Alaxander Law suit

That's just ridiculous, you don't see many people complaining about movies that show the wrong armor for the period, or something like that. Those guys need to get over it, I bet they wouldn't have a problem if they said Alexander was gay in a historical documentary.

I have to share this review of the movie.  It was posted on Classics listserv.

"Ok, finally getting around to a few remarks that I hope will be a bit more informative.  Let's start with sex, since that seems to be the hot issue for so many critics.  Leaving aside the oddity of Greek cultural conservatives' going out of their way to claim Alex as Greek, yet condemning the portrayal of his quintessentially Greek behavior, the most ludicrous single statement has to be this: "'There will be people who see Alexander the Great's bisexuality as applauding that lifestyle, and unfortunately it will lead some young boys, young men down a path that I think they'll regret someday,' said Bob Waliszewski, a film critic with Focus on the Family, a Christian group."  He should perhaps be more worried about young boys thinking it's already to launch wars of empire to impress, avenge, or live up to their fathers--a path we can all regret, soon, and for the rest of our lives.
     One of the most remarkable things about *Alexander* is how little it contains of the things it's purportedly about.  For a movie about a man who conquered vast portions of the globe, there's surprisingly little fighting (two battle scenes), and almost nothing on the nitty-gritty of recruiting and maintaining  the vast armies required to do so.  This, as some critics will assert, is because we're invited to focus on Alexander as  lover--that his sexuality is too much the focus of the film.  The controversy over the great gay (or bi; or homoerotic) hero obscures the fact that his love for Hephaistion is treated with a ludicrous degree of tact and delicacy.  ("Ludicrous' and its close synonyms will be coming up a lot in this review.)  We hear early on the quote about Alex only being conquered by H.'s thighs (one of the many things that gives the film generally high marks for historical accuracy, or at any rate fidelity to the unreliable and anecdotal traditions we have).  Then we see the two of them professing their love on various occasions, and other characters remarking on it--but as far as physical contact goes, they exchange warm, affectionate hugs which reminded me of nothing quite so much as the hug I'd given my uncle earlier that day.  Neither of us, however, were wearing eyeliner, which I suppose is supposed to be a sign of their sexuality (or a realization of how good Johnny Depp looked wearing it).  Worse yet, after a particularly emotional scene (I believe it was Alex's engagement to Roxane), A. soulfully looks into H.'s eyes and says 'Spend the night with me.'  This from a pair who have been lovers for about a dozen years?  After that length of time couple dialogue is more likely to be 'What time do you need to get up in the morning?' or "Stop stealing the damn blankets.'  Why such a ludicrous scenario?  I don't know what the screenwriters et al. were thinking (and the phrase 'What were they thinking?' will probably be on millions of lips by the weekend), but I think I know what they were feeling:  a general unease with homoeroticism and a felt need to sanitize it for the audience, and perhaps for their own aesthetic reasons.  Yes, there was a scene with Bagoas (now cut, but I suppose we'll see it on DVD), and another that remains involving a (closed-mouth, of course) kiss.  But I detect a note of liberal self-congratulation (Look!  We're breaking ground with a big, strong, manslaughtering gay hero!) that cannot disguise a degree of squeamishness, mixed with wonder and awe (Two guys!  In love!  And they're really, really devoted to each other and they even *spend the night together*!)  (As an aside, this was one of the scenes where the dialogue kept bringing up unwelcome reminiscences of bad pop songs--I had Whitney Houston's "Ah-eye-ah-eye-ah will always love you-ou-ou" running through my head, which was even worse than the Vangelis score.)
     Contrast this with the treatment of het sex, which was far more explicit (but even more risible).  First, Roxane seeing A&H embracing says, with an expression and Russianesque accent made to convey her Oriental(ist) sultriness "You luhhvv heem!"  Forgive her--maybe in Bactria they'd never heard of non-romantic, non-monogamous marriage as a privilege of men (especially those who ruled the world), and was unaware that Greeks liked guys.  (The possibility that she was tacitly objecting to the couple's atypical age equality seems a stretch.)  At this point Alex drags her upstairs and tries to rape her (presumably b/c this was what Young Alex had seen Dad do to Mom in one of the first scenes, and figured that's what het sex is all about).  She fights back, they engage in a naked slap-fight, she puts a dagger to his throat; after declining Alex's invitation to kill him, they go at it like crazed weasels.  Talk about messages I wouldn't want young men to pick up from this film; hmmm, maybe it's subtly more pro-gay than I'd originally thought...
     No, scratch that.  Any time the word 'subtle' is used in connection with *Alexander*  (or any other Oliver Stone film) it's being used ironically or to establish a contrast with *Triumph des Willens* or a brick through a plate glass window.  The first thing that struck me about the film was its ponderousness:  characters speak to one another as if all too fully aware of the weighty significance of their words.  The dialogue is stiff (unfortunately I can't give enough detail here to be useful) and the pacing slow and turgid.  Every individual shot seems to go on about one second too long, which is a bit worse in the reaction shots than elsewhere. 
     Cinematography and sets are sometimes impressive.  The second scene, a flash-forward 40 years to Anthony Hopkins as the aged Ptolemy teaching some youths about the Great Man, features a very nice recreation of the harbor at Alexandria.  An outdoor scene (Alex tames Bucephalus) features some lovely contrasts of white chiton and green sward; good mountain shots (not always easy to tell the computer-generated from the real, although lighting conditions in the theater were not optimal); and a beautiful re-creation of Babylon:  Ishtar Gate, panoramic views over the city from the palace, and a very inviting harem straight out of Gerome (hey, they quote Vergil, too).  Otoh, the battle scene I saw (Gaugamela) looked absolutely awful.  Despite some nice aerial shots, the action on the ground was confused and difficult to watch:  too much dust,  intended to be atmospheric but merely obscuring the action (cf. the vastly superior opening foggy battle in *Gladiator*).  Almost everything was in earth tones, with even the contrasting colors (blood; Persian costumes) lit so as to be muted and washed-out.  The framing of the individual shots was also clumsy:  confusing action, hard to tell who was who, with the occasional spurt of blood and loud sound effect informing you that something grisly--which you usually couldn't *quite* make out--had just occurred.  The battle scenes in *Troy* were a model of clarity--think of the (Homerically premature) death of Ajax, or the death of Patroclus.  In *Alexander* it's often difficult to tell which side is which, or who Alexander is (a problem they solve by giving him a ridiculous helmet). 
      Acting:  while the overall effect is bad, I wouldn't blame the individual actors, with the exception of Angelina Jolie (Olympias), who goes the extra mile to alienate the viewer.  Very Natasha in her accent, as Scott Thomson pointed out, and with many a long-held, simmering, meaningful gaze.  We first see her teaching Alex, age 8 or so, not to fear snakes, and grooming him to be a conqueror and expressing her contempt for his drunken father (*The Glory of Hera* seems to be just beneath the surface here).  I feel a bit bad picking on someone with an obvious collagen addiction, but she was truly awful.  Anthony Hopkins came off a bit better than most, since all he had to do was reminisce and point to maps, although his very presence signals one of the film's worst problems:  it spends way too much time talking about Alex's ambitions and his greatness and his passions, but far too little actually showing us.  It's hard to see where they spent $155 million.
      I'll conclude with a few of my favorite bad moments:
              Alexander tames Bucephalus.  Wild black horse, no one else can break him, but our adolescent hero says that he can, challenging his father.  Pretty sappy coming of age moment, made all the worse by the horse-whispering about not being afraid of one's shadow.  (A horse-savvy student pointed out as well that approaching a spooked horse from the rear, as Alex does, would likely get him kicked.)  The mounting, the ride over green fields, the reaction shot of the proud father--*The Black Stallion* was so much better than this.  And the kicker:  when Alex has finished his triumphant ride, he leans forward and tells the horse what his name will be, making it sound like an honorific title rather than 'Oxhead.'
             First scene:  Dying Alex, the ring (signifying Hephaistion's undying love) falls from his hand at the moment of death.  When you see this in the theater, I urge you to shout "Rosebud!"  You'll get some dirty looks, but afterwards your fellow moviegoers will be offering to buy you drinks for being ahead of the curve in mocking the movie.  Most people get there during the
            Battle of Gaugamela:  in addition to the problems noted above, the scene is burdened with a symbolic eagle flying overhead.  We're told it's the bird of Zeus, and a portent, and sure enough the damn thing is there throughout.  My first real laugh came at the closeup of the eagle's eye, pulling back to show it in flight, and then swooping along above the battle line.  "Why don't the Persian archers just shoot the damn bird?" my companion asked.  And then there's Darius.  The Alexander Mosaic is present early on (a crude form of it I think in the Ptolemy scene), and it's alluded to in the portrayal of Darius looking over the back of his chariot.  The Persians, unlike the other furreners in the movie, seem to lack the ability to speak accented English (how Orientalist is *that*?) and say things we can't understand.  At times, they seem to lack even this ability.  Darius--a good-looking man with a smooth, waxy face and a short beard--spends a lot of time peering intently toward the battle.  At a key moment, with Alexander's cavalry approaching, he peers intently in medium shot, turns around and makes a couple of stiff hand gestures to his troops (think semaphore), and turns back toward the battle.  Cut to closeup of his stiffly intent face, with its smooth skin and limpid eyes, looking like nothing quite so much as the Madame Tusseau version of Darius.   Guffaws erupt; 15 minutes later, when his body is discovered, Alex looks on his blood-covered face and we're treated to his internal flashback of Darius in his glory--this same shot.  It was like a running gag in a good farce--the laughter so much louder the second time.
       I missed the last hour, but am assured things did not get better:  too much slow motion in the second battle, including the famous horse v. elephant scene.  Alex is wounded, and the rest of the battle is shot through his eyes with a red filter...
       See it if you must, but be warned that only small sections are bad in a truly entertaining way.  *Attack of the Killer Tomatoes* it's not.

Jeff Carnes"

Snobbish and rather silly... A review written before even the guy saw the film (IF he saw the film) and some small details added after the film. It's humorous, but it's not hard to make fun of other people's efforts... especially if you are a snobbish stout as this moron is. This is the kind of review that warns me about a film I'll utterly adore... I am too much of an Alexander fan not to watch it. Actually, I'll go to the theater on the first show of the first day it comes to town

As for the Greeks sueing over the film... well, those people are either A class morons, or are pressing some other agenda.

I've wathced a trailer with Farell's Alexandros shouting "for the glory of Greece", to his soldiers... isn't that enough for the Greeks? For Voukephalas' sake, ancient Greeks having erotic affairs with both sexes is a given, what is wrong with those people who complain about it?

People are still gossiping about him in the streets  over 2000 years later - and anyone has to ask why they call him Alexander the Great?

Sadly most of the current discussion - and certainly this lawsuit -  has nothing to do whith who he was or what he may or may not have done in his life - it is about people furthering their own modern political agenda and coopting history to try and use it in their favor.  I wish, i wish..(and I tap my heels together when I say this)..I wish that one day people would understand the difference between politics and history.

Ok - that one's not gonna work - how about - ..There's no place like Alexandria..There's no place like Alexandria..

I find your thinking illustrating my point excactly!