This is a Great Alexander!

I'd heard that Oliver Stone's cut of Alexander: Director's Cut (2004) was actually a great movie, not the bomb that the theatrical release was. It turns out there were at least three "drector's cuts". Hope we got the right one. 

It starts with Alexander the Great's childhood, with his sexy, witchy mother Angelina Jolie and brutish, cold father Philip II, Val Kilmer. He is tutored by Aristotle, Christopher Plummer. He is very attached to another boy, Hephaistion. Alexander grows up to be Colin Farrell, and Hephaistion Jared Leto.

So Alexander gets no love from his father, even when he excels - like when he tames the wild horse Boucephalas. When Philip takes a Greek bride (Angelina Jolie was considered a savage), Alexander mouthed off and got exiled. Most of the rest of the movie is Alexander conquering the known world. He takes Babylon and conquers (but doesn't manage to kill) Darius of Persia. He heads towards India, taking Bactria and Sogdia, where he meets beautiful Roxane (Rosario Dawson). Although she is a foreign barbarian, he marries her - making Jaren Leto quite jealous. 

Because this isn't just about Alexander's conquests, but about his loves, mainly for Hephaistion. This homosexual relationship at the center of the movie may have been the biggest reason for it's weak box office. To us, it seems to be the most interesting thing about it. It is also the clearest. A lot of movie is about confusing politics and battles with mixed outcomes. So many battles end with Alexander surveying the dead and dying, and even mercy-killing his wounded compatriots. It looks like a disaster, but the voice-over assures us it was a great victory. (Voice-over by Anthony Hopkins as Ptolemy, one of Alexander's generals who picked up the Egyptian Alexandria after Alexander died.)

Of course, there's some great exotic locations, sets, and battle scenes, including elephants. Maybe if he'd stuck to that, this would have sold better.