Why You Do Me So Wrong, Oliver Stone?

I like bad movies.

I don't mean exclusively - I also like good movies too. But I've always had this strange reluctance to invest time in certain movies, no matter how critically acclaimed or publicly-loved, when something with a zombie or a rocket launcher is an option. Or a zombie with a rocket launcher...yeeeeeeah. It happens at home in front of the TV, or in the video store, or at the theatre. And it's almost always "This is supposed to be really good" vs. "This is supposed to have ninjas". It's usually not even close.

But every once in a while I sit my ass down to a Citizen Kane, or a Sideways, or a Midnight Cowboy, or some other film which has things like "engrossing plot" or "character development" and whatnot, and truly enjoy myself, and think "I should really rent good movies more often". And yet somehow I wind up actually paying real money to see crap like "Bloodthirst: Legend of the Chupacabras", which turns out to have been shot by some guy in his backyard with less production value than my 11th Grade video on Sir Isaac Newton's Three Laws of Physics, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger (aside – OMG, the Word dictionary actually contains the correct spelling of Schwarzenegger).

So what’s the point? Well, I’m trying to justify as to how, in a store field with literally thousands of choices, DD and I wound up taking home the three hour suckfest that is Alexander.

Look, I’ll put it right out in the open. I loved Gladiator. I even enjoyed Troy, although I watched it in a theatre full of drunken Germans which I highly recommend. I'm a master at supsension of disbelief, enough so to watch Big Trouble in Little China - repeatedly. And I enjoy big productions enough to cut them some slack on nitpicky little things like glaring historical inaccuracies - (cough)King Arthur(cough). If there’s lots of fighting, maybe some hot consensual sex, with plenty of suspense and a bit of humour, well, I’m entertained. I’m here for the epic battles, and if you want to throw in some pretentious and ego-stroking scenes here and there, just make sure Brad Pitt has a nice tan.

But, damn you, Oliver Stone – you expect too much!

I can handle Colin Farrell’s Irish brogue on a Macedonian conqueror, thrown in with a mishmash of British, American and the Angelina Jolie Random Foreigner #7 (Boris and Natasha Model) accents. I can handle the ancient, desert-dwelling peoples dressed in whites so bright it’s like a commercial for Tide With Bleach. I can handle the now-popular “Guys Who Wear Dark Eye-Liner Are Evil (and Effeminate)" motif, popularized in the Lord of the Rings movies. I can even handle the fact that you directed Jolie and Farrell in a scene where he’s supposed to be 18 and she’s supposed to be his mother, yet it’s painfully obvious that they are THE SAME AGE and Farrell really just wants to make out with her.

But what I can’t forgive is the writing. Oh, the terrible, terrible writing, that turned this man you obviously idolize into a moody, whining, self-aggrandizing prick. Remember the last season of Buffy, where she was all distant and removed and basically talked in dramatic speeches, which got really boring and irritating and anti-climactic after a while, and then eventually the writers clued in and made fun of how Buffy just gave dramatic speeches all the time, when, like, it was their fault anyway? Well, halfway through the film I started expecting – hoping, praying – that Cleitus would turn to Cassander in the middle of one Alexander’s big moments of blah blah glory, blah blah conquer your fear and you conquer death, blah blah we are what we do I’m rubber you’re glue, and do the “This is so painful I’m stabbing myself in the eye” motion, and then Cassander would follow up by pantomiming slitting his wrists, and then someone would like, fart, really really really loudly, and everyone would start snickering and gagging and run out of the room and then over some wine they’d bitch about how Alexander always has that bright light streaming through his golden mullet like, we get it, Oliver, he’s divine.

It was honestly painful – painful! – to watch Farrell as Alexander. Now, he’s not the greatest actor of our time, but he’s hardly the worst, and judging by his performance I can only imagine that his only direction from Mr. Stone was: “Okay, bug out your eyes. Raise your fists in the air. Buggier eyes! Now make your mouth twitch. Yell. Yell louder! Louder! Okay, you’re fighting back tears…fighting those tears…and now you’re crying. Make a constipated face. Scream. Cry more. More constipated! Okay, great.”

I’m not kidding – dude threw a tantrum in almost EVERY SINGLE SCENE, because almost every single scene involved someone insulting his mom or his dad, and Oliver Stone had already set up that complex situation by showing us that he hated his dad and loved his mom, and then having the narrator tell us that he hated his mom and loved his dad, and if I was as mixed up as that I’d probably throw hissyfits all the time, too.

Which brings me to the point of the narration. This is one of my finicky spots – I don’t generally like narrators, because they’re often used as a lazy way to provide exposition and reinforce key messages when the writers run out of ideas of how to subtly show us these things, and have to resort to banging us over the head with a mallet inscribed with “ALEXANDER WAS A GREAT AND MISUNDERSTAND MAN WHO WAS NOT AS BAD AS EVERYONE SAID, HE WAS JUST AHEAD OF HIS TIME” in the form of Anthony Hopkins as Ptolemy 40 years later, or as I like to call him, the Oliver Stone Propaganda Spout 3000 (Now With White-House Level Truth-Altering Capabilities!).

However – while I cringingly expect a narrator to provide historical context and character motivation - I was absolutely speechless when this one glossed over what should have been major and compelling parts of the plot in two sentences, as in (spoiler) how we watch a scene where Alexander’s father remarries, drunkenly banishes his old wife and son to exile, and all but gives power to his new family.

Cue the narrator – “Two years later, his father was murdered. Alexander became the king, conquered [a bunch of places I don’t remember, because he basically read a list instead of showing us], became pharaoh of Egypt, and now let’s cut to a scene where he’s in the middle of a desert chasing a king that hasn’t been introduced yet who maybe had something to do with his father’s murder but is anyway much more important than showing you his father’s murder or how he came back from exile, or what happened to his mother, or his first years as a general, because we ran out of money to film any of those things.” Or maybe I’m guessing about that last part.

Alright. I guess I’ve wasted enough of my life on this movie. But I could go on. Oh yes, I could. And if I did, I would start with Alexander’s war helmet, which is supposed to look all noble and intimidating, but really makes him look like Marvin the Martian grew feathery antennae. But I’m not going to, since I’ve learned my lesson, and I can only hope that you learned yours, Ollie.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to pre-order tickets for The Transporter 2.