"Alexander," the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Movie

Amanda: Happy Thanksgiving to you, too!!

Sarah: I still haven’t seen any “Firefly…” but I may go see “Serenity” when it comes out. I’m guessing Ryan may get that DVD set before too long; we’ll have to wait and see if I could borrow.

Anonymous (Is that you, Kristen Nicole?): Thanks for the update. Nic’s good health – one more thing to be thankful for. Any idea what it was?

Okay, so this evening, our whole family went to the movies. Mom and Mimi went to see “Finding Neverland,” which they very much enjoyed. Grandpa and Uncle Mike saw “Ray,” which they liked. Dad and I saw “Alexander.”

After having changed the channel when we pay-per-viewed “Lost In Translation,” you would think we would have learned our lesson, but now it’s hammered into our heads: DON’T CHOOSE MOVIES on the basis of a mutual “Meh, I guess I’d see that.”

(Note: Our original plan was to see “Christmas with the Kranks,” which is also receiving poor critical reviews, but I’d still like to see, since I enjoyed John Grisham’s novella, “Skipping Christmas,” on which it was based. However, since the first showing we could have seen was sold out, we changed our plans. BAD move. Knowing that Dad might have wanted to see “Ray” again, I should have jumped in with Mom and Mimi.)

I’m not prepared to call “Alexander” the worst movie I’ve ever seen. That dishonor still goes to either “Vanilla Sky,” which we also made the mistake of pay-per-viewing, or “Grind,” which my roommate likes (and which was also produced by an Oklahoman, as I’m rather ashamed to admit). However, I will reserve for “Alexander” the title of “Most Barf-Worthy Movie I’ve Ever Seen.”

Thankfully, it was light on the side of language. I don’t recall hearing a single swear word. Beyond that, though, there was everything else that’s wrong with R-rated movies… excessive gore, gratuitous nudity, and some NASTY suggestive content.

Plus, and this was particularly irksome to me, not only did they not get the classical history right, they completely BUTCHERED it.

Thank goodness they didn’t put “the Great” in the movie title. It certainly wasn’t.

Setting aside for a moment the fact that the movie was based around the revisionist historian’s idea that Alexander was bisexual (ICK ick ick… bad scene…), it was just a bad movie even beyond that. The dialogue was hokey, and the parts of history that were changed just for the sake of drama (adding in a final battle that convinced Alexander to turn back rather than just having him turn around at the mutiny itself) came off cheesy and melodramatic. The gore in the battle scenes was severely overdone (to the point of being non-realistic), and the battle scenes were just badly done. A couple of shots were even labeled “Macedonian Left” or “Macedonian Center,” as if it were a play-by-play or a reality TV show, and then ignored captioning the Persian legions or even the Macedonian right flank during cut-aways. And despite the fact that the costumes and weaponry looked realistic enough, the final battle (given that it never REALLY happened) seemed like an excuse to rip off the Battle of the Pelennor Fields from “Return of the King,” with archers on elephants marching against swordsmen on horses.

The shot that had Alexander rearing back on his horse against the rearing elephant was just goofy-looking, too.

Then there’s the camera work. The battles were shot in jittery, attention-deficit shots that shook the camera and shot from all sorts of crazy angles and made the viewer dizzy. It was as if the aforementioned portion of “Return of the King” was filmed by the cameramen and editors of the opening montage from “NYPD Blue.”

Then there’s the whole issue of the nasty worldview of the movie. Thankfully, the only real “sex scene” was with Alexander and his wife (though it didn’t need to be quite what it was; they could have left her covered up much much longer), but there was enough suggestive stuff in there that the whole point of the movie seemed to be “he couldn’t have conquered the world without the love of another guy.” Blegch. Now, I realize that there are historians who have asserted this idea, but I think they’re mostly just grasping for justification of their own acceptance of modern practices (still notably lacking in morals). Of course the people of the Hellenistic world had their own bizarre practices, but I think the extent in today’s widespread historical thought to which these practices were popular among the Greeks and Romans has probably been greatly exaggerated. The movie was just drivel that romanticized a stupid theory about an otherwise great figure in history (apparently, though, according to Dad, that’s Oliver Stone’s specialty).

Of course, they acknowledge the “rewriting” of history in the case of how Alexander died by having Ptolemy I change it when having his scribes write it down… but the other bits, like that irksome final battle, went into movie pseudo-history. Blegch again.

The movie wasn’t completely terrible; the scenery was magnificent. The reconstructions of Babylon and the Egyptian Alexandria were amazing, with the Alexandrian lighthouse, the Hanging Gardens, and the newly built Ishtar Gate stealing their scenes even as part of the backdrop. The shooting locations for India and the Hindu Kush, also, upstaged the actors completely. And, though her performance was really weird, Angelina Jolie actually managed to pull off a Greek-like accent.

That’s not nearly enough to save a doomed movie.

The trip wasn’t a total waste, though. In addition to everybody else seeing something good, we saw a preview for a movie I really want to see when it comes out. “The Interpreter” looks like it has a lot of potential.

I still want to see “Christmas with the Kranks,” and Mom and Mimi are beginning to talk me into wanting to see “Finding Neverland,” so I’ll have to go to the movies back in Jackson. That’ll take care of the nasty aftertaste from “Alexander,” too.

Alas. Someday, somebody will try to make a historical movie and base it on the actual ancient sources we have.

Hey, maybe that’s MY place in history. ;-)