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Director Blames Audience for Film Failure

Often-controversial director Oliver Stone has blamed the failure of his epic film Alexander on the "raging fundamentalism" in the U.S. South... Some conservative groups objected to Alexander's portrayal of the famous warrior as a bisexual. - more

Interestingly, the historian Plutarch, while probably embellishing Alexander's character, describes Alexander as follows,

"Alexander was always very chaste and courteous in his relations with the opposite sex, and he had a great respect for the institution of marriage.

The representation of the Greek rulers sexuality by Stone is fictional, an "interpretation" by the writer who had a definite agenda, the glorification of a homosexual relationship.

There are other fundamental flaws that in the movie that Stone needs to own up to as well.

I've come to greatly respect Brian Godowa, author of Hollywood Worldviews [Note - Brian Godawa is the screenwriter for the award-winning feature film, To End All Wars. His book teaches the reader how to undercover the underlying worldview present in every movie and is a must read - order it today for about $10]. Here is his view of Stone's Alexander:

11/9/04 Alexander Not Recommended At All.

BORING. A movie about Alexander the Great done by Oliver the Amateur. I don’t get it. I don’t understand how studio execs just keep giving away tons of money to this guy who makes terrible movies that don’t make money. I am personally offended by Stone’s arrogant selfishness that actually thinks he deserves three hours for all his movies when they barely deserve one hour fifty minutes. He reminds me of Scorsese. These guys are the kings of terrible epics and colossal wastes of money. This is a boring homosexual epic. Everything is too long from the very start of the boringly drawn out title sequence in the beginning, followed by a long boring droning and redundant monologue by Anthony Hopkins as Ptolemy, Then followed by long boring battle sequences that are attempted to be salvaged by giving it a Lord of the Rings rip off soundtrack. We see a long boring inspirational speech by Alexander to his troops when facing King Darius. This is so boring, even to Stone himself, that he fades out of it and onto a flying eagle, and then fades back into the boring speech being boringly concluded. Well, I’ve got to say, Stone didn’t have a conspiracy here, so that’s new, I guess. But unfortunately, like it or not, Americans are simply not interested in, nor do they connect with a homosexual “love” story. This movie will absolutely BOMB at the box office because not only is it way too long and boring, but you just don’t care for any of the characters, including Alexander himself. Look, let’s face it, all these lines about undying eternal love and devotion just don’t ring with truth at all in the mouths of Mr. Bisexual Alex and his sex buddy. Try as hard as he may, it’s inherently fallacious. Most people just won’t buy it. How many times are they going to reference the homosexual relationship of Achilles and Patroclus? (Must have been about 6 times). Okay, okay, we got your little analogy. And besides, what’s so heroic about this genocidal murdering bloody warrior, who invaded other countries, not even for gold or wealth, (which is supposed to be some kind of virtue to the Stone) but simply to conquer and be king of all. Yeah, that’s a real hero. What a great guy for trying to unify the whole world -- UNDER HIS THUMB.

[etc - read the full review here]

Posted by tim at January 6, 2005 4:53 PM

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