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If you haven’t seen “Alexander,” staring Collin Ferrel and Angelina Jolie, you may really enjoy it. It was much better than I’d expected. Great historical align

If you haven’t seen “Alexander,” staring Collin Ferrel and Angelina Jolie, you may really enjoy it. It was much better than I’d expected. Great historical alignment, excellent acting, exciting battle scenes and even some drops of esoteric wisdom here and there. Beyond that, the best source I know is Life of Alexander by Plutarch. It reads beautifully (even if it could probably benefit from some modern editing). Highly recommended! https://lexundria.com/plut_alex/1-77/prr https://lexundria.com/plut_alex/1-77/prr I suppose the point of the OP is that—it’s quite hard to know exactly what happened back then! For instance, the Greeks would never admit that Alexander was the son of the King of Persia and grandson of Philip. Yes, it’s unlikely but it’s not implausible…

omnibrain 4y ago
> If you haven’t seen “Alexander,” staring Collin Ferrel and Angelina Jolie, you may really enjoy it. That’s interesting, because Alexander is the one movie I truly regret not having left during the break. I found it boring, incoherent and in parts (especially Angelina Julie’s parts) really annoying. But to be fair, I watched it with German synchronisation. Perhaps that is to blame.
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  Give it another go. It’s an example of filmmakers deciding to forego formula in favor of respect to the original material. It does jump about a lot— and it might help me that I’m really familiar with the history. For instance, it is probably better if you already know that Aristotle trained Alexander and his military commanders—otherwise you might be wondering why Aristotle is featured so heavily. And they have a number of short scenes to communicate important vignettes in his life—like his conquest of Egypt is only referred to obliquely. Also, I thought Angelina Jolie’s role as Olympias was awesome. All the family dynamics were pretty well represented! Even Alexander’s love of his horse Bucephalus… like, there were some great scenes in there.
- IndySun 4y ago
  It was not an especially good film by any stretch. It is rare to find a fan. Hokey male posturing, celebrating vicious violence as now historical whimsy, cartoon opponents, plus some bad direction, script, editing, and acting. Literally generic. I don't know anyone who liked it, and certainly no one who would ever watch it again. You're quite safe. I would add in its defence, like so so many films released, there is a decent film in there dying to get out, if only the editor had their way. Colin Farrell was 'hurt' by the lack of audience and box office response.
Keysh 4y ago
> it’s quite hard to know exactly what happened back then! For instance, the Greeks would never admit that Alexander was the son of the King of Persia and grandson of Philip. Yes, it’s unlikely but it’s not implausible… Given that we know about Alexander's parentage from multiple contemporary sources, the idea that a pro-Persian epic poem written 1300 years later is plausible when it tells us something different is not very sensible. What's probably going on is a bit of retconning to resolve two contrary ideas. On the one hand, by the time Ferdowsi was writing, several hundred years of Arab rule in Iran had made stories about Alexander (who the Arabs thought was pretty awesome) popular. On the other hand, Persians remembered that Alexander had conquered an ancient Persian empire. (We know the pre-Islamic Sassanid Persians hated Alexander.) How do you reconcile this in a patriotic Persian poem? Solution: make it so Alexander was secretly Persian! (I have no idea whether this was Ferdowsi's innovation or something that had evolved over a few centuries of storytelling prior to Ferdowsi coming along.) There's a nice discussion of the background to this (including why Ferdowsi did things like refer to Alexander as "Caesar of Rome") here https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/20f0yh/historical_bad_history_alexander_caesar_of_rome/ https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/20f0yh/historic...
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  > On the one hand, by the time Ferdowsi was writing, several hundred years of Arab rule in Iran had made stories about Alexander (who the Arabs thought was pretty awesome) popular. Indeed, it's sometimes overlooked in the West that much of the Middle East and Southwest Asia consider their cultures at least in part descended from Greece, much as Europe and places like the US consider Greece the starting point of their cultures. And that's mainly because of Alexander. So you see some of the same stuff there that you see in Europe with Greek (and, by the transitive property, Roman) history, not seeing Alexander so much as a conqueror who defeated them, but rather as a vital part of the fabric of their history and society, as the British celebrate their Roman ruins rather than being angry or ashamed of them despite the Romans being, at one time, foreign conquerors, and even freely tie major cultural founding-myths to Rome (e.g. King Arthur), much as the Aeneid ties Roman culture to Greek.
  - 4y ago
tlear 4y ago
I forgot almost all of the movie but the portrayal of the Gaugamela is breathtaking. They could do better job with Persian equipment.. but Alexander's cavalry action was awesome to see. Also it showed well just how terrifying phalanx advance was. I was reading Xenophon recently and I thought it did awesome job showing why most other troops just ran when confronted with that.
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  Xenophon is awesome reading. I really hope there will be a film of it at some point.

omnibrain 4y ago

> If you haven’t seen “Alexander,” staring Collin Ferrel and Angelina Jolie, you may really enjoy it. That’s interesting, because Alexander is the one movie I truly regret not having left during the break. I found it boring, incoherent and in parts (especially Angelina Julie’s parts) really annoying. But to be fair, I watched it with German synchronisation. Perhaps that is to blame.

dr_dshiv 4y ago
Give it another go. It’s an example of filmmakers deciding to forego formula in favor of respect to the original material. It does jump about a lot— and it might help me that I’m really familiar with the history. For instance, it is probably better if you already know that Aristotle trained Alexander and his military commanders—otherwise you might be wondering why Aristotle is featured so heavily. And they have a number of short scenes to communicate important vignettes in his life—like his conquest of Egypt is only referred to obliquely. Also, I thought Angelina Jolie’s role as Olympias was awesome. All the family dynamics were pretty well represented! Even Alexander’s love of his horse Bucephalus… like, there were some great scenes in there.
IndySun 4y ago
It was not an especially good film by any stretch. It is rare to find a fan. Hokey male posturing, celebrating vicious violence as now historical whimsy, cartoon opponents, plus some bad direction, script, editing, and acting. Literally generic. I don't know anyone who liked it, and certainly no one who would ever watch it again. You're quite safe. I would add in its defence, like so so many films released, there is a decent film in there dying to get out, if only the editor had their way. Colin Farrell was 'hurt' by the lack of audience and box office response.

Keysh 4y ago

> it’s quite hard to know exactly what happened back then! For instance, the Greeks would never admit that Alexander was the son of the King of Persia and grandson of Philip. Yes, it’s unlikely but it’s not implausible… Given that we know about Alexander's parentage from multiple contemporary sources, the idea that a pro-Persian epic poem written 1300 years later is plausible when it tells us something different is not very sensible. What's probably going on is a bit of retconning to resolve two contrary ideas. On the one hand, by the time Ferdowsi was writing, several hundred years of Arab rule in Iran had made stories about Alexander (who the Arabs thought was pretty awesome) popular. On the other hand, Persians remembered that Alexander had conquered an ancient Persian empire. (We know the pre-Islamic Sassanid Persians hated Alexander.) How do you reconcile this in a patriotic Persian poem? Solution: make it so Alexander was secretly Persian! (I have no idea whether this was Ferdowsi's innovation or something that had evolved over a few centuries of storytelling prior to Ferdowsi coming along.) There's a nice discussion of the background to this (including why Ferdowsi did things like refer to Alexander as "Caesar of Rome") here https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/20f0yh/historical_bad_history_alexander_caesar_of_rome/ https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/20f0yh/historic...

yamtaddle 4y ago
> On the one hand, by the time Ferdowsi was writing, several hundred years of Arab rule in Iran had made stories about Alexander (who the Arabs thought was pretty awesome) popular. Indeed, it's sometimes overlooked in the West that much of the Middle East and Southwest Asia consider their cultures at least in part descended from Greece, much as Europe and places like the US consider Greece the starting point of their cultures. And that's mainly because of Alexander. So you see some of the same stuff there that you see in Europe with Greek (and, by the transitive property, Roman) history, not seeing Alexander so much as a conqueror who defeated them, but rather as a vital part of the fabric of their history and society, as the British celebrate their Roman ruins rather than being angry or ashamed of them despite the Romans being, at one time, foreign conquerors, and even freely tie major cultural founding-myths to Rome (e.g. King Arthur), much as the Aeneid ties Roman culture to Greek.
- 4y ago

tlear 4y ago

I forgot almost all of the movie but the portrayal of the Gaugamela is breathtaking. They could do better job with Persian equipment.. but Alexander's cavalry action was awesome to see. Also it showed well just how terrifying phalanx advance was. I was reading Xenophon recently and I thought it did awesome job showing why most other troops just ran when confronted with that.

dr_dshiv 4y ago
Xenophon is awesome reading. I really hope there will be a film of it at some point.