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Oliver Stone's Alexander

Alexander

Hephaistion: Don't worry, Ptolemy--we can always take shelter beneath Alexander's massive eyebrows.

I can't help it--I saw Oliver Stone's Alexander on Monday, and it won't leave me alone. What a mess of a movie! Full of gorgeous eye-candy, of course, but as a writer I'm going to come right out and say the script was terrible.  
 
Oliver Stone and his fellow writers seemed to be following the George Lucas School of Stilted Dialogue (it didn't help that there were so many minor characters that to remind us who was who, every line addressed to a person had his name in it: "By the beard of Zeus, Cleitus, we must not falter now!" "Philotas, listen to your wise father Parmenion, who was long an advisor to my father Philip the King." "But valiant Cassander, you'd look so much better if you'd let noble Hephaistion do your eyeliner.")   
Even so, if you didn't go into the movie with some knowledge of who these guys were, you wouldn't have been able to keep them straight (so to speak, but it's obvious the studio did their best to cut as much gay content as possible--Alexander and his life-long love Hephaistion don't even get a kiss).
 
The structure was clunky, too. Near the end of the film, there's a flashback, which I at first thought was there to remind us who a particular character was, since his death was significant. But then the flashback just went on and on, including relevant information that would have been put to better use earlier on. Just so many bad decisions...
 
Curiously, I kept thinking many of the characters had wandered in from other movies. As Olympias, Angelina Jolie decided to show the world that she'd have been a much better Queen of the Damned than poor Aaliyah--she was pure, evil vampire, right down to the apparently Transylvanian accent. Jared Leto, as Hephaistion, in his eyeliner (okay, it really did look good!) and furs seemed to be auditioning for Velvet Goldmine II, and Bagoas--tall, willowy, with long dark hair--looked not so much like a Persian eunuch but a leftover elf-prince from Lord of the Rings. Not that I've seen so many Persian eunuchs, but still.  
 
Word has it Bagoas' big love scene with Alexander was cut shortly before the film was released when the studio got nervous about it, leaving him with exactly zero lines in the whole movie. At one point Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) narrated "As Bagoas once said..." and I almost fell out of my chair. Who knew the boy could talk?? (I actually had to run off to the library and re-read Mary Renault's The Persian Boy to give poor Bagoas his voice back. Wonderful book--much recommended.)
 
One last thing: with all the wonders make-up and special effects can do, and a budget on this film that ran to 150 MILLION dollars...isn't there any way they could have made Colin Farrell a convincing blond? The man is DARK. They didn't bother to dye his brows, or lighten his stubble or anything. Cassander's hair kept changing color, too, from a tawny brown to jet black, but hey, I can accept that the Hellenic world had hair dye. Alexander was just supposed to be a natural blond, okay?
 
Sorry to rant on about Alexander, but it wasn't merely a mess, it was a kind of glorious one. Would I recommend it? No, it's awful. But it's stuck with me for the past few days, and I might...just...see it again.  
 
Pity me.

But hey, I can always recommend Mary Renault's Alexander books: