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08-02-2005, 12:40 PM
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#1 of 17 
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Alexander "Rehash of Richard Burton Movie"
In watching "Alexander" last night I couldn't help but compare it with the Richard Burton "Alexander the Great" movie. Alexander accomplished so much in his very short life Oliver Stone had the opportunity to show the story from a different angle. Saving Private Ryan, King Arthur, Troy, Gladiator, and many more. In Troy Wolfgang shows us the Spartans made the Trojan Horse using wood from their ships. Clever idea and who cares if its true we are watching Troy to be entertained, not for a history lesson.
Oliver took the safe route and just rehashed "Alexander the Great" without a great actor like Richard Burton.
Hollywood already showed us that Alexander's mother and father disliked each other and that his mother probably arranged for the killing of his father. None of the bickering between his mother and father needed to be in this movie.
What I wanted to see was how did Alexander accomplish the logistics of moving 40,000+ soldiers 2000 miles across Pershia to India? How did he feed, cloth and motivate his soldiers? Show us Alexander's battle strategy like the director did in Gettysburg. And show us lots of battle scenes.
Oliver claims he researched the history of Alexander for over 15 years, yet it doesn't show in this movie. There is so much about Alexander that Hollywood could easily make a trilogy about his life. Instead, we get a rehash of the 50's Richard Burton movie.
In any regards, I enjoyed the movie and recommend it for pure entertainment.
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08-02-2005, 01:31 PM
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#2 of 17
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Quote:
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There is so much about Alexander that Hollywood could easily make a trilogy about his life.
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Yeah but they were making one movie so it all had to fit into three hours so some stuff is gonna be lost.
And I think this fits better in the Movies fourm too  |
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08-02-2005, 07:04 PM
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#3 of 17
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That is the mistake that Oliver made. Why try to jam the highlights of "Alexander's" life in a 3 hour movie? Why not take the same path Michael Mann and Martin Scorsese did with Ali and The Aviator?
It's to late now a great opportunity was missed. We could have had a truly great movie that showed us something we haven't seen before. This is a movie, not a history lesson, directors need to take liberties to entertain as Wolfgang did in Troy. Instead we ended up with "Alexander the Great" without Richard Burton.
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08-03-2005, 07:24 AM
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#4 of 17
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John Co
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I watched this last night as well. Like others I was underwhelmed. It started out OK. But went down hill starting with the first battle sequence. It's hard to say exactly what was negative, but something was missing to make it very enjoyable.
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08-03-2005, 11:00 AM
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#5 of 17
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Jason
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Quote:
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This is a movie, not a history lesson, directors need to take liberties to entertain as Wolfgang did in Troy.
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Unfortunatly, the liberties with Troy didn't improve the story at all. I'm sorry, but it is very hard to take the Gods out of the Illiad and make it work.
Jason
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08-03-2005, 12:22 PM
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#6 of 17
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John Co
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See now I really enjoyed TROY. IMHO it was just done much better, the characters were more interesting, story told better, whatever.
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08-03-2005, 06:15 PM
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#7 of 17
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Second that, I also REALLY enjoyed Troy and never did get what all the bashing was about. It's not a classic by any means, but as far as entertaining, it did that for me in spades...different strokes I guess.
Haven't seen Alexander yet, now that the DC is out and getting OK reviews, I'll probably check it out on the week-end.
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08-03-2005, 11:38 PM
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#8 of 17
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Count me in as well as someone who enjoyed Troy as a popcorn action epic. Maybe it was the lowered expectations from so many slams against the movie. But I can understand how the omission of the gods had people peeved.
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08-04-2005, 07:40 AM
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#9 of 17
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I finally got around to seeing Troy on HBOHD and wondered what all the bashing was about myself.
I enjoyed Alexander alot more the second time around. Its hard to pinpoint exactly what went wrong with it - the first 2 hours FLEW by for me during my second viewing.
Its no where near perfect, but I found it enjoyable and its a gorgeous film to look at.
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08-04-2005, 10:14 AM
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#10 of 17
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Jason
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To me, Troy was a missed opportunity. It could have been great epic filmmaking, but ended up being a popcorn flick with a watered down storyline. It isn't bad, but it isn't everything it could be either.
Jason
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