone. If he made Talk Radio today, I bet it would end with the host reconciling with his ex, toning down his rhetoric, and tearfully talking the assassin into putting down the gun.

Per Mike's question, I saw the theatrical version twice in theatres and a few more times on DVD, and I've watched the Final Cut twice on Blu-ray. I never saw the interim version. I have a lot of affection for the theatrical version, but the Final Cut is the one to see. If you're going to give this a whirl, you might as well go big and just see the full version.

And this version has the most complete, poignant version of the Farrell/Leto romance, FYI.

Alexander Revisited: The Final Unrated Cut

I preferred this when I saw it in cinemas.. This version is far too long. There's one messy battle at the beginning then another at the end, and that's it other than a lot of talking. It's 214 minutes long - and it's not as boring as one might think, but still not exactly what I'd call "enjoyable".

The best (and only good) scene comes when Alexander dies in India (or so I thought), it's in slow-motion, and it's quite powerfully shot. It's funny how the only good scene is one in slow-motion. It speaks volumes of how erratic the battle filming is. I think that none of the acting is bad per se, but the entire cast is, well .. mis-cast, especially Jolie and Farrell, for me that never clicked, and it still doesn't.

D

Dp

I ignored this film when it was released due to the poor reviews. I was young, so a movie receiving bad reviews probably wasn't worth spending my limited money on.

I bought the Ultimate Cut (a slightly shorter cut of The Final Cut) this week and decided to watch it before the theatrical cut. And... the critics were very wrong, and the audience reception (which mostly seems to be a US market issue) was quite unfair. At least the Ultimate (and presumed Final) Cut. I can't imagine losing 40+ mins if I go watch the theatrical now. It probably has a lot of issues. But back to the Ultimate Cut:

This is perhaps the most accurately portrayed film based on antiquity put on screen. It honestly surprised me how closely Oliver Stone stuck to the historical documents, journals, etc., in the film. But this may also be why some audiences didn't like it because any accurate portrayal of Ancient Greece isn't going to popular with some modern audience just due to how different the times were.

I'll start with what seemed to be the biggest issue with some - the 'bisexuality/homoerotic" stuff. First, these terms and the idea that someone had a sexual identity didn't exist back then. It was normal and common for the people of Ancient Greece, especially the men of noble or elite status, to have same-sex relationships, including with young boys entering puberty. It's an uncomfortable topic today, yes, the latter anyway, but it was commonplace in many city-states throughout Greece and wasn't considered sexual in nature as it or most relationships are today. The adult men took on younger boys in more of a mentor role to prepare them for adulthood, and yes, this would include sexual interactions.

And it was common for adult men, again, typically of nobility or higher status, to have same-sex lovers along with wives. It was expected of them to marry a woman to have children, and it was at the same time acceptable to have male lovers too. At least if you were in the dominant, masculine role and not the submissive, feminine role if you were in adulthood. There was still a sigma then if you were a full grown man that allowed (or wanted) to still penetrate you, more or less.

There was no gay, straight, bi, etc. No sexual orientations. It was all about the roles and status back then, so it can feel unfamiliar or uncomfortable for some, even alien, when trying to wrap your head around. But this is where many movies (or other adaptations, books, games, etc) usually fail at being historically accurate. Not just related to sexual orientation, but many other subjects.

Filmmakers or creators try to make the ancient world feel relatable by applying modern ideology to it and to make the characters feel more relatable, but fact is... we can't relate to someone or some event from back then (at least Ancient Greece in this case). It's far too common for Hollywood, for example, to "Americanize" the classics or historical texts because it's both easier and more relatable for audiences today if they can understand and compare a character or events to themselves.

So I applaud Oliver Stone for being a very rare case of actually adapting this film while staying true to the texts. If this film had come out a couple years later, in the post Brokeback Mountain landscape, he probably would have been even more accurate. You really shouldn't be finding Alexander or any character relatable, exactly. And Alexander having three wives and a few male lovers, one especially notable one, is supposed to feel maybe alien to some. But that's historical fact, and it's something that the vast majority adult men of high status did in Ancient Greece. It wasn't like Alexander was a unique case which I think some seem to believe. He was just like everyone else in regard to this subject.

Now that that's out of the way, wanted to address it first because it seemed to be among the biggest complaints. (I think someone in this thread even said Stone should have read a history book... umm...quite the opposite).

Another complaint are the accents which is more fair, however... it feels pretty clear they decided on Irish accents for the Macedonians as a whole to portray them as what was considered the backwater state of Greece for a long time. And Jolie's sort of Russian accent wasn't random, I don't think, but rather a choice to show she wasn't from Macedon. It's fair to argue if an accent is bad, but if they're to differentiate different people's from ancient times... I'm more willing to give them a pass. It's better than having everyone in the film speak with a American accent, IMO.

Some of the acting gets criticized in its overacting or dramatic tones. This also didn't bother me, and when it did happen, I kept being reminded of how it kinda felt like a stage play at times. And state plays, of course, were an important aspect of Ancient Greece. Is it wrong to have this in a movie? Perhaps. But the acting as a whole was solid. And Jolie's acting seeming like she wasn't in the right place, honestly, it works here. Her character wasn't from this area so her acting and accent being different works out and I'm sure she was told to act in such a manner to portray this.

Finally, the battles, the two big ones at the beginning and then near the end. The Battle of Guagamela in the beginning has been considered one of, if not the number one, best portrayals of Ancient combat put on film and it's true. There are some slight critiques, it still fell into the "chaos" when two sides meet that Hollywood likes to do, and chariots while used in battles, yes, weren't as prevalent this late in history and were more often used as transport around the battlefield instead of for battle themselves. But the formations and details of how the battle unfolded were spot on.

The Battle of Hydaspes was less accurate and got the more typical Hollywood treatment. This was another easy victory for Alexander, but here it's made to look almost losing or 50/50 for Alexander and his army. He doesn't get greatly injured here, nor does his horse die here (Plutarch writes it died of old age, so it likely wasn't even in this battle). However, it's not all bad or inaccurate. The best thing is probably how they portrayed the horses actually being scared of the elephants. Horses are skittish when confronted with something unfamiliar, and a war elephant is about as unfamiliar as it would have gotten for them. In too many movies do we see calvary just charging ahead without fear and breaking enemy lines. This is a Hollywood invention, really, so Oliver Stone choosing to have the horses act like horses would here is a big plus in my eyes.

Lastly, the movie does a very good job with Alexander's death and the aftermath of it. If you think about it, it was one of the most consequential deaths in history. Without an heir and without choosing an heir, the vast empire he created became divided and fell apart, and eventually the Romans conquered Greece. If he had had an already born son(s), or at least had named a heir, the state of history, including today, would have been very, very different. The movies does well in showing this and is precisely accurate in the aftermath of his death, including getting the details of his bloodline (his mom, his wives and children, notably Roxana and their son) being murdered/executed in the short years thereafter.

I get people not liking the movie because it's long, it can be boring if you're looking for the typical action Hollywood delivers in these films, but it's just about as close to being historically accurate and a great retelling of Alexander's life as you're going to get in a single movie.

I have to give it an A- just because Oliver Stone actually attempted, and largely succeeded, in directing a film about Alexander's life. There is far more that's accurate in the film and it left nearly nothing out with the characters and events it chose to cover. So many directors "Americanize" their sword and sandals movies, and Stone clearly wanted to avoid doing that here. So kudos for him.

My only real complaint is how often we go back and forth through time during Alexander's life. It has to be at least a dozen times or more. I don't know if a single film could be done without jumping around like this, and I imagine people not as well-read about Alexander were often confused, but there were a couple moments where it took a bit to realize when this part was happening.

EDIT: I wanted to add that Ancient Greece, by modern standards, can be viewed as misogynistic. Again, it was a different time and it's okay to feel uncomfortable when it's displayed, but most films skip over it. And while Stone doesn't go all-in on the topic, he does a great job to showcase how women were thought to be a weak mess, or even tormenter of men. From Aristotle discussing love between a man/man and man/woman to a young Alexander and the other boys, to Phillip showing a young Alexander the paintings while discussing it, to the relationship Alexander has with his mom, this movie does showcase quite a lot of this compared to other movies.

From the Fates, the Furies, the Grey Sisters (lots of groups of three's), and more, women and female characters of both myth and history in these times often serve a message to boys/men.