Rate "Alexander"...

[MrFilthyIke]

I'm the ony one that gave it a 7? I must have no taste.

The only thing that bugged me was, like so one quoted, that lack of focus.

I rather enjoyed watching the macho homo-phobic squirming of my fellow movie-goers.

 

[Krieg]

Anyone know if the Scorsese/DiCaprio or Ridley Scott/Heath Ledger projects about the Lion of Macedon are still going forward.

There are going to be three War of the Worlds films, why not three Alexander ones?

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

Three WOTW? I only know of two... the Spielberg one and the British period one. What's the other?

 

[Krieg]

There is an animated version being done based on Jeff Wayne's 70's prog-rock album.

 

[talinthas]

this is easily the worst movie i've seen since the third matrix came out.
the only things saving it were Jolie's performance, and the greek letters they used to spell out actor names.

the story glossed over pretty much everything that made alexander great, and stuck to a really dull homoerotic love story/hopeless war in afghanistan thing. that's three hours of my life i'll never have back.

(for the record though, the homosexuality didn't bother me at all. it was just the utterly cheeseball way in which it was portrayed that bugged me. i've seen better same sex romances in gundam fanfic written by 12 year old girls.)

 

[Capellan]

For me, the two killers for this fil were:

- Colin Farrell's performance
- the fact that they made a three hour movie with a narrator and they still couldn't convey any real sense of the progress of Alexander's life. Ptolemy could have just said "Alexander had Oedipal issues, then he conquered Persia, married some chick with really fake-looking bosoms,failed to conquer India, and died" and it would have been about on a par with what we got.

 

[talinthas]

god, the portrayal of india pissed me off. When Alexander got there, he didnt run into painted tribals. Three of the most populated and urban cities in India were up in that area (Taxila, etc). His army was soundly stomped by the rising forces of Chandragupta Maurya and his amazing tactical advisor, Channakya. Indeed, the first empress of India in the Mauryan Period was the daughter of one of Alexander's generals.

Also, i wish the movie would have explained the Zoroastrian symbolism a bit more. I understood it, because my best friend is a parsee, but i'm sure most of america had no idea what it meant or why they kept showing it.

 

[shilsen]

god, the portrayal of india pissed me off. When Alexander got there, he didnt run into painted tribals. Three of the most populated and urban cities in India were up in that area (Taxila, etc). His army was soundly stomped by the rising forces of Chandragupta Maurya and his amazing tactical advisor, Channakya.

[Nitpick]Alexander never fought the Mauryas, mainly because Chandragupta doesn't come to power (322 BC) till a couple years after Alexander has already left India (325 BC). Alexander could potentially have fought the Nandas, but considering the size of their army it would have been a very bad idea, and it is essentially the prospect of fighting them that made his soldiers revolt and end his conquests. After Chandragupta overthrows Nanda, he fights and defeats Seleucus Nicator, whom Alexander had left in charge of this section of the empire, and marries his daughter.[/Nitpick]

 

[dzeeman]

Best thing about the movie was the audience!

I just saw Alexander the I-gotta-piss-after-two-hours-and-my-toes-have-gone-numb.

It was amazing to see the swing of emotions from the mostly male audience at the Bridge Theater at Penn in Philly:

Alexander slices some guys legs off: "Whoa! , man! Cool! Awesome!"

Farrel whispers sweet nothings into Jared Leto's ear: "ugh..., *giggle*, aww...c'mon!"

I gave Alexander a 3 for daring and a few cool battle scenes, but it was a terrible movie. Why the blonde dye-job? Also, I've seen Farrel act without his accent in several movies, why let him speak all "Top-O-the-Morning" with an historical Macedonian character?

I wonder if the idiot Greek lawyers are outraged because they really don't know any better - mostly because Greece's Greek Orthodox-influenced school systems don't teach the historical truth about their own amazing, albeit pre-Christian, civilization.

 

[Knightfall]

I'm the ony one that gave it a 7? I must have no taste.

The only thing that bugged me was, like so one quoted, that lack of focus.

I rather enjoyed watching the macho homo-phobic squirming of my fellow movie-goers.

I kind of like this movie too, so you're not the only one who gave it 7 out of 10. It was reallly long and I can see how some would view the movie as having lack of focus.

The way I look at it is that people (including me) sometimes have expectations of how a character, or time period, should be portrayed. Now, that's always a bad thing, but directors like Oliver Stone don't give a rats *** what we expect. He does what he wants, the way he wants, and if nobody likes it, too bad.

For me, I didn't have a whole lot of expectations going into this movie. All I wanted was a movie that was true to the time period, as I didn't have a whole whole lot of knowledge about Alexander the Great, other than he marched an army across Asia, conquering all he could.

Bad accents didn't register, neither did any supposedly horrible acting, and I wasn't squirming in my seat due to the homo-erotic content. Why? Because the movie depicted a different time period, a time before Christ. (I could say more, but that would be too political and/or religious.) The whole snake thing, now that was really creepy, but was appropriate too.

Plummer was unnoticable, Jolie was ok, Farrell and Hopkins were good, Kilmer was excellent.

The battle scenes made the movie for me, especially the fight against the elephants. I liked the part where Alexander is staring at the mountains, musing how the world is much bigger than was thought. I liked the part where Philip is showing (young) Alexander the painting in the cave.

Anyway, 7 out of 10.

[EDIT]
Both Troy and Gladiator were much better, IMO. (Gladiator still rules. Troy is a close second.)
[/EDIT]

Cheers!

KF72