Alita wrote: As these are the days of Alexander the Great's birthday, I thought it would be a good time to finally watch the 'Alexander' film. Not meaning to sound negative but I was really disappointed! I mean I was really disappointed. I don't know how else to put it but I was just really disappointed!
Yes, I've been celebrating Alexander's birthday too. I think watching the movie would be a good way to do that, so I'm sorry to hear you were disappointed.
Alita wrote:
To think this is the best modern moviemakers can come up with to remember the man who united East and West.
Well, assuming that Oliver Stone is not among those present, I think it's only fair to point out that he had a clear vision and purpose, that he has set out in numerous interviews, and I think he succeeded on those terms. A film maker has to have a vision of what he is trying to achieve. He could not give us 'your' Alexander, or 'my' Alexander, he could only give us his own Alexander. What he was trying to do was show us the man, what he was like and more importantly, what made him like that. He was also keen to show that we are all constantly affected by what has gone before in our own lives, and how patterns repeat themselves, which is why he made so much use of flashbacks and avoided a linear narrative.
Alita wrote:
The man who inspired every great name from Napoleon to J.R.R. Tolkien, who once united an island to the mainland, who scaled an unscalable mountain and spread his fame even to the mermaids who know his name...
Crumbs, Alita, delighted though I am to hear someone praising his inspiration, even I draw the line at mermaids....
Alita wrote:
Is this the best we can do? Barely 2 battle scenes and the rest a mixture of orgy and emotional claptrap. So many meaningful and important quotes left out, so many opportunities to show his goodness and kingliness blithely ignored!
Oh yes, so much missed out - I'm sure everyone's got their own list of things they wish had been included. But again, Oliver Stone had thought long and hard about what he was doing, and many things were only missed out because there wasn't time or money to include them. It wasn't that he didn't know about them, or didn't care. Two battle scenes, yes, but very different, and showing something of the differences between the earlier and the later battles. Just consider the elephant battle, how cleverly he incorporated elements from so many different events - that he didn't have time to show separately - in one battle.
As for emotional claptrap, that depends on whether you would classify all emotional scenes as claptrap. If you would, then there isn't much I can say. But if you accept that Alexander could be very emotional - and I think there is plenty of evidence that he could - then such scenes have their place, don't you think? Relationships of all kinds were one of the key ways Oliver Stone wanted to show what Alexander was like.
He could have done it very differently - but if he had shown us all the battles and sieges in perfect detail, we would have been left thinking, yes, but what was he like as a man? The trouble with Alexander is, the story is just too big to get everything in, and it doesn't end happily, making it not really fit the usual story-telling mould.
It's thanks to Oliver Stone's persistence and vision that it was made at all, and I think it was an honest and brave attempt, with extraordinary devotion to historical accuracy. I would give great credit to the cast too, who, given the constraints of the script, did a wonderful job, and the set designers and everyone, including Vangelis for his inspirational score.
I don't know which of the three released versions you saw, but the Theatrical Version, IMHO, is an underrated masterpiece that has been unfairly maligned in the press by people who really didn't know enough to judge it, and one day, it will be re-assessed and given the honour it deserves.
Fiona
