pothos.org

Michael,
What somewhat irked me about the Guagamela battle, besides the combining of three battles into one, was the lack of size and scale involved. Also, there was a double phalanx at this battle, Stone shows only one deep. Overall, it was better done than I thought possible. That Hydaspes battle is the one that leaves me with goose bumps every time I see it though. Nicator

Yes, I think the Hydaspes battle well conveys the sense of imminent disaster that must have engulfed the Macedonians. I'm not at all convinced it was fought in a Thai jungle-like forrest but again, I suppose that makes for easier filming: reduce the scale. Such reduced scale also helped with the sense of just restrained panic.Too pedantic to whingeing about the wounding in said battle? Probably - the demands of movie making would demand Alexander be near killed in one his most amazing set piece battles than some forgotten Indian village of little consequence eh?

I was thinking about this only a little while ago. In some ways I would rather have had Stone include the Mallian siege than the Hydaspes, not least because we didn't see any other sieges. He could have made it much bigger and significant - even made *that* the battle against Porus (he'd already changed the 'facts', so he could easily have changed them in a different way!).Still, I agree with you about how he did the battle - you do get a sense that it was a desperate fight, and Alexander does get into an isolated position when he's wounded, so the spirit, if not the letter of the incident is retained.ATBMarcus

Agreed,I would add another worthless point, that Stone was overwhelmingly biased by Renault. A point that I can easily relate to, as most of the earliest parts of my book were suffering from the same malady. Last month while writing the sections from Persepolis to India I re-wrote the legend of the meeting with the Amazon queen. This was the first section I wrote (and the inspiration for the book), and hopefully the last Renaultism forced re-write. I'm not slamming her, not by far. I loved her book. She wrote lovingly about her subject, but her historical accuracy bordered on fiction a bit too often.