Fri 29 Jul 2005
“Stone Blames Alexander Reception on American Youth” (Contactmusic.com)
Oliver Stone blames the abyssmal failure of his flopbuster “Alexander” on “inevitable result of America’s youth misunderstanding ancient history.” What he should be blaming is a) his own continued misreading of history and b) his unfulfilling way of telling whatever history he’s trying to convey. Especially in this movie. The scenes with Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) were so awful: the lighting was stark and unnatural, the backdrop was so poorly integrated with the set, and the set design looked cheap and artificial; it lacked refining.
Then, Stone casts Brad Pitt Colin Farrell as Alexander. Sorry, but Brad Pitt Colin Farrell has no Pathos to convey, so he was a terrible choice. He’s a very talented actor (think 12 Monkeys), but definitely the wrong guy for the job. Like all movies in that price range, it had some amazing CG moments, but CG does not a movie make. There has to be story. In fact, in movie making, story is everything and the only thing. Everything else about the movie (the music, the sound, the CG, etc.) should all be in service to story. However, like most Hollywood movies nowadays, story isn’t king. It’s the CG, or the movie stars, or the director that is touted above story, and in the case of “Alexander” Stone’s garbled the story, as he ususally does, so what was left was a shill of a movie.
Stone’s best quote from the article above:
“My reputation has been battered to death so many times, I’m surprised I’m still alive.”
So are we. To quote a song from Team America: “Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?” Just substitute Ollies’ name instead.
UPDATE: I corrected myself to mean “Colin Farrell” not Brad Pitt. I had just watched “Troy” when I made this post, so I had Brad Pitt on the brain I guess. Sigh. Thanks to Sheldon for pointing that out.
August 4th, 2005 at 9:15 am
Where did you get the idea that Brad Pitt is in “Alexander?” Colin Farrell stars, not Pitt.
Pitt plays Achilles in “Troy.”
August 4th, 2005 at 10:56 am
LOL! I had just watched Troy for the first time before I made this post, so I guess I had Brad Pitt on the brain. I meant Colin Farrell. Thanks for the correction.
August 10th, 2005 at 11:09 pm
that film is disaster
bablyone is not center of persia
persopolise and susx was and o my god what fake history about darius and persian
persian rolled over world over 400 years in such army
it s unbeliveble
alexander was great man because of great enemies !!!!
January 21st, 2007 at 6:14 am
good film unfairly slated…. In my opinion it conveys many aspects of Alexander very cleverly. Perhaps if you knew and understood the story, the rumours, and the mystery then the subtleties of the fim would nto go over your head and you’d enjoy it more.
January 21st, 2007 at 12:27 pm
As I think should have been clear by the quantity of words directed towards it, my main problem with the film was that it was a badly told story, not that I didn’t understand it. Stone has that problem sometimes, because he’s storytelling technique is more like propaganda than it is entertainment. Since I did formally study Classics at UCLA, I was a little better informed than average about the literature.