Alexander - The Ultimate Cut
Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 11:16 pm
You're probably aware that there is a 4th version of the movie scheduled for release on June 3rd.
Oliver Stone's decision to make Prometheus a hero of Alexander's - 'always a friend to mankind' - seems to me misguided. Promethues is not a real hero but an intellectual idea, a rationalisation of history, not something Alexander as an action man would have found particularly inspiring IMO. He wasn't a hero in the same warrior mould as Heracles or Achilles, or a god of tangible inspiration such as Dionysus. To have Prometheus as a hero of Alexander's also tries to give Alexander's conquests a gloss of higher purpose, in that he wishes to be seen as a benefactor of mankind by conqueroring them for their own good and giving them Greek, ie western, civilisation. It isn't a message that is made clear in the film but just a reference to those who know of the idea that Alexander was the great uniter of east and west and, as with so much else in the film, is a confused message that just gets lost in translation.
I'm not sure what further purpose Oliver Stone can have in producing yet another version of the film as no amount of editing is going to disguise the poor script or the unacknowledged debt to Mary Renault in trying to explain Alexander's nature through his childhood.
Oliver Stone's decision to make Prometheus a hero of Alexander's - 'always a friend to mankind' - seems to me misguided. Promethues is not a real hero but an intellectual idea, a rationalisation of history, not something Alexander as an action man would have found particularly inspiring IMO. He wasn't a hero in the same warrior mould as Heracles or Achilles, or a god of tangible inspiration such as Dionysus. To have Prometheus as a hero of Alexander's also tries to give Alexander's conquests a gloss of higher purpose, in that he wishes to be seen as a benefactor of mankind by conqueroring them for their own good and giving them Greek, ie western, civilisation. It isn't a message that is made clear in the film but just a reference to those who know of the idea that Alexander was the great uniter of east and west and, as with so much else in the film, is a confused message that just gets lost in translation.
I'm not sure what further purpose Oliver Stone can have in producing yet another version of the film as no amount of editing is going to disguise the poor script or the unacknowledged debt to Mary Renault in trying to explain Alexander's nature through his childhood.