As if!
THIS PIECE HAS TO BE THE SORRIEST EXCUSE I’VE SEEN FOR BOXOFFICE ANALYSIS.
First, there’s the insinuation that this all has something to do with the alledged recent "US swing towards conservativism," as if everything that goes on in America has to be explained through the lens of the election.
Second, there’s the implication that Americans aren’t willing to see the film because they’re "homophobes." Yeah, I suppose that’s why Oliver Stone’s previous film, JFK, which charged that the famous president was offed by a cabal of homosexual Republicans, made $94 million dollars in U.S. boxoffice (figure adjusted for inflation), with a budget of about half that.
No, the floppage of the film would have nothing to do with the fact that it’s a bloated, 3-hour behemoth that’s so awful it’s got a 14% freshness rating from the left-of-center critics at RottenTomatoes.com, who say things
like:
"Our history teachers may have been bores, but at least the bell rang before they became wearying."
"You could literally chop Alexander up into six 30-minute blocks, reassemble it at random, and the movie would make the exact same amount of sense (i.e. none). "
"So misconceived, so shrill, so fetishy is Oliver Stone’s epic, so unintentionally hilarious a stew of paganism and Freudianism, that it makes Conan the Barbarian look like Gladiator."
"Not just a bad movie but a bad movie of truly epic proportions."
"I respect Stone as a filmmaker, but this movie is punishment rather than entertainment."
No, comments like these need not be taken into account. Not when American redstaters make such a handy scapegoat for the failure of a filmmaker’s campy, self-indulgent, politically correct bloatfest.
The Independent’s spin on this is, in the words of Don Lockwood, "pure publicity." It’s the reason Hollywood wishes the film flopped.
(NOTE: I will mention one criticism of the film that isn’t fair–the fact that Alexander was bisexual. Stone isn’t making that up. That’s what the historical sources indicate, and there is little reason to doubt them on this pont. If you simply read a little Greek philosophy, it swiftly becomes painfully obvoius that Greek culture at the time was awash in bisexuality. Whether or how such should be treated in cinematic recreations of the period today, however, is entirely another matter.)
Heh. This is really bad journalism.
Mm, kind of like The Passion of the Christ, except offending red-staters instead of blue-staters, is that it? But since America is so sliced in two and the two sides are so close to even, and since all controversy is supposed to be good publicity, then the two films should do roughly comparable box office, shouldn’t they?
Or maybe the film sank like, um, a stone because there was no controversy and nobody cared, and the idea that this film “brutally exposed the cultural and moral divide which slices America in two” is the kind of monotonous claim made by monomaniacs who insist on wrenching every single subject around to their pet theme.
I’d like to add that the current definitions of *homosexuality* & *bisexuality* would not be recognized by folks in Alexander’s day. The use of such behavior in antiquity by modern homosexuals with agendas to somehow validate their lifestyle choice is a misuse of historical fact. It’s as much a fallacy as the use of seemingly homosexual behavior in the animal world that’s used to vaildate such behavior in humans. The alpha males of some species have been known to kill the children of their predecessor so only their offspring will survive but that’s called murder among humans.
I don’t get the whole “Alexander was bisexual” thing.
I’ve actually read Plutarch’s “Life of Alexander the Great”, and I don’t recall any mention of his homosexuality. In fact, I remember specifically a scene where he was offered a young eunich, and he actually turned it down, because he didn’t think it right to take him.
What documentary sources tell us he was gay?
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