Alexander is a dud

[JohD]

I have just returned from seeing this movie. I had not paid any attention to the lead-up publicity and it is fair to say that I hardly saw any promos whatsoever. My family, son 15, daughter 21 and wife draaged me to the movies. I love movies, but I have to say that this is the biggest load of @#@* I have ever seen. I know Alexander's story to some extent, my son is extremely familiar with it from DVD games (age of Empires etc) and we all regretted the sore bums at the end. Curious at what I believed to be a lot of hype of this movie, I now find that I could have saved myself the bother by reading some of the reviews. They are spot as far as I am concerned, too much emphasis in the movie on the homosexual angle. It was like an enforced homosexual indoctrination session. It detracted from the story as IMV, the homosexual angle is completely irrelevant to the Alexander story. Yet it was the main motive of the man, I mean Homosexual.It is a story of a homosexual that set out to win an empire, rather than the story of a great man, that may or may not have had homoerotic relationships, who achieved incredible feats by virtue of his inspiring leadership.The result is a dud. JohD

[Linda]

JohnWelcome. I don't think the "homosexual angle" is irrelevant, because it is part of who Alexander was. However, Stone's clumsy handling of this "issue" was probably due to being unsure of his audience's reactions. The ones who would object if it was left out, those who would object if it was put in. I think Alexander's relationship with his mother was far more of a problem. But both that and the relationship with Hephaestion were still at the drawing board stage - background motivations, theories, analogies were all lumped into clunky dialogue. They could have been condensed into a few good scenes, which would have shown the power Olympias had, and the love he had for Hepahestion, and what having that close relationshiop meant in political as well as emotional terms. The homosexual angle was far less than I expected - as some people have said, you could have missed it, especially as, like me, you got a bit turned off by the convoluted dialogue and drifted away occasionally. Some scenes were a bit cringy - Jared massaging Colin's neck. It was all so tentative and the blokes couldn't look each other in the eye. We expect better in this day and age.

[lucian]

So basically you didn't like the movie because it was too "gay"?I wouldn't call someone's love affair with anybody irrelevent to a person's life story. Although the movie could have focused more on his achievements as a conqueror and king, Hephaistion and Bagoas are relevent to his story, because he chose to make them important in his life, and as far as my opinion is concerned, kudos for Oliver Stone on being impartial to someone's tastes.

[S]

Frankly, a lot of the brouhaha about the so-called plethora of "homosexual overtones" in the movie is more indicative of the concerns, beliefs and fears of the viewers than of anything about the ancient world, Oliver Stone or the movie.Homoeroticism *was* prevalent in the ancient Greco-Makedonian world. It is true of any warrior culture, even today, whether that culture admits or acknowledges it or no. And that may well be the difference: the Greco-Makedonian world acknowledged what the modern age too often will not.It is also interesting how putting some innocuous homoerotic elements/images in a story evokes such outcry when heterosexual overtones, excessively graphic images and heterosexual socialization is relentlessly projected from every story, book and screen, whether it is of import to a story or not, and yet raises little outcry. The sexual scene between Roxanne and Alexander (which contributed nothing to the story and was the typical "exotic-woman" sexual fantasy) was far more graphic than any of the almost non-existant homosexual scenes; since it was the most graphic, why is the outcry not against *that*? Why should feeding audience voyeurism directed at heterosexual sex be "more acceptable" than the broad hints at homoeroticism found in this or any other movie? It feels like much ado about nothing except yet another volley in the artificial sex-obsessed "culture wars". The *real* disappointment was the poor story-telling, lack of clarity, lack of
character definition and almost comical dialogue.Regards,
Sikander