As the previous rant would suggest, I had the rather dubious pleasure of seeing Alexander the other night. At the cheap theaters, of course. Otherwise my outrage would almost certainly have outweighted my sense of humour. I don't really begrudge a 200 million dollar production my three dollar ticket price, even if the film's only useful purpose is to serve as quote fodder. Which is fine by me, but I somehow doubt the film's producers will consider this factor as ample compensation for the meager fourty million box-office tally. Probably the only way to get a lower return percentage would be to throw in a crazy genie played by some basketball player who can't act. Although, sad to say, such an addition may even be an improvement to this movie.
By this point, those of you who haven't seen Alexander are probably wondering what could possibly make it so bad. To save you the pain of viewing this film, I'll attempt to explain how an idea with so much potential could be executed so very badly. It's clear that the director intended to provide an overview of Alexander's 33 year life. Although admittedly a short amount of time in which to conquer so much of the known world, it is still a long time to cover in a film, even one that stretches towards the three hour mark. In selecting the scenes to be shown in the movie, the director makes his first major mistake. Quite frankly, many of the segments shown are either insignificant, unnecessary or both. Such as two multi-minute scenes of women dancing in front of a bored Alexander. Or various people telling Alexander to give up his dreams of conquest and go home. They do manage to show a couple battle scenes, which are obviously somewhat more interesting. However, going only by the scenes shown in the film, one would be inclined to doubt Alexander's reputation in battle. In fact, he seems to lose every battle scene projected on the screen, leaving it up to the narrator to assure us that Alexander is indeed great. There's really no direct evidence of this anywhere in the film. For example, Alexander seems to lose a big battle against the Persians, only to have the narrator declare that he subsequently won the battle. This cuts us directly to a scene of celebration as he conquers Babylon. Alexander really is only great when he's off-screen. Come to think of it, the movie would be better off-screen as well.
All of the aforementioned details are really part of a bigger problem. Even with a huge budget, and the momentary excitement added by a battle with elephants, Alexander is simply a boring movie. It just goes to show that sinking a lot of money into a production doesn't necessarily make it intrinsically interesting. 200 million buys a lot of boring, but the quantity just doesn't substitute for quality. History seems to indicate that Alexander was a fascinating, powerful and persuasive figure. Unfortunately, the film would rather he be known by the moniker of Alexander the Boring.
Return to Jaridis Blade's Gallery of Quotes